Andrew Kakabadse and Nada Kakabadse’s Blog

I recently appeared on the BBC World Service to discuss intimate relationships in the workplace. My research has found that 60% of workers during their lifetimes have an intimate relationship in the workplace. By ‘intimate’ I mean something beyond friendship but not necessarily up to physical contact — the Greeks had a word for it: agape, meaning “divine, unconditional,
self-sacrificing, active, volitional, and thoughtful love”.
You can listen to the clip on the BBC site here . Nada and I discussed this topic in further detail in our book Intimacy .

Last week I gave the following presentation with Paul Moore and Dominic Carter at the RiskMinds conference. It highlights the results of an anonymous survey of risk professionals we conducted, looking at the causes and implications of the 2008 banking crisis.
Our findings include

that executives are to blame
that it was a cultural problem at banks, NOT a regulatory problem (the cost to benefit of risk taking is not weighted correctly)
that remuneration was too high and that culture does not encourage effective change management
that executives should have a right to tell their side of the story

We’ll post our full report when it’s released in January.
Risk Minds 2009: Risk Survey Presentation
View more presentations from kakabadse .

In advance of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference , I recently gave a presentation at Copenhagen Business School on Business Schools, Society and Climate Change. Here is a short video overview of my presentation: [...]

The Walker report is a lowest common denominator response to addressing corporate governance at UK banks. We need a deep overhaul of the financial system: much better regulation, longer-term thinking, and a break up of the investment banking mindsets which led to the financial crisis.
Giving non-executive directors more powers, scrutinising how they are appointed, or increasing regulation alone will make absolutely no difference.  Non-executive directors already have the powers; it’s the culture of investment banking globally which must change.
Non-executive directors must spend more time understanding the bank on whose board they sit.  They have to understand the culture, get to know the key managers in the bank, and spend more time in the bank appreciating the way business is done there.  Banks also need to spend the resources to ensure their non-executives become familiar [...]

Prompted by this article about changing online habits, in this podcast Nada and I discuss information overload, online etiquette, and research we’ve done on teenage technology use.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Here are the slides from a presentation I gave at the 10th International Conference  on Corporate Governance in London on 10 October:

View more presentations from kakabadse .

With the rise in popularity of social networking and Smart Phones, people are feeling the need to be connected to the Internet at all times. I spoke to Sky News about my recent study on the effects of “Information Overload”, a phenomenon where people feel the need to be constantly connected, whether by mobile phone or home computer. As more people begin using Smart Phones – phones that have functionality to utilise the Internet and send messages – the number of people suffering from “Information Overload” will increase along with it.
This addiction to technology and the Internet often comes at the expense of one’s health and social life. People who are constantly switched on will likely see a negative impact on their overall productivity, even with tasks that they would consider to be routine. [...]

Prompted by this article on how Republicans in the US want to block American shareholders from having a say on CEO pay , in this video I discuss how executives are blocking shareholder activism against executive remuneration, and how the equity-based financing system that prevails in Anglo-America won’t shift to a longer-term stakeholder-based financing system. This is because the issue of executive bonuses in the short term takes away attention from global long-term needs and planning.

Last week I gave a presentation at the EABIS Colloquium in Barcelona entitled ‘Corporate Governance: Global Issues for the Future’. Here are the slides:
Corporate Governance: Global Issues for the Future
View more presentations from kakabadse .

Following up on the recent news that top performing women have higher levels of testosterone , in this audio clip Andrew and I discuss the issue, as well as womens’ career progressions, what happened in Norway when it became the law for women to represent 40% of a company’s board , and how risk is related to testosterone. Listen to the clip here:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]