Adam Smith Business School

Professor Niamh Brennan, University College Dublin

"General Meetings as Theater: A Colonial Case"
Tuesday, 20 February 2024. 12:00-13:30
Room 282, Hot House, Adam Smith Business School

Abstract

Company general meetings have been characterized as theatrical performances and ritual. This research explores director and shareholder verbal interactions at the annual and extraordinary general meetings of Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company, as reflected in verbatim minutes of those meetings. The research analyzes a unique dataset, comprising 25 full sets of verbatim meeting minutes over the period 1895-1925, using manual close-reading interpretive content analysis. Our unit of analysis is the verbal interactions between directors and approving versus dissenting shareholders. We demonstrate how powerful directors mobilized supportive shareholders to quash the dissenting shareholders’ voices. Our findings have implications for how modern-day general meetings are held.

Bio

Professor Niamh Brennan is Michael MacCormac Professor of Management at University College Dublin and Founder/Academic Director of the UCD Centre for Corporate Governance. A first-class honours, first-in-class UCD Science (Microbiology and Biochemistry) graduate, Prof Niamh Brennan qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG, holds a PhD from the University of Warwick, is a Chartered Director of the Institute of Directors (London) and holds an MSc (Coaching). In recognition of her research, Niamh was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2020, Ireland’s highest academic honour, the first business school academic to be so recognised.

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For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk

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First published: 11 January 2024