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Last year was particularly unsettling for European managers. Daily, they heard reports of an oncoming decade of hostile takeovers presaged by the likes of Hoylake's bid for BAT, KKR's interests in Britain, or GEC‐Siemens's recently consummated bid for Plessey.

The World Bank established the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) in 1985 as the first truly global agency which insures foreign investments against political risks. MIGA is now in its fifth full year of operations and has been more successful than originally forecast. This paper will discuss the formation of MIGA and includes an analysis of its operations to date. When appropriate, comparisons will be made between MIGA operations and those of the U.S. investment insurance agency, OPIC, the Overseas Private Investment Company, as well as private market insurers. Selected cases of MIGA guarantees are discussed in the paper.

Since women were first admitted to the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in 1976, gender integration has been an important issue. This chapter reviews the works of two social scientists that researched and documented the gender integration efforts of that time. It then summarizes more recent gender climate data, presents data from our study of correlates of cadet perceptions of females at USAFA, and discusses implications of these findings for gender climate and leadership development programs. In the early years of gender integration, male cadets had more traditional attitudes toward women in society than civilian males or female cadets; views that changed little by the time of graduation. Also, they often were vocally opposed to the integration of women at the Academy and in the military and viewed female cadets and officers as less capable leaders. In contrast, the females in the first cohort were less traditional in their attitudes and backgrounds and were very positively supportive of women in nontraditional roles. Nevertheless, they were “feminine” in their gender identities and, unexpectedly, became “more feminine” over the course of their Academy experience.

Despite vast improvements in the past 30 years or so, some gender integration issues remain; there continue to be gender-related jokes and comments, and a small but substantial portion of men do not believe that women belong at the Academy.

In the present study, we looked at what variables predicted men's and women's agreement with the statements: “female cadets can hack it (succeed) here” and “I have no trouble taking orders from a female officer.” We also looked at how cadets rated leadership scenarios featuring either male or female officers.

The findings revealed that different variables predict men's and women's attitudes toward females at USAFA.

Results are discussed in terms of continuing efforts to improve the gender climate at USAFA as well as to enhance leadership development programs.

Case studies have long been a staple ingredient of professional training, but among the challenges of using them are the difficulty of ensuring that their situations and elements accurately reflect the complexity of current case reality, achieving applicability across networking agencies, and the time they can take to create or obtain. The Center for Child and Family Studies is increasingly having participants create their own case studies for use in ongoing professional training. Practically, this method has several advantages. Theoretically, it is in keeping with constructivist values and the principles of adult learning. Though it does not work in every training situation in which cases may be used, it can greatly enrich training and training outcomes where it is feasible.