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Cross‐border mergers are rising in number and scope even though, on average, firms do not profi t from them. In this article, we use interviews and secondary data to assess a historic merger between two global consulting giants ‐ Cap Gemini and Ernst & Young Consulting. The two fi rms had well‐articulated strategic reasons for merging. Nevertheless, their integration strategy failed to address key differences in business models, core competencies, and organizational practices. As a result, the combined firm suffered five years of diminished financial and competitive performance. Our study highlights the organizational complexities affecting mergers between human capital‐intensive firms.

This paper introduces some of the elements of Knowledge Management and outlines the approaches RM Consulting ‐ the internal consultancy of the Royal Mail and the Post Office ‐ is taking to support the development of knowledge enablers within the organization. A Knowledge Management approach is described which focuses on people (including the organizational structure), processes and technology. The initial Knowledge Management focus of the organization is aimed principally on explicit knowledge, and the establishment of tools which help to capture internal information. The long‐term challenge is to capture the knowledge of the organization in such a way that all of its employees can maximize the value they provide to the organization’s stakeholders.

The transition from centralised to market economy created a number of difficulties for Polish enterprises and many of them went bankrupt, especially after the Soviet market had been lost. While large companies, such as steelworks, coal mines, railways, etc, have been protected by the government for social reasons, the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) could survive only when they, by themselves or with some external assistance, were able to introduce internal changes and adjust to the market environment. Polish SMEs may be divided into two groups: emerging private firms and split firms which were created by a partition of large state‐owned enterprises. The various reasons for failure are discussed for both groups and compared with those described in the literature. A general model of consultancy intervention is presented and the attitudes of Polish enterprises towards change are described. In general, the state‐owned and split firms are reluctant to change unless their situation is critical, and if restructurisation is done it is rather superficial. Thus, a successful consultant has to be not only convincing and flexible but also must assess how deep a change is wanted by a given enterprise. This paper presents the approach used in helping the split firms by the University of Mining and Metallurgy (UMM), Faculty of Management Consulting Group. In order to find solutions for a given firm, a working team consisting of representatives of an enterprise and university was set up. The team devises a strategy of enterprise survival and prepares a detailed plan of the steps to be taken. This approach, which in many cases has proved to be successful, consists of trying to infuse the employees with the philosophy of enterprise survival and organising a series of relevant training activities. When the employees fully understand the essence of all the actions necessary for enterprise survival (privatisation, improvement of marketing, creation of systems of motivation, quality control, management information and other), the consulting group’s role as “company doctor” is limited to the supervision of the change planning process and the assessment of the solutions chosen. This system of triggering employee initiative has been found to be not only effective but also cheap, an aspect which in the case of small enterprises should not be underestimated.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first to add to the debate on good governance and ethics of enterprise risk management (ERM) and second to describe an ethical maturity scale based on duty and responsibility for practical implementation to ensure better governance.

The methodology has centred on risk governance as a way for many organisations to improve their risk management (RM) practices from an ethical perspective based on responsibility and on fulfilling one's duty within the organisation.

While companies in Australia, for example, are more mature than those in Russia in terms of governance systems life cycle, there are a number of common international challenges in risk governance implementation. These relate to a link between risk framework, enterprise value model and strategic planning; to a definition of risk appetite, the embodiment of RM in organisational culture, internal audit and ERM function, the evolving role of a chief risk officer (CRO) and senior management buy‐in and sponsorship of the integrated ethical RM from a chief executive officer.

ERM – a way for many organisations to improve their RM practices – is a key component of the applied ethics of corporate governance. It has developed into a philosophy to assist organisations with the process of protecting shareholders' value while also increasing the bottom‐line profitability. Effective ERM is based on ethical risk governance. Internal audit needs to be involved in the process of integrating RM and compliance. It should maintain a degree of independence when assisting with ERM establishment. CRO is most effective when reporting to the board.

Global companies are becoming more accountable to multiple stakeholders. It is the adoption of an ethical code to arrest the lack of clarity of roles ascribed to the audit committee and risk committee and management's accountability or lack thereof that remains the challenge across different jurisdictions. In attempting to implement good governance and meet the challenges, the paper introduces an ethical maturity scale as an internal measure that could be embedded in an organisation's strategy.

Provides details of the case study company’s background and highlights the need for quality of service. Describes in detail the re‐design process and the methodologies used; discusses the need to balance hard (re‐engineering) issues with soft (people) ones. Finally, details some of the major benefits gained from this approach to re‐design.

This paper aims to report on a study that aimed at analyzing the relationships between information security and records management (RM), both as programs/functions established in organizations. Similar studies were not found in relevant literature.

The study used the classic grounded theory methodology. Pursuing the general curiosity about the information security-RM relationship in organizations, the study selected the United States (US) Federal Government as its field of entrance and followed the process of the classic grounded theory methodology that starts from the letting of the emergence of the research question to the formulation of a substantive theory that answered the question.

On the emergent question that why, despite the legislative establishment of agency RM programs and the use of the term records in their work, the US Federal Government information security community considered RM a candidate for deletion (CFD), the study coded the truncated application of the encompassing definition of records as the underlying reason. By this code, along with its three properties, i.e. limitations by the seemingly more encompassing coverage of information, insufficient legislative/regulatory support and the use of the terms of evidence and preservation in the records definition, the CFD consideration and the associated phenomena of unsound legislative/regulatory conceptualization, information shadow, information ignorance and archival shadow were explained.

The study results suggested the data for subsequent theoretical sampling to be the operational situations of individual agency RM programs.

The rationale presented in the study regarding the encompassing nature of records and the comprehensive scope of RM program can be used for building strong RM business cases.

The study appears to be the first of its kind, which examined the RM–information security relationship in a very detailed setting.

The revenue management (RM) discipline is built on the principle of demand-based pricing. This study aims to examine how and to what extent RM can be implemented in the hotel industry during low-demand periods, particularly during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

This paper used semi-structured interviews to gather information from hotel RM executives, RM consultants and RM system providers. Participants were asked to think about the impact of COVID-19 on their RM practices. This paper interviewed 26 revenue executives between January and March 2020.

Core RM processes are still relevant during the COVID-19 crisis; however, not all components are equally important. Business analysis, pricing strategy and demand modeling and forecasting are the most critical RM processes. Inventory and price optimization and setting booking controls are not as important at this time; along with distribution channel management, these processes will become more relevant as demand picks up.

Future research in this area should focus on each core RM process separately and in-depth to understand how implementation changes during the crisis and recovery periods. Future studies should also investigate how these processes operate during the recovery period. The full breadth of consequences of the COVID-19 crisis in hotel RM will likely manifest gradually. Therefore, the core RM processes should also be examined when the crisis is over.

Apart from a few studies that touched on RM-related strategies during economic downturns, to the knowledge, this is the first study to systematically examine the extent to which RM can be implemented during a crisis.

This study aims to explore the formation of municipal risk management (RM) and the reasons for the differences of RM practices between the seven biggest cities in Finland.

The empirical data of this comparative qualitative case study comprises 33 interviews conducted with municipal managers. Supplementary material includes documentary material on municipal rules governing RM as well as annual reports and risk tools used in the municipalities.

This study found differences in cities with respect to when, how and why RM practices had evolved. The results indicate that differences in RM practices and development paths between cities are largely explained by the differences in the original reason to initiate RM, time span since its introduction, professional and educational backgrounds of risk managers, local risk events and accounting infrastructure such as RM tools developed in a city. These findings also suggest that even within the same municipality, different functions can be at different phases regarding RM.

This study reports on RM as a new form of accounting in the field of Finnish municipalities. This highlights how fairly uniform considerations at the field level lead to variation in the elaboration of RM practices at the municipal level. The study finds that different paths in the development of local RM involve iterative evolution between the phases of emergence, largely explained by contextual differences. This study contributes to understanding the emergence of new accounting forms in a municipal RM context.

Portastor all‐steel security vaults — protection against fire and theft The rapid introduction of information systems into the office environment has led to a growing concern over the security of such valuable and portable elements as wordprocessors and printers. A simple, safe and relatively cheap way to protect office equipment is offered by Brovault, from Portasilo's range of security vaults, Portastor.

There have been major efforts to develop the technology for integrated construction environments and the mechanisms needed to improve the collaboration between construction professionals. Evidently, the development and usage of such an environment is a complicated task. The two issues that can be among the main contributors to this are: the development of the technology and its effective implementation. These two issues are addressed separately in this paper. The paper first explains the approaches of sharing project information, followed by a review of a recent project in this area, the result of which is a distributed integrated construction environment based on the industry foundation class (IFC), capable of supporting a number of construction applications. This environment is capable of supporting a construction team to work collaboratively over the internet. It then discusses the difficulties facing the successful implementation of such environments in construction organisations. This is addressed within the context of two management models for effective implementation of IT: the resource‐based model and the Nolan model.