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This case study analyzes Wal-Mart’s market entry and expansion in the Mexican market. Today’s Wal-Mart has become the largest retailer in Mexico. The case discusses all the current issues of this debate within the perspectives of growing the international firm and other internationalization issues. The case also evaluates the global retailing industry and its changing competition. Within the current circumstances, it is expected that Wal-Mart will continue to grow in Mexico and the NAFTA region. On the other hand Wal-Mart may face heightened competition and will be challenged by Mexican and other international retailers. The significance of this work lies in its timeliness and relevance to the ongoing debate of NAFTA-related boom and internationalization in the retailing industry.

Competitive advantage arises from the differential among firms along any dimension of firm attributes and characteristics that allows one firm to better create customer value than do others. Generic sources of competitive advantage include ownership of assets or position; access to distribution and supply, as well as proficiency ‐ knowledge, competence, and capability ‐ in business operation. To achieve and sustain competitive advantage, a firm needs to creatively and proactively exploit the three generic sources, preempt rivals attempt at these sources, and/or pursue any combination of proactive and preemptive efforts. Juxtaposing creation and preemption as well as ownership‐based, access‐based, and proficiency‐based sources, this article advances an integrative framework that helps management practitioners systematically analyze the nature and cause of competitive advantage.

Examines the changes facing middle managers as organizations move to leaner, empowered organization focused on delivering service to customers. The model of the inverted triangle leaves middle managers still in the middle, but now confused as to their new role – their world is literally topsy‐turvy. The reasons for these changes are the revolution of information technology, the absence of a hierarchically‐based career path, the need for greater creativity in organizations and the increasing focus on values. Although much has changed, much remains the same. Managers today still have many of the same needs they had in 1967. Identifies five factors of a high‐performing manager.

The purpose of this paper is to continue and extend the ongoing conversation about greatness in American business.

This survey, conducted in 2021, replicates and extends McCormick and Folsom’s 2001 and 2011 rankings of the greatest entrepreneurs and businesspeople in American history. The authors’ pool surveyed 51 experts to develop an updated ranking and explore factors of greatness.

Henry Ford topped the ranking followed by John D. Rockefeller and Steve Jobs. Business scholars ranked Oprah Winfrey the greatest female and minority businessperson.

The authors extend previous research by surveying the authors’ expert pool about factors of greatness in American business history. “Ability to imagine or envision the future” ranked highest with “created wealth for shareholders” in last place.

The authors examine the approach by which Sam Walton, a 48-year-old when he took his first technology course, drove creation of a new set of technology for retailing.

By breaking Walton’s approach into five stages, the authors show how his way of working points to a credible path for leaders with limited background in technology to lead technological change.

Senior leaders can apply Walton’s systematic way of leading for creation of excellent processes to accomplish customer-focused technology innovation in the modern era.

Five elements of Walton’s tech innovation leadership are reviewed and analyzed.

This article offers insights about how Walton was able to form a tech savvy team of managers and synthesize a vision about the potential of technology to produce operational breakthroughs far in advance of his competition.

Country‐of‐origin research has concentrated on the examination of consumer product perceptions or attitudes towards products made in different countries based on a variety of intrinsic or extrinsic cues. This research takes a different approach by examining the impact of country of origin, levels of foreign product ownership and consumer′s occupational status on interpersonal perceptions. Since respondents were not asked to engage in direct evaluations of various products of domestic or foreign origins, consumer normative response tendencies should be minimized. This approach also allows the examination of differential effects of country of origin on different consumer segments according to the occupational status.

Sam Walton opened his first Wal‐Mart discount store in 1962. Today, Wal‐Mart is not only the world’s largest corporation but also the world’s most admired company, according to a 2003 Fortune magazine poll. Wal‐Mart is competitive and successful because it has been doing many things right. This article helps shed light on the rise of Wal‐Mart and the roots of its competitiveness. Business practitioners aspiring to succeed can learn a great deal from studying the Wal‐Mart way of doing business.

The purpose of this paper is to describe lessons learned from integrating student-managed investment funds (SMIFs) in finance education systems based on the case of the Raymond Rebsamen Investment Fund at the Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas.

The paper has three main parts. First, it describes how the Rebsamen Fund operates as an integral part of undergraduate and graduate finance education at the Walton College. Second, it explains how the Fund spawned creation of sister funds, an institute, a 62-seat trading center, and coordinates with other agencies and stakeholders. Third, it lists strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing future SMIF integration into finance education.

The use of innovative experiential learning solutions like SMIFs bridging theory and practice can be enhanced by integrating them into effective systems of finance education.

Lessons learned include benefits of SMIF management by class, licensing and professional certification, trading centers, use of SMIF finances to support other components of education, proliferation of SMIFs, SMIF stimulation of academic units like centers/institutes, SMIF facilitation of collaboration, importance of tying SMIFs to student finance clubs, coordination of industry speaker visits between SMIF classes and clubs, and use of SMIFs in addressing cutting-edge challenges.

This paper discusses how SMIFs can be integrated in finance education.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the scholarly historical literature about Wal‐Mart and its relationship to the emergence of a retail service economy in the USA.

The review examines book‐length studies or collections of essays on Wal‐Mart. It highlights the developments that historians have linked to Wal‐Mart, and seeks to demonstrate both the progression of this historiography and the value of studying Wal‐Mart.

This young and relatively small historiography has developed quickly in recent years. Work in the last five years suggests that when historians use Wal‐Mart as a case study or template corporation, they can learn much about the development, nature, and trajectory of the postindustrial service economy and American political culture.

This is the first review essay of historical writing about Wal‐Mart. It will be useful to scholars curious about what has been written and what remains to be written about America's largest private employer and retailer, and the potential of such analysis for further insight into post‐1945 American society, economy, and culture.