Why do we need to understand audit committees? The Cadbury Committee recommended that UK companies should adopt them in response to financial scandals that have stemmed from dubious financial reporting practices. In other countries, similar commissions have made similar recommendations and audit committees are now a common institution. However, many practitioners doubt whether an audit committee really does much to ensure the integrity of a firm's financial statements because, as outsiders, members don't know enough to dig deeply beneath the numbers.

The Audit Committee: Performing Corporate Governance argues that such criticism overlooks the ceremonial function of these committees. The audit committee is an arena where members can form and strengthen shifting and fragmentary networks with each other and with the external auditors. Within these networks, both consensus and independence are demonstrated, generating comfort, which legitimises the company and maintains its access to external sources of capital.

The audit committee is a key part of the corporate governance structure within an organisation. Many in the UK have been patched together to meet regulatory requirements and their operation is poorly understood because few people other than their members have access to their deliberations.

In this account of the world of audit committees the practitioner will find the ethnographical perspectives on ceremonial performance, consensus, independence, and comfort both familiar and different. It's like looking at a photograph of something commonplace from an unusual angle or through a strange-shaped lens.

Why do we need to understand audit committees? The Cadbury Committee recommended that UK companies should adopt them in response to financial scandals that have stemmed from dubious financial reporting practices. In other countries, similar commissions have made similar recommendations and audit committees are now a common institution. However, many practitioners doubt whether an audit committee really does much to ensure the integrity of a firm's financial statements because, as outsiders, members don't know enough to dig deeply beneath the numbers. The Audit Committee: Performing Corporate Governance argues that such criticism overlooks the ceremonial function of these committees. The audit committee is an arena where members can form and strengthen shifting and fragmentary networks with each other and with the external auditors. Within these networks, both consensus and independence are demonstrated, generating comfort, which legitimises the company and maintains its access to external sources of capital. The audit committee is a key part of the corporate governance structure within an organisation. Many in the UK have been patched together to meet regulatory requirements and their operation is poorly understood because few people other than their members have access to their deliberations. In this account of the world of audit committees the practitioner will find the ethnographical perspectives on ceremonial performance, consensus, independence, and comfort both familiar and different. It's like looking at a photograph of something commonplace from an unusual angle or through a strange-shaped lens.

The Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance, better known as the Cadbury Committee, was set up in May 1991 to address the concerns increasingly voiced at that time about how UK companies dealt with financial reporting and accountability and the wider implications of this. The Committee was sponsored by the London Stock Exchange, the Financial Reporting Council, and the accountancy profession, and published its final report and recommendations in December 1992. Central to these was a Code of Best Practice and the requirement for companies to comply or to explain to their shareholders why they had not done so. The recommendations and the Code provided the foundation for the current system of corporate governance in the UK and have proved very influential in corporate governance developments throughout the world. While academics and practitioners have explored and discussed the developments in corporate governance since 1992, little attention has been paid to the processes of code and policy development. This book explores the origins of the Committee, provides rich insights in to the way in which it worked, and documents the reaction to the publication of the Committee's report. The issues which the Committee addressed are still of great concern: the complex relationships through which corporations are held to account have profound effects on all our lives. The Committee provided a framework for thinking about these issues and established a process through which such thinking could be articulated and continue to evolve. This book represents a major contribution to the history of the development of UK corporate governance in the late twentieth century: the why, how, what, and when of governance development.