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North Dakota has in place a telecommunications infrastructure that is advanced and active, given the state's rural nature and large pockets of low population communities. The state is criss‐crossed by fiber‐optic cables that link the majority of telephone central offices to each other and connect clusters of high schools with interactive video networking. Public television stations are available in most communities of the state. State government is among the leaders in the state in the rapid deployment of frame relay services. The frame relay network represents the newest generation of data communication facilities in North Dakota, replacing a statewide network of dedicated leased data circuits and X.25 packet switches. The frame relay system provides each user group on the network with a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for data communications, which is transparent to other users on the network.

In the constant crisis of educational administration, teacher leaders may no longer be ignored as qualified individuals to help lead schools. Who better to teach leaders to lead teachers than teachers? In this chapter, I use an Assumptive Worlds framework to analyze the micropolitics of 12 secondary mathematics teacher leaders. The qualitative data comes from a larger study that explored secondary mathematics teacher definitions, perceptions, and enactments of teacher leadership. As viewed through the Assumptive Worlds framework, teacher leaders can help bridge the divide between teachers and administrators so schools work better for kids.

Leadership is an important element of total quality management (TQM). Organizations spend considerable time and money looking outside for the latest in leadership technique. Value‐added leadership suggests organizations also identify and reinforce existing observable leadership behaviours which are already contributing to innovation and high quality performance. Quality is enhanced by at least four categories of those commonly practised but transparent value‐added leadership behaviours: self and others; awareness and choice; focus and integration; and innovation and action taking. Identifying and institutionalizing these “already paid for” value‐added behaviours can be an important contribution to overall TQM efforts. Make leadership choice not chance a factor in your organization’s quality quest.

The College of St. Germain is a private, liberal arts college in the U.S. Midwest. Several faculty members developed and launched an academic business and economics conference. Despite of a lack of funding from the college, and a general apathy among other colleagues, the conference became financially self-sufficient and grew each year, with increasing attendance and submissions from many international scholars. Part A of the case focuses on the beginning, planning, and growth stages of the conference, and culminates with the successful conclusion of the third annual conference and planning for the fourth conference. Part B focuses on the fourth and fifth conferences, and concludes with the surprising cancellation of the sixth annual conference. The case highlights the challenges and accomplishments of the conference chairpersons and the organizing committee, as well as management, marketing, and leadership factors that contributed to the ultimate demise of the conference.

The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent service delivery in the Canadian federal government actually improved after a decade of reform efforts, and how employee empowerment accounted for any improvements that arose.

Five focus group interviews were conducted in 2002 with federal government employees involved in service delivery. Interview transcripts were content analyzed. The employee empowerment and service quality literatures, including critical perspectives, provide the theoretical underpinnings of the study.

Productivity and service enhancement did materialize, but little empowerment occurred. Work intensification was revealed. The shortcomings of applying private sector‐style definitions of productivity to the public sector were identified.

Study findings have limited generalizability due to small sample size. Findings must be verified through additional research. Comparative findings from countries that introduced service reforms more comprehensively than did Canada would be of interest.

Public sector efforts to improve service delivery should address possible material barriers affecting service delivery and pay more attention to employee needs. The efficacy of quantitative performance targets should be re‐examined.

The outcomes of a public service reform initiative intended to improve service quality by allegedly empowering front‐line workers are presented from an employee perspective. As there is limited empirical research done on this topic from that perspective it should be of general interest to researchers in the fields of public policy and human resources management.

The content of selected international marketing serials, published from 1985 to 1998, is examined. Results show that the authors published in these serials tend to be affiliated with marketing departments, senior professors, male, and work with a single co‐author. Articles often focus on export and import, promotion, consumer behavior, and country of origin. Empirical studies – often survey research based on one‐country convenience samples – are typically drawn from the USA, UK, Japan, Korea, PRC, Canada, and Hong Kong; South America and Africa are less studied regions. Statistical analysis is often limited to univariate and bivariate methods.

I am the Managing Director of Grant/Seebeck International, an online consulting company based in the United States. I am pleased today to be the Chairperson of a session on electronic payment services. For the last three days you have had a wonderful time going about looking at the stands and seeing what is happening in the online business and in the Internet. You have seen a lot of great products, but today we hope to answer a question. At the end of a great meal and a great feast you are always presented with a bill, and the question is, how am I going to pay for what I have just seen? Our panel is going to try to answer that question. We have a distinguished panel. All of us have been around the online business for a very long time. We have been here since it was a little business in which we had to convince people, publishers, information providers that they could actually make money in the electronic information business. A lot of people back in the late 70s and early 80s believed that the electronic information business was a business in which they would not make money, and so these people have been around since then. I am happy to introduce to you our panel.

Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) member schools often compare their faculties’ research records to journal lists of their “peer and aspirational” programs. They often survey faculty and administrators’ perceptions of journal quality; number of Social Sciences Citation Index downloads; or “count” the number of faculty publications – but rarely analyze accounting programs’ actual journal quality lists. To examine this issue, we use a survey of national accounting programs. We identify a set of quality-classified journal lists by sampling 38 programs nationwide, varying by mission (e.g., urban or research), degrees granted (e.g., doctoral degrees in accounting), and national ranking (e.g., classified as a Top 75 Research Program) – from which we derive 1,436 data points that classify 359 journals that appear on these 38 programs’ journal lists. We also describe a case study that an accounting program used to revise its old journal list. We also find that while programs generally use generally accepted “bright lines” among the top three categories (A+, A, A−), they tailor their listings from the wide variety of B or C classified journals to create their own sets of acceptable journals in these categories. The study provides guidance and data for accounting programs who wish to develop or revise their own journal lists. While many studies have examined journal rankings, this is the first study to document the use of journal lists by accounting programs with a wide array of missions.

The goal of this study is to investigate the importance of safety issues in playgrounds, related to type of equipment and undersurface and their potential impacts on property values.

The population of this study was drawn from neighborhood residents in Taman Sri Nibong Park, one of the biggest neighborhood parks in Penang, Malaysia. A total of 173 questionnaires related to playground injuries were distributed and collected. The data were analyzed through the use of descriptive statistics.

Drawing from the experiences of children with playground injuries, the present study concludes that more effort should be taken to establish particular qualities in designing playgrounds to attract more visitors and investors. Most playground‐related injuries are related to swings (50 percent) followed by slides (22.2 percent). Moreover, the findings revealed that 41.2 percent of injuries identified by parents occurred on sand, which is used as the undersurface of playgrounds. Swings, climbing frames, slides and monkey bars are the types of equipment that attract more children or, in other words, are the instruments found in most ordinary playgrounds that cause the most casualties. Therefore, particular attention needs to be given to ensure safety in designing the parks.

This study is limited in its scope due to the lack of time and budget. Moreover, it focused only on one playground and therefore it cannot be generalized. Hence, further research about safety issues in playgrounds is needed to allow a better understanding. In addition, more studies are needed to explore how new equipment designs should be incorporated to ensure safe playgrounds, which in turn can increase property values.

This research would enable government, the private sector and equipment designers, as well as society in general, to benefit from new approaches in considering the effects of the safety of equipment in playgrounds and its important effects on playgrounds, which could be a key determinant of property value. It can affect development strategies by attracting more investment in equipment safety design. This new way of thinking can also affect the quality of life of society and its sustainability.

The paper provides a new way of thinking about the effects of playgrounds on property values by looking strategically at safety aspects in playgrounds.