I was very sad to learn of the death of Sir Adrian Cadbury. He had a huge influence on my academic
career, for which I shall always be grateful. I first met him when I was in the
middle of my PhD study of audit committees. At that time, around 1996, there
was very little academic literature on audit committees and what there was
suggested that they weren’t very effective, so I wanted to know why the Cadbury
Committee had placed such emphasis on their value. I discovered that Sir Adrian
was speaking at a conference on internal audit in Birmingham so I went along
and, after his very interesting talk, I posed my question. His response was a
big smile and with a twinkle in his eye he replied “It was the only thing the
Committee could agree on!” Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that and in the
coffee break he explained much more about the background but that remark
sparked in me a deeper interest in how the Committee had worked and a lengthy quest
to find the minutes of its meetings.
After that, we corresponded occasionally: he was always
ready to answer my questions and it was a delight to receive his beautiful handwritten
letters. As academic research in corporate governance became more established,
conferences took place. Adrian was a regular attender and speaker at one
organised by Bernard Taylor at Henley Business School, an annual event which
brought together academics and corporate governance practitioners from across
the world. One morning there I awoke
very early and decided to go for a walk by the river where I encountered Adrian
watching the early morning rowers with great interest: that was when I learned
of his great rowing prowess, about which he was typically very modest. He also chaired sessions at the annual
conference hosted at Birmingham Business School, where he showed great
enthusiasm for the academic work presented, particularly by young scholars from
abroad. They all wanted to be photographed with him and he acceded charmingly
to every request.
My search for the minutes continued. I eventually tracked
down the original Committee secretary, a civil servant long retired, because
Adrian remembered that he had been a keen ornithologist: a search of bird
watching groups led me to him but sadly he had no idea of where the minutes might
be. As news of my quest spread, people
were very helpful; possible locations mooted were an attic in Edinburgh (the
home of one of the Committee members), a warehouse in Milton Keynes (where
ICAEW papers are stored) and the archives of the former DTI but many diligent
searches have as yet revealed no trace of the minutes of Committee meetings
between 1992 and 1995. At one point I
actually accused Adrian of not having held any formal meetings at which the
entire committee assembled: he thought this was very amusing and denied it but
it became clear from his papers that much of the important work in developing
the Report and Code went on outside any formal meetings.
When he decided to give his papers to the Judge Business
School in Cambridge, he told me that he
didn’t think any of the twelve boxes contained copies of the minutes but that I should look at the papers to see if there were any clues. When the papers were eventually archived, I was invited to examine them and speak about their importance at a symposium. (The papers have since been digitised and are all available online, a remarkable resource) At that point I recruited my colleague Judy Slinn, a business historian, to help me as she had lots of experience of working with archives. We realised very quickly that this amazing material could provide the basis for a book and Adrian was delighted at the prospect of the Committee’s work being properly documented. His support for the idea enabled us to raise some funding for the work, from ICAS and from the British Academy, and a publishing deal with OUP, the publishers of Adrian’s own book “Corporate Governance and Chairmanship”.
Thereafter he took a keen interest in the progress of the
book and generously offered to write a foreword. He dropped the odd gentle hint
that we should get on with it a bit more quickly as he was, as he put it, no
spring chicken.
I’ve blogged about some of the frustrations of putting the
book together. But there was much pleasure in the process too, especially the
time spent in the Judge library reading Adrian’s annotations on many of the
documents: our task would have been very much more difficult if his handwriting
hadn’t been so clear! On one occasion he very kindly invited us to his home for
coffee to chat about some of the issues: his memory of the Committee’s work was
very clear and he was able to explain much of the context of the data we worked
with.
Although he always referred to the work of the Committee as
a team effort , it became very clear to us that the success of the Committee’s
work was in great part due to his people management skills and to the immense
efforts he put in after the Report and Code were published, which
ensured that the ideas became embedded in thinking about corporate governance.
A significant problem for us was avoiding the writing of a hagiography but, while
he modestly played down his personal contribution, we wanted to ensure that it
was properly documented. We sent him the final draft in some trepidation but to
our relief he seemed quite thrilled with it .
We were delighted that he was able to speak at the book launch
in October 2013 and his remarks were very kind. He was, as ever, charming and patient with
everyone there who wanted to speak to him and asked him to sign copies of the
book.
I had tentatively floated with him my idea that
non-executive boards were now in great danger of distancing themselves too far
from management and that maybe the boundary between governance and management
should be more permeable, an idea which drew on the data Thom and I were
collecting on the role of NEDs in NHS
boards. He firmly disagreed, but charmingly, of course.
The last time I heard from him was earlier this year when we
shared our amusement that someone in the OUP marketing department thought that, since Cadbury must mean
chocolate, a Valentine’s Day marketing push for the book would be useful.
I shall miss his wise counsel, his keen intellect and the
twinkle in his eye. It was great privilege to know him.
