Bob Tricker

Professor R. I. (Bob) Tricker wrote the first book with the title 'Corporate Governance' (1984) and continues to research, consult, and write in the field.

He was educated at King Henry Vlll Grammar’s School in Coventry, qualified as a Chartered Accountant, served as an officer in the Royal Navy, was Financial Controller of the British subsidiary of an American steel company, then studied at Harvard and Oxford Universities.

His first book, The Accountant in Management, was written when he was P.D.Leake Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Management Studies, where he subsequently became Director. The divisive clashes between college heads and businessmen, political cliques and power plays, and incredible interpersonal relations on the Management Centre’s Council led him to realise that governance was not management, as taught at the Management Centre.

His research as a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford led to the exploration of ‘corporate governance’ – the title he chose for the book about his research (1984). His doctorate was awarded for work on strategy and management information systems. He served on the Councils of both the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. He was founder-editor of the research journal Corporate Governance – an international review.

He has held professorial appointments at universities around the world, including Hong Kong, Melbourne, New York, Oxford, Sydney, and Warwick. He spent fourteen years in the Far East, principally as Professor of Finance at the University of Hong Kong. Consequently, he lectured in Australia, China (in the early days of its economic rejuvenation), Japan, Malaysia, Sarawak, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam (before it had officially opened to the West). On retiring from Hong Kong University, he taught a doctoral program at Hong Kong Baptist University and wrote a distance-learning corporate governance course for Hong Kong Open University. For five years he also taught a corporate governance programme to professors from Russian business schools at the Schulich Business School in Toronto.

He has been awarded honorary professorships of the University of Warwick, the University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Open University.

He now lives in Devon, continues to write, and has been the Deputy Launch Authority for the Torbay lifeboat and crewed on Brixham heritage sailing trawlers.