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An empirical study was conducted to investigate predictors of computer anxiety among undergraduate college business students. The effects of academic major, computer‐related experience, gender, and ACT scores on computer anxiety were investigated. The results indicate significant differences in computer anxiety levels among business students with different majors and with different amounts of computer‐related experience. Business students’ ACT scores were also found to have a significant relationship to computer anxiety. A significant difference between male and female business students was not found. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Shareholder Theory allows management to ignore the interests of the other constituencies while pursuing its own narrow self‐interest under the guise (the ethical facade) of promoting the interests of the shareholder owners. The Shareholder Theory does not provide any relistic counterweight against management abuse. The Enron example strengthens the arguments for the use of Stakeholder theory and exposes the utter failure of the Shareholder Theory.

Failures may lead to ultimate success in both nature and business. Just as dynamic ecosystems depend on death to replace senescent organisms with vigorous growth, the termination of uneconomic activities is essential to wealth creation. This paper explores the benefits of failures, and uses aspects of the analogy between death and business failure to analyze how failures in business economize upon resources and lead to better firms and greater efficiencies. A distinguishing feature of our work is the analytic use of competitive markets to provide insights into the processes of success and failure. Recognizable patterns of business failures are discussed in an effort to provide entrepreneurs and managers with a basis for understanding and acting upon changing circumstances.

This study examines how the Fortune 500 use transactional public Web sites (TPWS). It applies innovation diffusion theory to identify variables and construct a model to explain differences in adoption rates of TPWS across industries. The study finds high rates of TPWS adoption in the airline, computer and office equipment, commercial banking, and retailing industries. The study also explains why the rates of TPWS adoption vary across different industries. Characteristics of both the innovation and the industry’s environment affect TPWS adoption. A high level of TPWS adoption is associated with industries where: products, services, and sales processes “fit” electronic transactions, the level of price competition is extreme, competitors are aggressively adopting the same technology, and firms are experienced with related technologies and have already developed the necessary information technology infrastructure. The study is significant because it identifies the specific innovation and environmental characteristics that drive varying rates of TPWS adoption among large firms across different industries.

Calls for corporate social responsibility are widespread, yet there is no consensus about what it means; this may be its charm. However, it is possible to distinguish the fi duciary obligations owed to shareholders, as expressed by Milton Friedman, from all other paradigms of corporate responsibility. Friedman maintains that: “ ...there is one and only one social responsibility of business‐to‐use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition, without deception or fraud.” All other paradigms argue that corporations have social responsibilities that extend beyond the pursuit of shareholder benefits to stakeholders. The list of cited stakeholders is ill‐defined and expanding, including non‐human animals and non‐sentient things. This paper defends the intellectual and ethical merits of fiduciary duties, and compares and contrasts it to the stakeholder paradigm. The fiduciary duty to firms’ owners is the bedrock of capitalism, and capitalism will wither without it.

This article describes the origin, design, and implementation of the Haworth College of Business Electronic Portfolio Project, a curricular innovation that is one of the key components of the college’s newly revised and reaccredited undergraduate business program. Included in the article is a description of the portfolio process, its creation, and initial implementation, including implementation challenges and issues. Throughout the discussion, goals and the challenge of meeting them are examined, and suggestions for continuous improvement are explored. The article offers key issues to consider before adopting a portfolio process on a large scale.

Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 130 (SFAS 130) was released in 1997 which required publicly traded companies to separately report comprehensive income in the financial statements. SFAS 130 prescribed three alternative formats for the presentation without mandating any one specific format. SFAS 130 also required certain details of comprehensive income to be displayed prominently in the financial statements. The current study examined the presentation of comprehensive income by a sample of companies traded on the NASDAQ market to determine the predominant method of presentation among these companies, five years after SFAS 130 became effective. Results of the examination of one hundred annual reports showed that a majority of the sampled companies used the third approach, which was to present comprehensive income as part of the Statement of Stockholders’ Equity, as against the first two approaches that favored presentation of comprehensive income on the face of the Income Statement or in a separate statement. Further, the paper also discusses some ancillary findings pertaining to the presentation of the details of comprehensive income.

The preceding article, “The Social Responsibility of Corporate Management: A Classical Critique,” argues that the Shareholder Theory, which the authors refer to as the “Friedman Paradigm” represents the only intellectually and ethically meritorious model for assessing corporate social responsibility. This response argues that the 19th Century Shareholder Theory is based upon numerous factual and legal inaccuracies and fictions when evaluated in the context of the modern era. Requiring that management serve only the interests of the shareholders is morally untenable. The authors’ assertion that the competing theory, The Stakeholder Theory, is unworkable is based upon both a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the theory. Refinements and clarifications about who qualifies as a stakeholder make the Stakeholder Theory both workable and a very useful way to improve corporate governance. Now is the time to apply the Stakeholder Theory as part of the ongoing process of improving the moral and social responsibility of corporation management.

Although personal information privacy concerns have been around for years, the introduction of E‐commerce and its associated technologies presents privacy concerns anew. The Fortune 500 represents traditional leadership in the use of technologies and business practices. This preliminary study examines Web sites of the Fortune 500 and shows that slightly more than 50 percent of Fortune 500 Web sites provide privacy policies on their home pages. Comprehensive privacy policies to address all privacy dimensions recommended by the FTC are less common.

Most four‐year business degree programs have a common body of knowledge (CBK) or “business core,” composed of courses from all the major disciplines in the business curriculum. All business majors, regardless of specialization or area of concentration, are required to take these courses, or their equivalent, as a part of their degree programs. On many campuses, non‐business majors are also enrolled in these courses. Some of these non‐business students are required by their curriculum programs to take specific business courses; others take them as electives. The result is a mixture of students with varying backgrounds and interests in some CBK classes. This mix of business and non‐business majors in the same course raises several questions, three of which were examined in this study. In a mixed course, is there any difference between business and non‐business majors’ attitudes about the course? Is there any significant difference in performance between business and nonbusiness majors in the same course? What are the attitudes of faculty who teach such courses concerning student performance and instruction of the course? A survey was administered to study perceptions of business and non‐business majors concerning a single CBK course at one institution. In addition, course grades for business and non‐business majors at that institution were compared. Another survey was administered to ascertain the opinions of professors teaching the same CBK course at institutions located throughout the southeastern United States. Results of the surveys showed that faculty and students had different perceptions and that student grades tended to differ by major.