Professor Adam Leaver

Management School

Associate Dean for Research and Innovation

A.Leaver@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 3360

Room C061, Sheffield University Management School

Full contact details

Professor Adam Leaver
Management School
Room C061
Sheffield University Management School
Conduit Road
Sheffield
S10 1FL

Profile: 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

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.

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Research group: Centre for Research into Accounting and Finance in Context (CRAFiC)

Grants

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 Sheffield.	Adam Leaver	Jon Silver
2020	Luminate	'Building An International Centre for Audit and Accounting Reform'	£150,000 approximately, of which £45,000 for Sheffield	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 Sheffield	Adam Leaver
2019	ESRC/Productivity Insights Network	Financialization & Productivity	£10k, all attributable to Sheffield	Adam Leaver
2019	Luminate	‘Conflicts of Interest in the Auditing Sector’	£65k; of which roughly 2/5ths were allocated to Sheffield	Adam Leaver	Leonard Seabrooke & Duncan Wigan (Copenhagen Business School)
2019	ISRF	‘A Network For Lemons, Phase I’	£14k, all attributable to Sheffield	Adam Leaver
2018	ISRF	‘A Theory Of The Financialized Firm’	£60k, split 50/50 between Sheffield and University of Oslo	Adam Leaver/Keir Martin

Teaching interests

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: