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Plus Corporation, working with a leading‐edge Japanese manufacturer, is rushing a unique product to market. The principals must manage the joint venture, survive a competitive crisis, and keep their parent corporation happy. It's easy to empathize with the line managers, but try taking the perspective of the CEO of the parent firm.

Extant research studies document gender differences in career outcomes for middle and advanced career stages. The purpose of this study is to examine potential gender differences in early‐career success with a particular focus on whether educational intervention might mediate any potential differences.

Survey data for recent business college alumni were analyzed using descriptive techniques, linear regression and logistic modeling; the response rate was 25 percent and all data were self‐reported. Both objective and subjective measures were used to assess outcomes. A priori, given similar educational training and expectations for managerial careers, we should expect to find similar early‐career progress regardless of gender.

Differences are apparent out of the starting gate for women in early‐career stages compared with their male counterparts, by both objective and subjective measures. Results also suggest an opportunity to improve outcomes through educational interventions. Limitations of the findings include the use of self‐reported data and a modest response rate.

The findings of this study highlight the importance that integrated leadership development programs may play in supporting women's early‐career success and the need to advise young women to negotiate more assertively for salary and leadership opportunity at the immediate start of their careers. For educational institutions, the findings suggest that concerted focus on support for women students' development may enhance their early‐career outcomes.

By focusing on early‐career outcomes, the paper seeks to contribute to the gender and careers literature by highlighting results that may set up the patterns seen among women in mid‐career and senior level managerial careers. In addition, the paper demonstrates the educational interventions may be of value in reducing the impact of stereotype threat on women's career outcomes.

Successful benchmarking exchanges require co‐operation from both the prospective benchmarker and the host benchmarkee. Adopting the viewpoint of a host company provides valuable insight into how to make benchmarking partnerships more effective, both for benchmarkers and benchmarkees. Provides specific ideas on how to structure benchmarking exchanges effectively based on in‐depth interviews with nine experienced host companies and survey data from 31 experienced host companies. Provides a generic process flow for handling benchmarking requests and discusses critical issues to be addressed in adding value towards a mutually productive benchmarking exchange.

“Plus Corporation, partnering with a leading edge Japanese manufacturer, is rushing a unique computer hard drive to market. This startup subsidiary must manage the cross‐cultural joint venture, survive a competitive crisis, and keep the parent corporation happy.” The product development project was so successful, top management at Plus was given the opportunity to run its parent company.

Corporate women's networks have existed for more than 25 years, with varying results. Understanding how networks can be more effectively focused is important to talent management and professional development, particularly as women comprise an increasingly significant portion of the leadership pipeline. This study aims to provide new ways to assess and enhance the strategic value of women's networks in terms of both talent and business development.

The authors bring more than 40 years combined experience to their survey of women's networks in 32 multinational corporations. A structured interview protocol was followed to gain an in‐depth understanding of current women's network practice.

This paper describes the range of current practice in the implementation of women's networks and suggests new tools for understanding how a women's network is currently positioned and might be focused for greater strategic impact, both for network participants and for the firm.

Three tools are provided for assessing and potentially repositioning the focus and strategic objectives of women's networks in corporations. This paper should spur valuable discussion among network leaders as well as executive sponsors, diversity officers and CEOs about how to maximize network value; the tools are potentially transferable to other internal networks or affinity groups.

Many firms use well‐known turnkey tools to establish their women's network. This paper provides new tools targeted particularly to those networks and companies that are beyond the start‐up phase.

The purpose of this paper is to survey and analyze current process improvement (PI) approaches, their empirical results reported in the literature, and develop accordingly a conceptual framework and implementation guidelines.

A literature review of the popular business database to search for case studies and empirical research on PI methods was conducted. The empirical evidence on success and failure factors were inferred and tabulated. Based on synthesis of the lessons learned from this empirical evidence along with concepts drawn from economics, and operations management, a conceptual framework is developed.

It was found that the framework would serve as a diagnostic tool for identification of, and recovering from root causes of problems and inefficiencies faced in business environments. The framework proposed synthesizes and extends earlier PI tools and basic approaches used for mitigating disruptions faced in operations practice. The framework design consists of three main phases: Specify; Analyze; and Monitor closely. Accordingly, it is denoted by SAM.

Decision makers can be altered to both the success factors and causes of failure of different PI approaches, and a framework is provided along with implementation guidelines that help assure practical effectiveness of PI efforts. The guidelines provided for practicing managers comprise two categories: specific; tool‐based, and general; system‐based.

The contribution of this paper is two fold: first, empirical evidence on the drivers of success and failure of four main PI approaches, were synthesized. These include: six sigma, benchmarking, reengineering and process mapping. Second, based on this empirical evidence, a conceptual framework that guides both the choice and implementation of business process improvement programs is developed. The proposed framework and its implementation guidelines help assure actual effectiveness of PI practice.

The purpose of this study was to explore strategies used by successful female entrepreneurs to manage the challenges of running a small apparel business.

A qualitative research design was used. Primary and secondary data were collected on small business in three countries: Russia, South Africa and Thailand. In-depth interviews were conducted with a total of 11 female small apparel business owners. Businesses ranged from tailoring and custom clothing shops, to small-scale design and production, as well as small apparel retail stores.

Three emergent themes highlight the similarities and differences that surfaced across the participants’ narratives. Key issues within the thematic areas point to the need for these women to be creative in finding resources to start and grow their small apparel businesses, and to manage the competition that they face within this industry.

It is difficult to generalize the findings of this study beyond the sample. Implications of the findings for understanding the needs of female apparel entrepreneurs and small business owners are considered.

Despite the significance of women to the apparel industry as well as small business ownership, thus far, the role of women as apparel entrepreneurs and small business owners has been under-examined in the literature. This study offers insight into what it is like for women seeking to succeed as apparel entrepreneurs and small business owners.