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The effectiveness of work groups can be strongly affected by their “cohesiveness”. This study examined stereotypes held by African‐American college students regarding African‐American, Euro‐American, and Hispanic persons. The 92‐items in Schein’s Descriptive Questionnaire were rated by subjects (graduating African‐American undergraduate business students) as either positive (e.g. intelligent, persistent, ambitious, etc.) or negative (e.g. uncertain, passive, nervous, etc.). A total of 55 items were characterized as positive while 11 were considered negative. African‐American students perceived African‐Americans in general in a favorable light when compared to Euro‐Americans and Hispanic persons. The potential effects of such perceptions on African‐Americans’ integration into business organizations and mixed working groups are discussed.

Attempts to discover whether African Americans who aspire to managerial positions are the victims of racial discrimination. Seeks to provide insight into the perceptions of these candidates against a managerial profile. Provides the results of a survey of 231 African American students at a business school of a historically African‐American University in the southern USA. Concludes that some African‐Americans’ experiences are unique to this minority.

Companies increasingly concern themselves with the question of diversity. As globalisation continues to speed along and demographics undergo major shifts, organisations may believe that a more diverse work group will increase their effectiveness. This article addresses issues that may impact the success of integrating recent African American business school graduates of an historically black university into the culture of an organisation. African Americans were asked to compare Hispanics, the fastest growing minority, to both themselves and to whites with reference to managerial ability. Results show that they view themselves as distinct and more qualified than Hispanics, but see little difference between Hispanics and whites. The greater the supervisory ability of the respondent (as measured by Ghiselli’s Self Description Inventory (1971)) the greater the disparity perceived between African Americans and Hispanics. Implications for organisations are discussed.

Total Quality Management activities are gaining prominence in higher education. Many universities and colleges are implementing these activities across their institutions and incorporating them into the curriculum. Total Quality Management adoption by academia may enerally be attributed to pressures from industry. This research studies the views and expectations of industry managers across the United States on the subject of Total Quality Management in business education. The related literature is reviewed and from it research questions are posed concerning managers’ views of Total Quality Management adoption in business education. Managers were surveyed, and their views in general align well with those of prominent industry advocates. Industry managers in the study, however, are sending the message that knowledge of Total Quality Management is not a prerequisite for employment. In addition, given their opinion that industry is not the primary customer of the business school, managers may be neglecting the supplier‐customer relationship with area business schools. This is a gap that needs to be bridged if business schools are expected to embrace Total Quality Management practices.

This research was designed to investigate what differences might exist between graduating African American and White business students regarding achievement motivation as determined by their fear of success and fear of appearing incompetent and whether there exists any moderating influence based upon their attitude toward the role of women in society. The sample consisted of 99 African American students and 102 White students. African Americans scored significantly lower than Whites on the Fear of Appearing Incompetent Scale. Likewise, African American women scored significantly lower than white women on this scale. No differences were found in the scores among African American Males and White males on the Fear of Appearing Incompetent Scale. For the entire sample, those with a progressive view of women scored higher on the Fear of Success Scale than those with traditional views of women. Achievement motivation among the groups of respondents is also evaluated.

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between attitudes toward women and managerial ability of African Americans. African American males were compared with African American females on both the Attitudes Toward Women Scale and the Supervisory Ability Scale. No differences were found between the groups regarding supervisory ability. However, significant differences were found between males and females on the AWS scale. According to their score on the AWS scale, males were divided into those who had traditional views of the roles of women and those who held liberal views of the roles of women. Those characterized as liberal had a significantly higher score on the Supervisory Ability Scale than those characterized as traditional. These findings imply that as more able African‐American males advance in management, African‐American females may fare better than at present.

Forecasting sales for an innovation before the product's introduction is a necessary but difficult task. Forecasting is a crucial analytic tool when assessing the business case for internal or external investments in new technologies. For early stage investments or internal business cases for new products, it is essential to have some understanding of the likely diffusion of the technology. Diffusion of innovation models are important tools for effectively assessing the merits of investing in technologies that are new or novel and do not have prima facie, predictable patterns of user uptake. Most new product forecasting models require the estimation of parameters for use in the models. In this chapter, we evaluate three techniques to determine the parameters of the Bass diffusion model by using an example of a new movie.

The decade of the 1980s was unique for the sheer quantity of education reform reports and legislation. Virtually every state enacted education reform legislation, including reforms of teacher education, licensing, and comprehension. According to Darling‐Hammond and Berry, over 1,000 pieces of legislation related to teachers have been drafted since 1980, and “a substantial fraction have been implemented.” As I discussed in my 1989 RSR article, “Five Years after A Nation at Risk: An Annotated Bibliography,” two waves of 1980s reform reports were identified in the enormous body of primary and secondary literature dealing with education reform. The reform publications of the early 1980s stressed improvements in curricular standards, student performance outcomes, and changes to the education programs, such as salary increases, teacher testing, and stricter certification requirements. The second‐wave reform publications emphasized more complex issues centered around the concepts of restructuring the schools and teacher education programs, as well as empowering teachers to become more involved in curriculum and governance issues.

This paper aims to explore complexities of compliance with international and customary law when faced with terrorist threats. The paper's thesis asserts that terrorism cannot be successfully repelled unless the legitimacy of international and domestic law is adhered to by states out of a sense of reciprocal obligation in accordance with the principle of pacta sunt servanda (pacts shall be respected).

This paper examines US pronouncements in order to assess strategic validity.

While the Middle East, particularly Iraq, has been the focus of the US “War on terrorism,” the paper suggests two questions: what has been the US response to terrorist threats in the Americas? Have US national security priorities post‐9/11 been unnecessarily diverted from the Americas where much needed support is promised but lacking, and instead have resources been concentrated far beyond domestic and international norms?

The paper examines the US national security priorities, concluding that they have been unproductively diverted from the Americas to the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular. The US fixation upon Middle East “regime‐change”, while neglecting to recognize the dangerous nexus and presence of organized crime and terrorist organizations in the Americas, is illustrative of how the present administration has diverted its post.