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“Culture” has become a critical factor for success in today's international business environment. In particular, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are known to suffer from a high failure rate, due to culture differences. Studies on M&As suggest different and often controversial relationships between culture, integration and performance. The purpose of this paper is to identify major sources of inconsistent results, thereby providing promising directions for future research.

Findings are based on an extensive literature review including 58 papers from 20 learned international journals. Main selection criteria were keywords (merger/acquisitions and integration/culture) applied to the database “EBSCO Business Source Premier” and the h‐index calculated with the help of Harzing's Publish or Perish. Each article was coded and categorized.

The analyzed articles reveal three major reasons for the inconsistent findings in M&A research: first, most scholars refer to “integration” as an umbrella term for different and distinctive acculturation strategies, e.g. integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization; second, some studies mix different levels of analysis with respect to culture constructs, e.g. national vs organizational culture; and finally, there exist various definitions of “M&A success”, which become manifest in a plethora of measurement techniques.

The paper identifies and discusses potential reasons why the culture‐performance debate in M&A research has not yet provided a consistent conclusion. This article helps to better understand the current perception of culture in radical change processes within organizations. Promising future research directions are outlined, which should help to extend and specify current knowledge about culture as well as its impact on M&A success.

The purpose of this paper is to show that Slawek Magala’s theory of management of meaning in organisations can be considered as a step towards a generic theory of organisational change.

The authors are integrating Slawek Magala’s views on the processes, which play a role in changing organisations (i.e. framing, reflecting, negotiating, and seeking new windows of opportunities) with the related types of narratives as developed by David Boje (2001, 2008) and with further extensions by Fink and Yolles (2012), which are based on a model of paradigm change.

The authors develop a theoretical framework, which might serve as a basis for analysis of change processes emerging from different contexts within or outside a firm and offer some reflections about comparing research into issues of organisational change.

This is a theoretical viewpoint paper.

The extension of Magala’s model offers a practical guide for research into organisational change processes.

Magala’s model offers a deeper understanding of actual change processes.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time where a concept about emergent causality deriving from interaction between two conflicting agents (i.e. involved parties as, e.g. managers and subordinates) is applied to emerging stages in change processes.

Modelling the organisation to enable purposeful analysis and diagnosis of its ills is often problematic. This is illustrated by the unconnected non‐synergistic plurality of organisational models each of which relates to a particular isolated frame of thought and purpose. A cybernetic approach is adopted to create a generic psychosocial model for the organisation that is used to characterise its emergent normative personality. Organisations are often complex, and seeing them in terms of their normative personality can reduce the complexity and enable a better understanding of their pathologies. This paper seeks to do two things. The first is to show that it is possible to set up a generic model of the organisation as an agency, and the second is to show that this same model can also be represented in the alternative terms of the emergent normative personality. In order to do this, an understanding of what it is that constitutes generic criteria is required. In addition, the paper shall show that organisational and personality theories can be connected generically. One of the consequences of the theory is that the patterns of behaviour which occur in an agency have underlying trait control processes.

A meta‐systemic view of the organisation is adopted through knowledge cybernetics that enables more flexibility and formality when viewing organisational models. The paper develops a formal generic model of the organisation that should facilitate the exploration of problem situations both theoretically and empirically.

The outcome of the research formulates the cognitive processes of normative personality as a feasible way of explaining organisations and provide a capacity to analyse and predict the likelihood of their behavioural conduct and misconduct. As an agency trait model, agency explains the socio‐cognitive aspects of self‐organisation and the efficacy of connections between the traits. These traits control the personality, and inter‐trait connections are Piagetian intelligences that orient the traits and work through forms of first‐ and second‐order autopoiesis. The development of a typology of pathologies is also suggested as feasible.

There are previous metaphorical notions that link agency with traits. Here, metaphor is extended to produce a formal model for the emergent normative personality. This is the first time that socio‐cognitive and trait approaches are formally linked, as it is the fist time that a typology for organisational pathologies is proposed.

Extreme events are the occasion for many people’s encounters with climate change. Though causation is complex and no one event is directly attributable to climate change, when we consider Cassandra, we can consider what people encounter in assistance after an extreme event. This chapter takes the case of assistance to displaced people after Katrina to explore how care and surveillance were intertwined. Methods include analysis of government documents as well as interviews. When we consider assistance people receive, we often focus on the intended assistance and how it worked or did not. Evaluation is difficult, not least because criteria for determining what it means to work are uncertain. However, if we include the process of gaining assistance as part of the experience, we broaden concerns from the instrumental outcomes to the mixed messages people get in assistance. Assistance appears in a context, where the most vulnerable people have reasons to mistrust government and nonprofits, and where in the United States assistance has come intertwined with supervisory rules, a focus on getting people to work, and a need to manage criminal histories. Trust in government may be limited, emergency care can operate outside ordinary legal frameworks when providers are new, and legal accountability for assistance may be experienced as confining, despite caregivers’ intent.

The purpose of this paper is to examine opportunities and challenges from multiple-embeddedness of developed countries multinational enterprises (DMNEs) in emerging economies. It further investigates the effect of global financial crisis on the DMNE’s embeddedness strategies.

Utilising POLS regression on secondary data bases, such as World Bank Development Indicators, over two period, first, from 2003 to 2007 (pre global financial crisis period), and second, from 2008 to 2012 (post global financial crisis), this study models the advantages and challenges faced by DMNEs into emerging markets.

Findings suggest that challenges in terms of institutional and cultural differences have decreased over time. This may be due to the DMNE’s experience of operating in emerging economies.

Since the global financial crisis is on-going, further changes in terms of opportunities and challenges are yet to be uncovered. Further investigations using qualitative designs are also warranted because many qualitative phenomena, such as cultural differences, cannot be captured through purely quantitative methods.

There are two practical implications. First, policy makers can appreciate the change in the economic gravity in the current scenario. Openness of economies may further bring in economic equilibrium in favour of emerging economies. Second, managers of businesses looking to internationalise should pay attention towards changing market conditions and requirements in emerging economies.

This paper portrays the importance emerging economies which consist of a large proportion of the world’s population.

In the current economic scenario, this paper seeks to highlight the opportunities and challenges for multiple embeddedness through mergers and acquisitions in emerging economies, which is seen to be timely and topical and at the same time advances the theoretical knowledge and practical implications.

Though assurance services framework has been defined in the Auditing Standards, the understandability of the concept of reasonable assurance are varied by different auditors. The audit risk model (ARM) that is being used on a worldwide basis to underpin the audit risk of companies, is often being criticized. The purpose of this paper is to assess auditors' perceptions of reasonable assurance in audit work and the effectiveness of the ARM.

Three independent variables are examined: CPA certification, ranks of auditors and gender for their influence on two dependent variables: the perceptions of reasonable assurance in audit work and the effectiveness of the ARM. MANOVA analysis and follow up Discriminant Analysis are employed.

Results reveal that there are significant differences between the perceptions held by auditors of different ranks regarding reasonable assurance in audit work. Partners entertain higher perceptions of reasonable assurance than staff auditors. The “gender” variable does not have an influence on the two dependent variables. Auditors with CPA certifications have higher perceptions of reasonable assurance. There are no differences in the perceptions ratings by different rank of auditors, gender and CPA certifications on the effectiveness of the ARM. The three independent variables have average high‐mean ratings on the effectiveness of the ARM, confirming that the current ARM still can provide an effective assurance.

This empirical study revokes the UK study and The Netherlands study. Immediate attention need not be focused on restructuring the ARM. Future contemplation of other important issue such as auditor independence may be considered.