COLLUSION

• The life and times of the CEO. Harrington and Steele. Cranfield University, 1999. Convincing survey of CEO's, spelling out what they think are the most significant influences on them. A clue - for bigger quoted companies, it's the City!
• Barbarians at the Gate. Burroughs and Helyar. Harper, New York, 1990.
  Riveting account of the machinations of investors, bankers and managers leading up to the leveraged buyout of R.J.R Nabisco. Feel for the poor employees as pawns in the bigger game!
• Stewardship Theory and Agency Theory. Donaldson and Davis, Australian Journal of Management, 1991. It is not possible to understand the underlying ideas of contemporary corporate governance and investor/manager relationships without an appreciation of Agency Theory, which in a nutshell propounds that managers are the agents of shareholders, are untrustworthy and must be incentivised and sanctioned to do what shareholders want.
• In the Mirror of the Market: The disciplinary effects of company/fund manager meetings. John Roberts et al, Judge Business School and Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
  Demonstrates the ways in which investors exert their supremacy over managers, in effect making them their agents inside companies.
• Having Their Cake, Don Young and Pat Scott, Kogan Page, 2004
  Chapter 4, 'Dancing Partners: The relationships between managers and markets'. Carefully researched description of the complex skein of relationships between the City and managers, who does what and what they want.