We live in interesting times, never has the world seen such huge opportunity to establish pervasive peace, democracy and wealth and yet at the same time face such fragility in those endeavors. 

Change is a response to dissatisfaction and frustration. It represents the difference between who we are and who we would like to be, what we have and what we would like to have, what we look like and how we would like to look, how we are perceived and how we would like to be perceived, how we function and how we would like to function. Change has occurred when human beings behave differently or aspects of their world are different from the way they were previously.  Change is dynamic, relentless and organic. 

 In recent years we have seen huge change in the world of business occur at many different levels in response to a few relatively significant events. Each event in itself represented a change in behaviour.  Like the dripping of water over a million years, small events contribute to emerging ideas until, in time those events facilitate something massive such as the following:

•  Collapse of Barings Bank signalled the power of computing and communications systems to conduct business at such a pace that existing governance models (management controls and audit practices) were rendered useless.  

• Manipulations of electricity and money markets as well as accounting practices by ruthless professionals at Enron have exploded the myth of independence and objectivity of the public accounting profession.

• In preparation for the promised Y2K information systems meltdown consulting fees were so huge and results so limited that there has been a huge idling of consultants and massive reduction in willingness to take advantage of their services.

• Rise and fall of “New Economy” businesses and massive dot com stock market losses has proved that planning and budgeting is an intensely human process in which good sense is over whelmed by greed and naive optimism.

• Terrorist acts on September 11, 2001 created an unprecedented disruption in economic activities.  Perhaps more important human beings were reminded of their inherent vulnerability.

 Edition number 5 of Focus Magazine is about change in four different aspects of change in the world of organizational measurement and reporting.  Catherine and Joe Stenzel in the context of the Enron debacle, discuss the responsibilities of managers to disclose important information to interested parties.  David Keys and Douglas Clinton discuss the emerging cost accounting practice of Resource Consumption Accounting (RCA), which reflects the evolution of ERP capabilities and the integration of activity based costing/planning and operational data accessibility into real time applications.  Tim Leach in his article on collaborative enterprise risk assurance management (ERAM) provides insight on the benefits of the undertaking a more systematic risk management by organization managers, a response if you like to Barings and Enron.  Finally John Shaw and I report on the application of Value Based Management at Royal Bank Financial Group and how it has changed the age old management budget time wrangling.

 We welcome your comments on any article we publish in Focus Magazine and indeed your suggestions for future editions.  Finally, please forward Focus Magazine to friends and associates.