Stopping reading, starting analysing...

My plan to cut back on my reading has been quite successful but logging in to Google Scholar yesterday I found that it had a couple of suggestions for me to look at. Big mistake. I found myself reading an article which made me sigh.

The authors have developed a typology for analysing the quality of "comply or explain" reporting. All well and good: everyone these days wants to develop a typology. It's rather like years ago when we all wanted our own two-by-two matrix: I remember being very excited when I managed this when studying internal auditors' views of risk management. But...there is already a very good paper on the same topic which develops a taxonomy.

What is the difference between a taxonomy and a typology in the context of social science? I have always understood a taxonomy to reflect hierarchical arrangements whereas a typology just groups things together on the basis of characteristics rather than relationships.

Anyway, the authors do recognise the other paper and make some attempt to explain why their approach is different but if I'd been reviewing the paper I would have asked for a more detailed explanation.

But the source of my irritation is more fundamental. The authors note that there is a very limited literature on comply or explain, thus justifying their contribution. But does this matter? The intention of the Cadbury Committee in recommending comply or explain in the Code of Best Practice was to initiate conversations between investors and companies. Nowhere in the paper is the view of investors mentioned: the whole focus is on regulation and enforcement. Regulators have to justify their existence: that they call for improved disclosure quality is inevitable. But investors seeking information about corporate governance don't rely solely on published reports: they have other information sources. If they are unhappy about the quality of disclosures, let them pursue this directly with companies, exercising voice or exit.

Rather than sitting at their desks, churning out sterile analyses of explanations of non-compliance, academics could make a greater contribution by finding out what investors think and what difference such explanations make in practice. Much more of a challenge to get suitable data, of course, but surely much more valuable in assessing the practical effects of the comply or explain requirement.

That was a brief diversion and my reading is now focused on storytelling which is considerably more interesting. I have returned to interview data collected a decade ago, using a new perspective which I think may generate a third paper from the data. I have been planning to do this for some time but have been waiting for a Mac version of MAXQDA, software that I have used in the past. Finally this has appeared and I have downloaded a free demo version. I wonder if I can get all the coding done before the 30 days run out!