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This article discusses the competitive advantage firms can derive from the wise utilization of foreign trade zones. Recent environmental changes which have necessitated an increasing use of FTZs are discussed, as well as the benefits offered by FTZs as compared to other government tariff incentive programs. Several examples demonstrate the various ways information is given regarding the money required and the time involved in the establishment and use of an FTZ or a subzone.

Most universities have MBA programs designed to train functionally specialized managers for large Fortune 1000 type firms. The graduate management education needs of small and mid‐size firms have been largely ignored. Many innovative MBA programs have themes that emphasize entrepreneurship, management of technology, or international business, but none have integrated all three themes in a redesigned MBA program that meets the needs of small and mid‐size firms.This paper describes a successful business‐driven approach to re‐engineering the form and content of an MBA program to create a higher value‐added program for smaller and rapidly growing enterprises. This curriculum development process was funded by a grant from the Cleveland Foundation’s Statewide Program for Businessand Management Education. Guided by a business‐driven process, The University of Toledo successfully initiated a new Executive MBA for Small and Mid‐size firms in the fall of 1995.

Hypercompetition has long been recognized as a significant problem in almost all manufacturing industries. Service industries are also experiencing the problems of hypercompetition. Now, it seems to be spreading to higher education with significant consequences. This paper aims to describe the movement toward hypercompetition and the implications specifically for the MBA program.

This paper directly compares the experiences of industrial hypercompetition with what is developing within universities. Since businesses are typically farther along in the process of responding to hypercompetitive markets, they provide insight into what educational institutions might expect to occur and how they could respond to this threat despite the differences between these two types of organizations.

The paper finds that technological change, globalization, and increased competition are the most important environmental challenges facing MBA programs today. Technology, in particular, seems to be acting as the principle disruptor of the traditional MBA model. Additionally, corporate MBA programs and international competition have become important considerations. The important question is will Peter F. Drucker be correct that traditional universities will be severely challenged by technology‐based competition?

This paper provides useful information on hypercompetition and the implications specifically for the MBA program.

The interactionist minded self (IMS), the package of cognitive processes, including the internal conversation, that the classic pragmatist philosophers and early interactionist sociologists claimed were important for understanding self and action, has been underinvestigated. These conceptions of the self have tended to be treated as a set of hermeneutical devices rather than as testable propositions about how people think. The authors identify several empirical claims about the IMS, discuss the diversity of minded activity (including the claim that some people don't have internal conversations), summarize some of the findings from our research on internal conversations, provide a set of topics related to the IMS that we believe should be researched, and discuss methods for researching these and other topics related to the IMS.

Creativity is increasingly vital to competitive advantage. Leaders are under growing pressure to generate a creative output from themselves and their teams, and human capital managers and consultants are increasingly called to facilitate and build a climate that promotes innovation. Positive emotions are beneficial for big picture, creative, innovative thinking (Fredrickson, 2001; Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005; Subramaniam et al., 2009). Negative emotions create more accuracy, bottoms up neural processing, and problem finding (Forgas, 2013; Forgas & Wyland, 2006). This research investigated if induced positive emotions lead to a higher creative output than negative emotions. An online experiment aimed to induce either a positive or negative mood through video clips before participants undertook a creative task. Personality dimensions were also measured to assess how preferences in information processing impacted creative output. The study demonstrated the efficacy of induced mood and concluded that positive emotions seem to be beneficial for creative output, both quantity and quality. The findings add to the considerable data on the impact of emotions on workplace performance (Amabile et al., 2005) and can be directly applied to learning, innovation, and creative thinking interventions in the workplace. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of interventions that facilitate a positive emotional climate and how to increase creative potential and performance.

The realm of organisational politics is an unpredictable and high‐risk environment. The political situation can be controlled and managed, however, with knowledge and understanding of political behaviour. Political behaviour can have both positive and negative effects. The underlying cause is individual self‐ interest. To deal with the political environment, managers can use manipulative techniques; but a problem‐solving approach is much more effective. A tactical approach involves the use of short‐term win/lose techniques. Only the strategic approach minimises the effects of individual self‐interest in the long‐term.

This chapter tackles the tension between equity and excellence that critics often highlight in opposition of diversity initiatives and efforts in the higher education employment setting. We present several arguments that respond to the assumptions undergirding these criticisms, by drawing on prior research to emphasize that equity and excellence are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, we present new evidence from a national sample of Black and Hispanic Engineering Faculty (BHEF) (n = 68) to argue that their racialized work experiences promote exclusive environments that serve to sustain their underrepresentation and marginalize their performance contributions. We conclude with a new direction for how to cultivate inclusive work environments in higher education.

Social Movements can play an important role in societal change, and Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) are often carriers of those efforts. SMOs differ from traditional organizations in the goals they seek to accomplish and how they operate. Typically, within Social Movement literature, the unique internal organization forms have been understudied and usually do not attend to the socio-structural aspects of those processes. Using a Critical Race Theory/Intersectionality (CRT/I) lens and organizational theories, this study analyzes an ideologically driven SMO case dedicated to transformative change and the leadership of structurally marginalized people and communities, particularly women and people of color. Analysis of this case reveals unique organizational dynamics and particular ways that socio-structural patterns influenced every level of social movement-building and organizational practices.

The phenomenon of creativity spans research topics across Marketing and Consumer Behavior. Interest in, and research on, creativity has grown over the past several decades. With this heightened attention comes the question of how best to conceptualize and measure creativity. This question is addressed by reviewing the conceptualizations and measures used in the psychological study of creativity. From this review, we build a framework by which to analyze papers from the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Marketing Research. Based upon this analysis, we provide recommendations and best practices for future research. Of particular importance, we recommend the use of convergent problem-solving tasks in combination with ratings of novelty and usefulness reported separately. Such measures allow one to distinguish between instances of effective-creativity (when an idea is both novel and useful) and instances of quasi-creativity (when an idea is novel but lacks usefulness). The importance of the framework to research and analysis beyond the experimental paradigm is discussed.

The television series The Americans succeeds as a family drama, crime drama, and political drama. Criminal law offers a useful perspective for interpreting the series. By examining the post-finale criminal liability of two key characters, daughter Paige Jennings and FBI agent Stan Beeman, this chapter provides some novel insights into the characters, their motivations, and the events in the last season of the series. The legal analysis also uncovers some ironies. Most notably, Paige’s legal vulnerability will put her in a moral dilemma because her best way of avoiding a lengthy prison term is to provide evidence against Stan, punishing him for letting her and her parents go.