Friday

Some really interesting stuff has surfaced overnight from the ICAEW discussion on the impact of computer trading on financial stability which seems to be how the member's query is being interpreted.

http://www.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/current-projects/computer-trading/working-paper

Huge temptation to read all the material right now, before breakfast!

A request from the editor of a journal I have never heard of to submit papers. All over the world there must be academics slogging away taking on the often thankless task of editorship and sending out these requests. This one is personalised, referring to one of my recently published papers. But the journal doesn't appear on the Association of Business Schools journal ranking list so I am loth to encourage colleagues to submit work there. I have accepted an invitation to join the editorial board of "Social Business", a new journal which has great potential but only one issue has so far come out and it's also not ranked. I have promised the editor something on board diversity but I haven't had a chance to write it yet. Another plate to be kept spinning.

Today's alerts tell me that a new issue of AOS is out, as well as an article in a sociology journal comparing UK and German corporate governance codes. This reminds me that an Austrian scholar I know is currently in Oxford, working on a comparison between the UK and Austrian codes, and wants to meet up soon. He will be interested in this article. A few clicks reveals that it's not available via our library so I request an inter-library loan and then send the citation on to him.

I set out to get on with chapter 6 but a couple of (welcome!) interruptions delay me. I get even more interruptions if I try to work in the office and home is a lot more comfortable. I realise that my desk is a great mess of papers so I spend some time sorting them into more manageable piles relating to the three main projects I have on the go at the moment. The pile of papers to read is very high and I start reading. Suddenly it's lunch time....

I deal with further email and then set about pulling together the information about the department's research activities that I had asked colleagues to provide. One set relating to publications and other outputs has to be presented in a specific format. To make it easier for myself I ask for the information to be set out in that format and amazingly this time most people have done as I asked so it was a relatively simple cut and paste job which took about an hour. Six people have yet to reply but my deadline has not yet arrived for this.

A more urgent request was for general information about individual research interests and I had asked for this to be sent before today's date so that I can pass it on to the marketing department on Monday for the new web page. Another cut and paste job. Four people missing this time. I emailed the document to everyone and two of the missing ones emailed back the necessary information quite quickly.

So I've spent a couple of hours on jobs that could be done by an administrator. In theory, we have a share in one of the executive office team but if I asked her to do it I'm sure there would be ructions. If we had a dedicated administrator for the department though, things would be so much easier. I even know of other universities where professors have their own personal assistants...

A LinkedIn alert draws my attention to some discussions that are going on in the corporate governance research group. More practitioners than academics seem to post there which gives an interesting perspective. This group was started nearly two years ago as a result of conversations at the EIASM corporate governance workshop in Brussels that I co-chair every year. There are now 574 members which is very pleasing.

Right, my inbox has only 13 messages and they can wait till next week. The weekend starts here...