The Centre's mission is to carry out multi-disciplinary research into corporate governance issues occurring at National, European and Global levels.
The mission is translated into a set of research objectives covering the following research themes.
1. Corporate governance and organisational performance
The core research objective is to study the linkages between organisations' compliance with corporate governance pronouncements and their corporate performance. This also looks at the market perception of the appointment of executive and non-executive directors (NEDs) as well as shareholder engagement.
2. Auditing
Examines the role of internal and external auditors in serving the Board of directors and shareholders; the continuing debate into external auditor's independence; the predictive value of audit going concern disclosures; and IT governance, including the USA Government 's critical infrastructure assurance office.
3. Non-executive directors
Research on the roles played by non-executive directors is essential if we are to build a normative model of the contribution that directors make to corporate governance. Research looks at the roles played by non-executive directors, supported by theories in organisational behaviour (OB) and human resource management (HRM), to illuminate and inform better practice.
4. Committees of the board (e.g. Audit, Remuneration)
Cadbury created the need for organisations to establish new committees of the Board, such as the audit committee and the remuneration committee. Research into the criteria for use in measuring the effectiveness of audit committees is long overdue. Other research projects concentrate on executive remuneration as well as the role and membership of audit committees in the public sector.
5. Communicating with stakeholders
An area of great importance to organisations facing pressure to improve transparency while protecting what they see as commercially sensitive information. This dilemma takes place against an argument that better voluntary disclosure should benefit organisations in terms of a lower cost of capital and/or reduced share price volatility. The objective is to examine how organisations can manage the trade-off between the desire of investors and other stakeholders' for more transparency, and the costs associated with disclosures that might benefit competitors.
6. Legal aspects of corporate governance.
Intangible assets are recognised as a key driver in wealth creation. As such, their measurement a key concern for the accounting profession and corporate governance. However, we have only very imperfect ways of valuing these assets, and corporate failures and accounting scandals have emphasised the need to improve our understanding of how we value companies. This is a major area of research interest and we will add our voice to the growing body of debate through research which informs policymakers.
Key activities
The centre seeks to achieve its aims by:
- Conducting funded research and producing scholarly publications and reports for policy-makers and practitioners
- Organising workshops, seminars and major conferences to promote debate and disseminate research results
- Recruiting post-graduate research students (M Phil and PhD) to research within the different research themes
- Contributing to public debates on Corporate governance
