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Dow Jones Announces News/Retrieval Service; Now Sees Itself as “Retailer” of Information. When a data base producer decides it is time to enter the on‐line era, it most frequently choses to do so by forming a “partnership” with one or more of the existing on‐line vendors‐companies such as SDC, Lockheed, or BRS‐which have existing computer facilities as well as marketing and educational programs.

Trust is a key concept in business, particularly in electronic commerce (e‐commerce). In order to understand online trust, one must first study trust research conducted in the offline world. The findings of such studies, dating from the 1950’s to the present, provide a foundation for online trust theory in e‐commerce. This paper provides an overview of the existing trust literature from the fields of philosophy, psychology, sociology, management, and marketing. Based on these bodies of work, online trust is briefly explored. The range of topics for future research in online trust in e‐commerce is presented.

In the wake of numerous late twentieth century cult disasters, and most recently, the September 11 tragedy, this paper considers the question, why do people obey outrageous commands from charismatic authorities? According to Gary Becker, “the economic ap‐proach provides a valuable unified framework for understanding all human behavior” (Becker 1976:14). We test this generalization by attempting to explain, in terms of rational choice theory, the behavior of two members of infamous cults, the Manson Family and the Ragneesh Foundation International. Each of these subjects slavishly obeyed orders from a charismatic personality, one to the extent of committing murder. Were they mentally ill or rationally maximizing their utility? We consider these theoretical options. In August of 1969 Charles Manson ordered several of his followers to commit gruesome murders for the purpose of initiating the apocalypse. They obeyed. In late 1978, Jim Jones commanded over 900 members of the Peoples Temple to commit suicide. They obeyed. From 1981 to 1985, executing orders to build utopia perceived to come from their guru, members of the Ragneesh Foundation International terrorized the inhabitants of Antelope, Oregon. Similarly, followers of Osama Bin Laden are suspected of carrying out the disastrous suicide murders of September 11. Over past decades, the incidence of violence involving submission to a charismatic leader appears to be escalating. Increasingly the public must contend with the “awesome power” of charisma, “enshrouded in a mystique of irrationality” (Bradley 1987: 3–4). The extent to which followers committing criminal acts of obedience may be held accountable has become a pressing legal issue. How can this kind of volatile religious commitment be explained? In recent years, experts on cults have experimented with rational choice theory. According to economist, Gary Becker, “the economic approach provides a valuable unified framework for understanding all human behavior” (Becker 1976: 14). We test this extravagant claim with two cases of seemingly irrational commitment to a charismatic cult leader—one a follower of Bhagwan Rajneesh, the other a Manson Family killer. These subjects are not representative cult members but rather were chosen because they demonstrated an exceptional loyalty to their leaders that has been widely construed as the result of brainwashing or insanity. Rather than survey data, we rely on autobiographical testimonies since they offer a more detailed and comprehensive view of the thought processes that motivate behavior, the subject matter of this paper.

This feminist standpoint study aims to make an empirical contribution to the entrepreneurial leadership and HRD fields. Women entrepreneur leaders' experiences of gender will be explored through a framework of doing gender well and doing gender differently to unsettle the gender binary.

Against a backcloth of patriarchy, a theoretical gender lens is developed and a feminist standpoint research (FSR) approach taken in this study. There are five case studies of women entrepreneur leaders operating small businesses across North East England in sectors of IT, law, construction, beauty, and childcare. In each case study a two‐stage semi‐structured interview process was implemented and the women's voices analysed through a framework of doing gender well and differently.

This paper highlights the complexities of gender experiences offering four themes of women entrepreneurs' experiences of gender within entrepreneurial leadership: struggling with entrepreneurial leadership; awareness of difference; accepting and embracing difference; and responding to difference, which are offered to challenge the gender binary and capture the complexities of how gender is experienced.

The field must begin to shift its focus from the dominant masculine discourse to foster understandings of gender experiences by using gender as an analytical category to enable the field to truly progress.

Women are still an under‐represented group within entrepreneurship and within the higher echelons of organisations. This requires greater attention.

This feminist study calls for both scholars and practitioners to analyse critically their underlying assumptions and bring a gender consciousness to their HRD research and practice to understand gender complexities within entrepreneurial leadership and organisational experiences more widely.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the papers written for this special issue, to suggest some themes and problems emerging from recent retail history, and to bring together work from a variety of subfields.

The essay surveys recent themes in retail history, using the contents of the special issue as a point of departure. It relies on secondary sources.

The articles in this issue highlight the importance of power relations and more formal political economy and government policy to retail firms. They also emphasize the importance of nearby institutions and populations to retailers. Taken as a whole, the pieces speak to recent interest among business historians in the social contexts and contingencies that shape firms and also in the history of failure, draw their attention to the importance of “the local” in business generally, and point to the possibilities of more work on very small firms, early American and non‐US (or globally framed US) retail and questions of women and gender. This work is part of a resurgence of interest by historians of all stripes in retail and its history; although reading across sub‐disciplinary lines can be challenging, the essay concludes by encouraging scholars of retail to do so.

This essay should encourage work in understudied fields and particularly encourage broad reading among retail historians.

The essay introduces readers to literature they may not have encountered and articulates themes and questions emerging from new scholarship on retail.

Reports a study of the salesforce compensation practices in manufacturing companies which is the first of its kind undertaken in Australia. Australian companies rely heavily on salary as the main form of salesforce compensation, unlike in the USA where the majority of salespeople are rewarded using commission‐based means. To a lesser extent, this is also true for Britain. The companies in this study, like many European firms, make relatively little use of performance‐related compensation methods such as commission. These findings are surprising, given that most companies reported that the main objective of their compensation plans was to reward above average performance. Such discrepancies between objectives and methods appear to be widespread and can, in part, be related to the social and legal environment in which Australian companies operate.

The Peaceful Kids Early Childhood Social‐Emotional (ECSEL) Conflict Resolution Program and curriculum was created to fulfill the need for a developmentally appropriate, theory‐based approach to promoting social‐emotional, cognitive, and conflict resolution skills' development in preschoolers (ages 2 to 6). From Fall 1997 through Fall 1999, an evaluation of this program occurred in 18 classrooms in day care/Head Start centers. Each classroom was randomly assigned to one of three conditions: ECSEL training for (1) day care staff, parents, and children, (2) day care staff and children (but not their parents), and (3) control, no‐training. As predicted, children in the condition where both parents and day care staff were trained showed significant increases in assertiveness, cooperation, and self‐control, and significant decreases in aggressiveness and socially withdrawn behavior. Parents receiving training showed significant reductions in authoritarian and permissive parenting styles and an increase in authoritative parenting style.

Susan Martin identified in 1986 three factors responsible for a dramatic change in automated networking environment; the first of which was the use of microcomputers, which enable libraries to accomplish locally, what once could be achieved only by joining with others. Microcomputers are used either in a stand‐alone mode or in connection with mainframes. There are no longer microcomputers for small libraries and mainframes (or minis) for large libraries; both use microcomputers. But we can wonder if there is not an automation configuration for poor libraries with stand‐alone functions on microcomputers, and another for wealthy libraries integrating functions in a total information system.

Management thinking on the relationship between a business enterprise and its external environment has evolved in a number of ways over the last hundred years. At each stage, the concept of the company has been determined by the socio‐economic circumstances in which managers find themselves.

This article presents an empirical test of three hypotheses dealing with the modernisation of polyethnic societies. An hypothesis derived from the functionalist/developmental perspective and two hypotheses derived from the conflict/competition perspective are assessed using survey data on Francophone‐Anglophone relations in contemporary Quebec. The main conclusions are that 1) the cross‐sectional design using survey data allows a clear test of Hechter's (1975) reactive ethnicity hypothesis; 2) the reactive ethnicity hypothesis is supported in the analysis; 3) the resource competition hypothesis (e.g., Nielsen 1980) is also supported; 4) the reactive ethnicity and resource competition hypotheses are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as some recent authors have claimed (Nielsen 1980; Ragin 1979), and can best be seen as two variants of the same communal competition perspective imbedded in the conflict theory tradition.