The boards of Australia’s Top 100 companies are heavily populated by people drawn from the ranks of professional service firms, with almost 25 per cent of directors with multiple seats coming from the Big Four – PricewaterhouseCoopers, EY, KPMG and Deloitte.

The revelation that one in four of so-called “interlocked” directors – those who hold two or more board seats in the top companies – has worked at the Big Four comes as the firms reel from the controversy surrounding PwC’s tax advice to the ­federal government.

We hear a LOT about “the economy” – in politics, in news… what’s good for it, what’s bad for it, will “IT” survive… but what is “IT” in 2022? We’re still in the midst of a pandemic and are a week into a new Government so it’s a good time to check in on the state of the economy… and remind ourselves – what is it again?!

Dr Claire Wright is a business historian at the University of Technology Sydney Business School, joins us to talk about The Economy.

The second wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s brought sweeping changes to women’s roles in both business and politics. This episode we explore the history of women in leadership. We ask what does the landscape of women in leadership looks like today? What the continuing barriers are, and how we can progress to not only increase the number of women in leadership positions but also to expand the diversity of women in these roles.

Guests: Claire Wright – business historian at the University of Technology Sydney Business School and Blair Williams – Research Fellow and Lecturer with the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at the Australian National University.

If your ambition is to join one of the nation’s top corporate boards you could do worse than opt for a degree in accounting or the law. Then do all you can to join one of the big four professional service firms and hang on till you make partner. Around 50 or so you can happily say goodbye to your colleagues with the expectation that your professional experience and accreditation will prompt an invitation to join an ASX publicly listed company board.

In this article, Helen Trinca and Claire discuss the career paths of top company directors, particularly the increasing dominance of the corporate elite by professionals such as lawyers, accountants and bankers.

We think of wool as a rural business, but Melbourne’s Collins Street was once the epicentre of Australia’s wool industry.

While wool is grown in regional areas most of the industry’s infrastructure takes place in cities where it is processed, marketed, sold, insured, financed, and shipped overseas.

In the 1920’s over 120 wool-broking firms were clustered within a three-block radius which was crucial for the growth of Melbourne.

Claire Wright, business historian, shares the story of Melbourne’s wild and woolly past and teaches Jacinta Parsons a new word.

In the years after World War 2 new universities opened across Australia, and one of the developments that came out of that was the collaborative environment that is the tea room. Why was this so important and what effect did it have on our universities as places to work? Rod Quinn speaks to Dr Claire Wright about the importance of informal collaborative spaces for interdisciplinary knowledge.