Another working weekend

Cats woke me up early on Saturday but wouldn't let me concentrate so tidied up my PC desktop. Realised I now have four folders entitled "interesting papers" for 2011 and the three previous years. At some point I shall have to trawl through those files and see if they really are interesting... If I had been organised enough to set up Zotero or similar software properly it would probably be much easier but I think it's too late now.


Wrote another chunk of just under 1000 words for the book. This could be a preface or a conclusion. It spells out exactly what we intend to do in the book - I have a clearer idea now, before we started I didn't think that the archive would provide enough material so I expected to have two chapters on subsequent developments. But chapter 5 which looks at the response to the Code has become so long and my co-author (who is supposed to write the final chapter) is so slow that I think it would be more sensible to finish the story in 1995 which is really where the archive ends, making the final chapter a brief survey of Adrian's subsequent work, the reflections of the people involved, based on our interviews and some later publications, the committees and reports that followed and the overall influence of the Code but fairly superficially. Chapter 7 will look more closely at "comply or explain", linking up with some of the academic literature. If I could write 1000 words a day it would all be done by Xmas...


I wanted to make the point about the misreporting of the Committee's origins - the Larcker and Tayan book, which is otherwise very good, says that the UK parliament set it up (I wrote to them pointing out that this was wrong and they replied to say that they would correct it in any subsequent edition). So I thought I'd search Google Books to see if I could find any other examples. There were quite a few. And a  paper published by Dahya et al in 2002 has been reprinted in several collections and is widely cited - its first line is “The Cadbury Committee was appointed by the Conservative Government of the United Kingdom in May 1991.” 


Interesting email from the solicitor I met at the House of Lords do. We have been discussing the role of NEDs - he is an expert on directors' duties and has a very academic bent. He has sent me details of a current case to read - another item for my tottering pile.


Our faculty research director has sent out an agenda for next Friday's meeting with 24 items! I have tried without success to get him to group the items into those that need discussion and those that are for information only. He is remarkably resistant to this idea but has instead gone through the items telling me why each is essential. It would be much more helpful to have this detail on the agenda itself. It doesn't look as if there is much to discuss at this meeting so maybe it will be over quickly but there is a big danger that among all the papers, which really only need rubber-stamping before sending up to the next level, there is an issue that someone will pick on and make a meal of (I've even been known to do that myself!). If the agenda is properly constructed, this can be prevented. No-one has any training in chairing meetings and we waste a huge amount of time in them. An obsession with bureaucracy reflects a culture of blame-placing and a lack of thoughtful leadership. It is much easier to focus on, for example, documenting a detailed response to the student satisfaction scores than looking at the bigger picture to identify the broader influences on student satisfaction (and in particular the negative aspects of the restructuring which people are happy to expand on anecdotally but no-one seems interested in examining using hard evidence).


Enough ranting for a Monday morning...