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In the USA, as elsewhere, there is an ongoing need to improve quality in higher education. Quality improvement models from business have not been widely embraced, and many other approaches to accountability seem to induce minimal compliance. This paper aims to contend that learning communities represent a viable alternative in the quest for quality. By restructuring the curriculum and promoting creative collaboration, learning communities have become a major reform effort in US colleges.

The paper provides an overview of learning community theory and core practices and four original case studies of institutions that have made learning communities a long‐term focus of their quality improvement efforts.

Findings include: effective learning communities are clearly positioned, aimed at large arenas and issues and are central to the organization's mission; learner‐centered leadership is a key component of effective programs; learning communities offer a high leverage point for pursuing quality; effective learning communities meet faculty where they are; successful initiatives create new organizational structures, roles and processes; successful programs attract and reward competent people and build arenas for learning from one another; and successful programs have a living mission and a lived educational philosophy reaching constantly toward more effective practices.

Educators will draw rich lessons from this concise overview of learning community theory and practice and the story of these successful institutions.

The term ‘obsolescence’ occurs frequently in the literature of librarianship and information science. In numerous papers we are told how most published literature becomes obsolete within a measurable time, and that an item receives half the uses it will ever receive (‘half‐life’) in a few years. ‘Obsolescence’ is however very rarely defined, and its validity, interest, and practical value are often assumed rather than explained. Before reviewing studies on ‘obsolescence’, therefore, it is necessary to look at the concept and to identify the reasons why it should be of interest.

In 1974, citations to the literature of an earlier year, say 1966, will be to a relatively small number of ‘enduring’ articles, the remainder having been forgotten. The currently cited literature of a particular growing subject will consist of the ‘enduring’ literature of earlier years, and the recent literature some of which will endure and some of which will ‘die’. There willl be more citations to recent literature because there is more of it. A trend towards multiple authorship may be reducing the growth rate of published articles.

In a paper published in 1973 Oromaner included an analysis of citations to articles in three sociological journals in 1960 by subsequent volumes of those journals 1961–70. This study was unusual in that it was one of very few that followed citations to a given set of articles through in time (diachronous study), as opposed to analysing by date a set of references to articles made by journals or articles of a given date (synchronous study) — a far more common procedure.

To examine an under‐researched area, namely the dynamics of chairman‐CEO interrelationship and its effect on the enterprise.

A qualitative methodology has been adopted through in‐depth interviews with chairmen, CEOs and non‐executive directors on the nature of chairman‐CEO interactions and their effects.

Four critical themes form the basis of this paper, chairman's role and contribution, nature of chairman‐CEO relationship, impact of the chairman‐CEO relationship on board effectiveness and the attributes of an effective chairman.

Enhances understanding of the determining influence of the chairman‐CEO dyad on board and organisational performance and also on the influence of formative context on this dyadic interaction.

One of the few studies that has explored through in‐depth interviews the chairman‐CEO relationship.

Born in Pittsburgh, PA, on November 1, 1910, Taylor Ostrander grew up in Westchester County, back in New York, his family's home state for many generations. He went to public schools in White Plains and Scarsdale and graduated from Hackley School in Tarrytown in 1928; that fall he entered Williams College in Williamstown, MA, where his mother's father was in the class of 1882.

This chapter explains how and why the knowledge economy will increase the demand for knowledge engineering. It defines and traces the evolution of knowledge engineering. It identifies the two components of knowledge engineering – elicitation and representation. It discusses the increased importance of tacit knowledge, specifically know-what and know-how, for organizations and companies. The increased demand for knowledge engineering calls for increased number of knowledge engineers. Knowledge engineering will expand beyond its current homes in systems development and cognitive science. The MASK methodology is an important intermediary between formal knowledge engineering and the methods needed to develop natural language and conceptual modeling for the knowledge economy.

Pyrotechnic effects and spectacular death belong to the symbolism of terror and political assassination – bizarre techniques of miscommunication through fear practiced on the innocent and designed to effect social change. While focusing on the use of terror in 9-11, this article deals with both terror and political assassination as closely related communicative practices of death. It outlines a theory of terrorism that suggests September 11 may be an example of expedient terrorist destruction ordered from within the state, a macabre instance of a state protection racket. Commentators on the left tend to see terrorism as a blow extended by the oppressed against exploiters. However, terrorism is much less likely to be a manifestation of a revolt by – or on behalf of – the underprivileged than a demonstration of brute force by the state or its agents. Machiavellian state terrorism is terror/assassination performed for reasons different from the publicized ones; often initiated by persons or groups other than those suspected of the act; and – most important – secretly perpetrated by, or on behalf, of the violated state itself. Machiavellian state terror advances the ruling agenda, while disguising itself as the work of individuals or groups opposed to the state's fundamental principles. As an example, the article reviews a mysterious 1971 assassination in Paris that obliquely foreshadows some critical elements of the official story of 9-11. The article underlines the importance of oppositional theorizing: questioning government and looking for connections between events are critical features of what it means to be vitally active in the political universe.