In 2002, the book based on my PhD was published. I had met a rep from a very small publisher at a conference and she had asked to see the manuscript. Knowing nothing about academic publishing, I was thrilled when it was accepted - no changes needed but they did want camera-ready copy which in those far-off days was quite a hassle to produce. I think they printed 50 copies. Sales never reached the point of generating royalties, the company was absorbed into a much larger publisher, my contact moved on and the book sank without trace. But my mum was quite impressed and it looked good on my CV.
In 2003, when Google was still something of a novelty, in an idle moment late on a Friday afternoon, I googled my own name. Glancing down the results, I noticed one hit in which my name appeared together with that of Oliver Williamson. Odd, I thought. Isn't he a famous American economist? A click brought up a pdf which looked like a book chapter, with the title: " Organization Theory. Lessons for the Lens of Contract/Governance".
Searching the text, I found this:
"Laura Spira's ethnographical examination of role of audit committees in corporate governance is what I would refer to as a precious jewel. Rather than address the issues in a normative way, she examines the practice. Her main finding is that (2002, p. 165): 'an important and unacknowledged role of the audit committee is the provision of comfort, through a process of ceremonial performance.. The comfort thus generated supports claims to organizational legitimacy and facilitates resource access. The study offers a possible explanation for the popularity of audit committees despite their apparent lack of effectiveness in improving corporate governance standards.'
The comfort benefit is that audit committees enable companies to present a concern over high standards of corporate governance, whereupon added legitimacy and better access to financial resources result (Spira, 2002, p. 169).
In the wake of Enron and other accounting scandals, the idea that the auditing committee is a legitimating façade, maybe even a scam, is hard to resist. Spira does not purport to settle these matters definitively, but her treatment suggests that the audit committee is more form than substance. That has lessons for corporate governance reformers: do not mindlessly proliferate new rules, the observance of which serves ceremonial purposes and deflects attention from serious underlying concerns."
Wow! No-one had reviewed my book and I didn't even think any copies had been sold. And now a Nobel Laureate economist had called my book "a precious jewel"! To be honest, the excitement of that moment has never died.
Husband arrived home from work expecting dinner. No chance. I was far too busy composing an email to the great man asking how he had discovered my book. Husband, with an undergraduate degree in economics, had never heard of Professor Williamson and was not impressed.
Some hours later a puzzled reply arrived. "I have no recollection of this piece, could you remind me?" Slightly deflated - was this a forgery? was the author a different and less illustrious Oliver Williamson? - I sent him the URL.
"Ah" he replied, "I must have found your book on a shelf in the library at Berkeley." My book had found its way to a library in California - that was astonishing enough but to then be taken off the shelf by an eminent scholar in a random moment - what are the chances?
He said that he had written the chapter for his students and had no current plans to publish it but I was welcome to quote his comment. Which I did. Often. Whenever an opportunity arose. In job applications, grant applications, annual appraisals...Of course, I had to explain who Oliver Williamson was to my mum ....and sometimes to other people... even, occasionally, to economists...
Some years later Professor Williamson came to the UK to give the annual Malthus lecture at the university of Hertfordshire. After his lecture - which, I confess, I barely understood - he was surrounded by a crowd of people asking him what were no doubt penetrating questions about the arguments he had presented. I shouldered my way through to thank him for his kind words which had given a huge boost of confidence to someone in the early stages of an academic career. Of course, he had no idea what I was talking about but he smiled benignly.
The book wasn't that good. (I've written better stuff since.) It wasn't ethnographic, it was just based on a bunch of interviews. I think he was intrigued because it was an unusual approach to the subject at that time. But his comments made me believe that, in my fifties, I had become a proper academic and that my thoughts might be considered worthwhile.
Negative reviews have never bothered me since. And, paying it forward, I always frame the reviews I write as positively as I can. Although, sadly, I've never come across anything I would describe as a precious jewel.
