Professor Adam Leaver
Management School
Chair in Accounting and Society
+44 114 222 3360
Full contact details
Management School
Room C061
91Ö±²¥ University Management School
Conduit Road
91Ö±²¥
S10 1FL
- Profile
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Adam Leaver is Professor in Accounting & Society and Director of the Centre for Research on Accounting and Finance in Context (CRAFIC). Prior to that he was Professor in Financialization and Management at the University of Manchester.
Adam’s primary research interest is in the financialization of the firm. His recent work examines the dimensions of time and space in accounting and finance across a number of projects:
A first examines the role of the accounting regime in facilitating higher shareholder distributions by allowing managers to pull income forward in time.
A second explores the tension between an accounting regime which discounts the future, and an impending ecological disaster whose costs are exponential; and whether it is possible to reimagine the temporality of financial reporting to bring forward green investments.
A third analyses and visualises the changing social networks within financial services across space and time.
A fourth tries to understand the different calculative frames and speeds of accumulation in city-region development.
Adam is interested in novel methodological combinations which allow social-constructivist such as forensic follow-the-money accounting and social network analysis to explore His work appears in leading international peer-reviewed journals including Work, Employment & Society, British Journal of Management, Organization, Economy & Society, Critical Perspectives in Accounting, Review of International Political Economy, New Political Economy and The Journal of Cultural Economy.
Adam currently holds an ESRC open call grant to investigate Manchester as a ‘centripetal city’ and a Luminate grant to examine audit failure and audit reform. He was also ISRF Political Economy Research Fellow 2017-18.
- Research interests
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Adam's current research interests include:
- using social network analysis methods to map the social relationships that underlie certain complex securities markets
- developing a relational theory of the firm to understand the impact of financialization in the corporate sphere
- exploring the inter-temporal transfers and tensions that arise as a consequence of financialization
- theorising the relations between accounting and the built environment.
- Publications
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Books
- . Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- The end of the experiment?: From competition to the foundational economy. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- . Oxford University Press.
- Financialization at Work Key Texts and Commentary.
- .
Journal articles
- . Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 99.
- . Accounting Forum.
- . Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 56(3), 896-921.
- . Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 55(4), 923-930.
- . Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.
- . Environment and Planning A, 55(4), 969-996.
- . Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, 2(3), 403-429.
- . Organization.
- . Competition & Change, 21(2), 114-131.
- . History and Anthropology, 27(5), 585-601.
- . Soundings, 62, 95-106.
- . Economy and Society, 44(1), 91-109.
- . Juncture, 21(3), 215-221.
- . Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 25(1), 46-57.
- . Accounting Forum, 37(4), 300-314.
- . Journal of Cultural Economy, 6(3), 336-352.
- . Work, Employment and Society, 27(3), 396-413.
- . Accounting Forum, 36(1), 5-17.
- . Journal of Cultural Economy, 5(4), 473-488.
- . Economy and Society, 41(3), 360-382.
- . Journal of Cultural Economy, 4(4), 387-404.
- . Socio-Economic Review, 9(3), 567-596.
- . Organization, 17(5), 543-561.
- . Review of International Political Economy, 17(3), 454-480.
- . Competition & Change, 14(1), 1-22.
- . New Political Economy, 15(1), 9-28.
- . Economy and Society, 39(1), 33-63.
- Narratives and the financialised firm. Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie(SPEC. 49).
- . British Journal of Management, 20(2), 252-264.
- . Soundings, 41(41), 8-18.
- . European Journal of Communication, 23(3), 295-317.
- . Journal of Cultural Economy, 1(2), 109-127.
- . The Sociological Review, 56(1_suppl), 162-186.
- . New Political Economy, 12(3), 339-347.
- . New Political Economy, 12(3), 349-368.
- . Review of International Political Economy, 14(4), 553-575.
- . Economy and Society, 36(1), 51-77.
- . The Sociological Review, 53(1), 96-128.
- . Review of International Political Economy, 11(4), 677-713.
- . Information & Communications Technology Law, 12(3), 247-262.
- . Competition & Change, 6(1), 95-111.
- . Competition & Change, 5(1), 39-71.
- . Capital & Class, 23(1), 155-166.
- Through A Glass Darkly: Tracing The Mundane Organisation Of A Bubble Network. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2017(1).
Chapters
- The temporalities of financialized accounting In Vollmer H (Ed.), The Handbook of Accounting In Society (pp. 45-57). Edward Elgar Publishing
- In Seabrooke L & Wigan D (Ed.), Global Wealth Chains: Asset Strategies in the World Economy (pp. 30-48). Oxford University Press
- Crowding out investment, disgorging the social settlement: financialisation and the search for sinecures in a failed free market experiment In Berry C (Ed.), What We Really Mean When We Talk 91Ö±²¥ Industrial Strategy (pp. 179-182). Future Economies
- Reconceptualizing financial innovation Frame, conjuncture and bricolage, ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO BANKING REGULATION AND REFORM (pp. 111-133).
- , The Corporation (pp. 291-302). Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- The Metropolitanisation Of Gains, The Nationalisation Of Losses In Christensen J (Ed.), The Greatest Invention – Tax and the Campaign for a Just Society (pp. 220-223). Common Wealth Publishing / Tax Justice Network
- , New Perspectives on Industrial Policy for a Modern Britain (pp. 60-78). Oxford University Press
- Everything for sale: how non-executive directors make a difference, REMEMBERING ELITES (pp. 162-186).
- Financialization In Bozkurt O, Finn R, Granter E, Hunter C, Kivinen N, McCann L & Wierman B (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Critical Management Studies Edward Elgar Publishing
- Creative accounting and shareholder value : why the accounting rules on distributable reserves must change In Allen P, Konzelmann S & Toporowski J (Ed.), The Return Of The State: Progressive Economic Policies for a Post-Pandemic Britain Agenda Publishing
Reports
- Why the principle of capital maintenance and the definition of distributable profits matter
- Value for money and accountability: a report on the Birmingham City Council section 114 bankruptcy
- Reward for failure: The paradox of audit partners’ record payouts amidst poor audit quality
- Audit failure in the UK energy supply industry
- Manchester offshored : a public interest report on the Manchester Life partnership between Manchester City Council + The Abu Dhabi United Group
- Pay and the pandemic: the decoupling of Dutch boardroom pay from performance during the Covid-19 outbreak
- How To Estimate Distributable Reserves
- Against hollow firms : repurposing the corporation for a more resilient economy
- Financial engineering and the productivity crisis
- Auditing with accountability : shrinking the opportunity spaces for audit failure
- What comes after the pandemic? A ten-point platform for foundational renewal
- Written evidence from Professor Adam Leaver (LCC 43)
Website content
- University Finances Are in a Perilous State – It’s the Result of Market Competition and Debt-Based Expansion.
- University finances are in a perilous state – it’s the result of market competition and debt-based expansion.
Other
- Briefing note: an update on Higher Education finances.
Preprints
- , SSRN Electronic Journal.
- , SSRN Electronic Journal.
- . Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Grants
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Date Funding Body Title Grant Value Principal Investigator Co-Investigators 2020 Independent Research Fund Denmark TIME MIRROR: Accounting for the Green Transition Approx. £1.4 Mil. Thomas Riise Johansen, Copenhagen Business School Adam Leaver; Len Seabrooke (CBS); Caroline Pontoppidian (CBS); Richard Murphy (CAN) 2020 ESRC Inside And Outside The Centripetal City: The Implications Of Manchester’s Property-Led Regeneration For The Northern Powerhouse Agenda £572,516, all allocated to 91Ö±²¥. Adam Leaver Jon Silver 2020 Luminate 'Building An International Centre for Audit and Accounting Reform' £150,000 approximately, of which £45,000 for 91Ö±²¥ Adam Leaver Richard Murphy (CAN); Duncan Wigan (CBS) 2020 ESRC/Productivity Insights Network Rethinking Capital Allocation In A Context of Financialization: Producing An Index Of High Productivity/Low Financial Engineering Firms For Investors £49k, all allocated to 91Ö±²¥ Adam Leaver 2019 ESRC/Productivity Insights Network Financialization & Productivity £10k, all attributable to 91Ö±²¥ Adam Leaver 2019 Luminate ‘Conflicts of Interest in the Auditing Sector’ £65k; of which roughly 2/5ths were allocated to 91Ö±²¥ Adam Leaver Leonard Seabrooke &
Duncan Wigan (Copenhagen Business School)2019 ISRF ‘A Network For Lemons, Phase I’ £14k, all attributable to 91Ö±²¥ Adam Leaver 2018 ISRF ‘A Theory Of The Financialized Firm’ £60k, split 50/50 between 91Ö±²¥ and University of Oslo Adam Leaver/Keir Martin
- Teaching interests
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Adam's teaching is research-led and uses 'follow-the-money' methods to explore contemporary economic issues.
His teaching uses case studies drawn from his research to illustrate broader economic themes and issues, with a strong social responsibility theme.
In the past this has included accounting analysis of outsourcers, pharmaceutical firms, banks, supermarkets, water companies, car manufacturers, new economy retailers and football clubs.
This approach allows students to enhance their practical accounting skills with topical and relevant cases, whilst as well as developing the transferable skills of critical reflection and independent thought.
- PhD supervision
Adam is available to supervise PhD students in the following areas:
- Critical accounting using 'follow-the-money' methods
- Financialization
- Heterodox economic/accounting approaches to financial crisis
- Economic sociology of finance
Professor Adam Leaver supervises:
- PhD student Abiodun Akintebi
- PhD student Kevin Burrows