No abstract

This research attempts to ascertain the feasibility of quantitatively measuring business school undergraduates’general ability in analyzing business situations effectively. As a first step toward establishing an international test model that business schools worldwide can emulate, the researchers designed a new educational test instrument— Case Reasoning in Management (CRiM)—and administered it to 120 business under-graduates (evenly distributed across four levels of study). Results show that under-graduates at a higher level of study and those who have achieved better academic results in the business curriculum tend to perform better on CRiM. The researchers also measured undergraduates’tolerance for ambiguity, creative thinking, stress resilience, and the Big Five personality of intellect and found that these personal factors are positively related to the test scores. As expected, English language score, gender, age, family income, and high school results are not related to performance on the test. However, because a convenience sample with students from only one university and similar ethnic background was used, this research can at best be a pilot study. Future research should rigorously examine the generalizability and predictive validity of CRiM on a global basis.

We are deeply indebted to the two anonymous reviewers and the Editor for their painstaking efforts and the extremely meticulous comments given to us during the entire review process of this paper. A thousand thanks to all three of you.The study reported here employed a 2 (wheelchair-bound versus non-wheelchairbound) x 2 (Caucasian versus Chinese) x 2 (programmer versus computer operator) full factorial experiment design to examine the effects of evaluator biases on the perceived employability of job applicants. Results based on 640 evaluation reports showed that evaluators tended to accord higher employability ratings to job applicants with apparent physical disabilities and those with a higher level of job skill. The positive bias in favor of applicants with disabilities in terms of perceived employability was greater for Caucasian than for Chinese job applicants. These results suggested that there might be race-disability interactions in the evaluation process. Implications for research on employment discrimination were discussed.

Started in 1875, pawnbroking was a unique small business sector in Singapore. Its core business activity comprised giving out loans to walk-in pawners who presented valuables as collateral (pledges). Pawnbrokers made most of their profits from the interest differentials between the interests charged on the loans and the cost of capital of providing the loans. They were allowed to auction off unredeemed pledges through approved auction houses to recover their losses. Pawnbrokers were also allowed to purchase unredeemed pledges that had been pawned with themselves at the auction. About 90% of the pledges accepted by pawnbrokers thus were gold and jewelry. This case provides a detailed description of the pawnbroking industry in Singapore and the operations of pawnbrokers. The case is useful for teaching in areas such as industry analysis, company operation and human resource management.