Conference report ‐ Designing a corporate governance course ‐ What do you think?

Abstract

During the Corporate Governance Workshop in Bangor on the 19th December 2000, and the March 27th SIG meeting at the 2001 BAA conference, the SIG made some progress in our attempt to design a high level corporate governance course. We wished to do this to establish a clearer focus for and higher quality communication within the SIG group, to acquire a common view of what the core of the field constituted, with the aim of improving the design of existing and emerging courses, and to identify new areas of research which linked SIG members. We recognised that ‘Corporate Governance’ comprises a very wide field and that we had to limit our course design in some way. As a result, we agreed to narrow the course design parameters and aims as follows. The course should consist of a 20 hour teaching module, have a corporate focus, reflect the interests of the SIG members, be aimed at the final year of a UK undergraduate programme in accounting and finance and emphasise this subject area and the teaching and research skills of staff in this field. We also expected that the course would make full use of available theoretical approaches, namely, contracting theory, institutional theory and critical theory, as well as relevant economics, law or sociology literature, without becoming hostage to one view. We therefore expected the course to have a solid inter disciplinary focus, but with the accounting and finance field at its heart.