The Cadbury Collection, consisting of papers relating to the activities, discussions, findings and recommendations of the 1990s enquiry into “Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance”, has been completed with the handover of copies of speeches made by the committee’s chairman, Sir Adrian Cadbury.
The Cadbury Code has now been adapted or adopted in over 100 countries and the collection, housed at Cambridge Judge Business School, is expected to attract both researchers and practitioners.
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“The Cadbury Archive underscores the point that corporate governance research and related issues are very important to Cambridge,” said Professor Gishan Dissanaike.
“The new Cambridge Corporate Governance Network which brings together researchers in the Law Faculty, Cambridge Judge Business School, the Centre for Corporate Law and also Economics, is a great addition to our portfolio because it allows us to showcase the work which is done across the university. The Cadbury Archive is an integral part of that.”
Sir Adrian Cadbury, in an interview for Cambridge Judge Business School’s website, said if asked to repeat the exercise he would have focused on two areas – a properly constituted audit committee and boardroom self-evaluation.
“Among issues that really surprised us was the failure by many large companies to have an audit committee that really looked at the figures and had a good relationship with the auditors and made use of what they could offer.”
In business everybody undergoes evaluation, added Sir Adrian, but his committee did not evaluate how boards were working.
“In my view, if I believe the board is the pivot, then they should go through a process of self-evaluation. How well are we working? Could we do better? What decisions have we made that are, looking back, the right decisions and which ones weren’t.
“The question of board evaluation of themselves seems to me to be a gap which would have been good if we could have filled.”