Abstract
He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, And it’s greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman! For he might have been a Roosian, A French, or Turk, or Proosian, Or perhaps Itali-an! But in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman!
I have written a formal obituary of Bob Parker (who died in July 2016) for Accounting and Business Research (ABR), a journal which he edited with great distinction for 18 years. I am most grateful to the editors of Accounting History (which published many of Bob’s papers) for allowing me space to share some informal recollections about Bob. One memory is that Bob was fond of quoting (and deliberately misquoting) Gilbert’s dotty rhymes, fortunately spoken not sung.
Professor Robert Henry Parker went to the same small rural Norfolk school as Admiral Horatio Viscount Nelson, though admittedly a few years later. When Bob was a lad, he served a term as an articled clerk in an accountant’s firm. He wore clean collars and a brand-new suit for the pass examination at the institute. 1 After that, Bob pursued a proper activity of Englishmen: to go down to the sea in ships. Thereby, Bob went to work in Nigeria (as an auditor) and then to Adelaide (as a lecturer) while still in his 20s. His searingly dry English humour might not have been understood by Roosians but was appreciated by Australi-ans.
After Nigeria and Australia, there was Manchester, Fontainebleau and Dundee, all before the age of 40. He also courted excitement in the form of his feisty wife, Agnelle, from Mauritius. I particularly enjoyed Agnelle’s emotion-filled lament on the inadequacies of Scottish ‘cuisine’ of the 1970s. Bob is survived by Agnelle and by a son (Michael), daughter (Theresa) and granddaughter (Carina).
Bob’s last and long-running post was at Exeter University from 1976. I had arrived on the staff there one year before him, having taken the classic route of economics degree and accounting qualification, as Bob had done 20 years before. On starting my academic career, I thought that a study of international differences might lead to entertaining travel, and I asked my colleagues for advice. They thought that my topic would be mostly harmless and suitably bereft of practical importance, and they recommended consultation with a ‘Professor Parker’ of Dundee. My practitioner’s mind was so unsullied by anything academic that I had never heard that name before.
I wrote to Bob, and he sent useful advice on reading. Soon after, he was appointed as Exeter’s first professor of accounting. For me, that was a stroke of good fortune from which I will never recover. At our first meeting in Exeter, Bob had just returned from a visit to Caen, and he showed me a postcard of the tombstone of William the Bastard (aka the Conqueror). My ‘O level’ Latin enabled me to translate it. I had passed my entrance exam. Soon, Bob became my PhD supervisor and then we designed a course, and started writing the book, on Comparative International Accounting (CIA, 1st edition of 1981; 13th of 2016).
In daily meetings for coffee in the senior common room, I found out much about accountancy and about being an academic. I learnt that auditors run firms not companies, and that they have offices rather than branches. I learnt how to pronounce Mel’b’n. Bob gradually taught me how to edit ABR, and I soon discovered why that would be useful: he was about to go on a sabbatical to the University of New South Wales, leaving me to do much of his editing. Incidentally, in those days, we received physical page proofs which we corrected and then drove to the publishers across the river Exe.
Of course, Bob had often been in Australia before that sabbatical, having taught in Perth as well as in Adelaide in the early 1960s. This, too, was of great use to me. On my first visits to the antipodes in 1980 and 1981, all academic doors were open to me in Australia and New Zealand.
Bob’s dry sense of humour was also cheeky, and he did not suffer from false modesty. At my first conferences, he used to introduce me to the great and the good: ‘This is Chris. I have taught him more than he knows’. He enjoyed sending e-mails with such titles as ‘CIA files’, hoping (apparently in vain) for detection by government agents. He would often rush up the corridor brandishing some new source of innocent merriment, 2 such as a draft book review for ABR from a distinguished US academic which began: ‘This publication fills a much-needed gap’. As recently as last year, while commenting on one of my drafts, he chided: ‘You have shown once again that you can write very quickly, but is that an excuse for getting it only 97% right?’. Dick Edwards reports similarly, mentioning one of Bob’s comments on a draft sentence: ‘unnecessary gobbledygook even when written by JRE’: a clever mixture of flattery and useful criticism. For 40 years, I have relied on that sort of candid advice, which has greatly reduced the number of mistakes in my writing.
Bob’s hand can be seen in many important developments in academe. For nearly 20 years, he successfully steered ABR towards international renown, having taken over as editor in its fifth year of operation. In the 1960s, Bob helped to resuscitate 3 the Association of University Teachers of Accounting (AUTA) which eventually became the British Accounting and Finance Association. Shortly after he arrived at Exeter, he was on his way to a meeting of the AUTA Executive. As he left, I advised him not to offer to host the annual conference at Exeter and warned that, if he did, I would not organise the conference. That is how I ended up organising the AUTA conference of 1978. 4 Modified rapture! 5
Bob was greatly in demand for such tasks as PhD external examiner, member of chair-appointing committees, book reviewer and journal referee. Everyone knew that he would do the job well and congenially. He was thus always too busy. The whiteboard in his office, which could just be observed among chaotic piles of papers and books, bore the slogan ‘SAY NO’, but that was breached more often than honoured.
I acknowledge 40 years’ worth of help from Bob. He was my PhD supervisor, collaborator on several papers and co-author of 13 editions of CIA. Nearly all my other publications benefitted from Bob’s long experience and useful advice. In all that time, there was never a hint of ill temper: Bad language or abuse, I never, never use, Whatever the emergency; Though ‘bother it’ I may Occasionally say, I never use a big, big D— What, never? Well … hardly ever!
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Steve Zeff has written to say, ‘He was a gentleman and a scholar’, and many others have made similar remarks. In ‘Farewell to a modest scholar’, the poet
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asks whether the departed one can be replaced, but Who know him, know such hope is vain; Wise, patient, clear, judicious, fair, The artist temper, fine and rare__ We shall not see his like again.