Where does the time go?

It's 10.30 am on a sunny October day. This morning Beanie the cat woke me at 5 am so I was sitting at the PC quite early. So far:

I've responded to some emails, tried (yet again) to set up a Scholarly Connections meeting for the department and sent out a request for information on research ouputs from colleagues.

I've checked Google Reader for updates on the blogs I follow, and read several.

I've followed up two automatic alerts to newly published papers (nothing interesting)

I've made some notes for a bid for research funding, to look at the role of audit committees in the UK public and third sectors. I've done a Google Scholar search on "public sector governance" and skim read a paper on corporate governance in the Australian public sector.

I've read a paper sent to me by a young colleague, which has received a revise and submit from a 3* journal - pretty good for a first paper. But some of the reviewers' comments are difficult to understand and it's a bit much to criticise the paper's writing style in sentences that are very badly written. Reviewers' comments can be very discouraging for new researchers. As a reviewer, I know that sometimes it's not easy to find something positive to say, but I always try to acknowledge the effort that the authors have put in and to be constructive. It'll take some fairly major reconstruction but I think this paper can be sorted out.

I've read a very good paper by a legal scholar which analyses two recently published papers on the impact of independent directors on boards and argues that we need to recognise that the role of the independent diretor in corporate governance may be more complicated than has been considered by policy makers and regulators. I like the conclusion: "We may yet hope against hope that director independence could be the magic bullet for corporate governance. But there might be no magic." Tung, F (2011) The Puzzle of Independent Directors: New Learning, Boston University Law Review, Vol 91, 1175-1190. I think this is good because the ideas resonate with my own thinking. I'm currently working on a book on the history of the Cadbury Committee, which, two decades ago, took the value of independent directors as read, in spite of very little evidence about their impact. We need to challenge the conventional wisdom!

I've read the FRC feedback on its consultation about gender diversity on boards
http://www.frc.org.uk/press/pub2645.html
I'm pleased to see that the FRC is taking a measured approach to amending the Corporate Governance Code on this. Mandating board structures has costs as well as benefits and the debate on quotas to promote gender diversity does not, in my view, reflect the costs properly. The Davies review was very selective in the research it quoted. I'm trying to write a paper which brings together the research on the topic, which has been undertaken in different academic disciplines which don't seem to talk to each other. Again, US legal scholars have much useful stuff to say.

And I've started writing this blog, to keep a record for my own use and for anyone who thinks that professors sit about twiddling their thumbs all day...

Time for a cup of green tea...