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The practitioners of postmodern organization theory have had to respond to the charge that postmodernism has a declivity toward skepticism. Their response to organizational skepticisim is to decenter dominant theories, paradigms and organizational forms, rather than to negate them. Decentering supplements discourse by augmenting its repertoire; the opposite of skepticism, which diminishes its object. The main ways in which postmodern organization theories try to overcome the specific sceptical position of paradigm incommensurability (the reduction of discourse about organizations and organizational discourse to a solipsism of private language games) are described and assessed in terms of three positions: John Hassard’s “multiple paradigm” approach on the level of methodology, Stewart Clegg’s “embedded rationalities” on the level of empirical conceptualization, and Kenneth Gergen’s “heteroglossia” on the level of discursive practice. Hassard and Clegg are engaged in the mapping function of postmodern organization theory, whereas Gergen is engaged in deconstraining organizations.

As a result of the end of the cold war, the US Government’s defence spending has decreased significantly since 1989. Consequently, many aerospace companies in the defence industry have begun the transition to commercial products. Reviews the commercial success strategies of Lockheed Martin, Hughes Electronics and Rockwell. Commercial success strategies discussed include: mergers, derived products, partnerships, consolidation, fresh blood in management, subsidiaries and acquisitions. Examines the negative side‐effects ‐ which include downsizing and less investment in technology research ‐ of the commercial transition.

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In race‐centered societies dominant racial populations create and maintain society through constructing collective representations of The Other Races. These collective representations of racial subordinates by the dominant are cultural commodities produced through typification and stereotypical processes and structures. They became powerful sources of socialization which institutionalize race‐centerness in societies through normalizing cultural interpretations of social and political stratification categories defined as races.

Experimental design is a powerful technique for understanding a process, studying the impact of potential variables affecting a process and providing spontaneous insight for continuous quality improvement possibilities. It has proved to be very effective for improving the process yield, process performance and reducing process variability. A number of successful applications of the experimental design technique for process optimisation have been reported by both US and European manufacturers over the last ten years. This paper illustrates an application of Taguchi methods (TM) in an industrial setting for identifying the critical factors affecting a certain process and subsequently reducing process variability. Both the analysis of variance (ANOVA) on mean response and the signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) have been carried out for determining the optimal condition of the process. A significant improvement in the process performance was observed in terms of variation reduction.

Wall Street loves spin‐off announcements, but do spin‐offs actually increase shareholder value?