Stuart A. Youngblood

The teaching of business ethics: A survey of AACSB member schools

This report presents the findings of a survey of business ethics education undertaken in the Fall of 1988. The respondents were the deans of colleges and universities associated with the AACSB.Ethics, as a curriculum topic, received significant coverage at over 90 percent of the institutions, with 53 percent indicating interest in increasing coverage of the subject. The tabulations of this survey may prove useful to schools seeking to compare or develop their emphases in business ethics.

Personality, Training Performance, and Withdrawal: A Test of the Person-Group Fit Hypothesis for Organizational Newcomers.

Abstract Person-group fit, operationalized as the congruency between employee personality characteristics and an average profile of successful job incumbents within that occupation, was examined relative to training performance, absenteeism, and turnover of airline flight attendants. Two sets of hypotheses were proposed: (a) increased person-group fit would improve training performance and increase attendance and turnover, and (b) person-group fit would moderate the training performance-attendance and the training performance-turnover relationships. In general, the main effect influence of person-group fit on performance, attendance, and turnover was not supported. Person-group fit, however, did moderate the training performance-withdrawal relationships. Implications of the results and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Ability Testing and Graduate Admissions: Decision Process Modeling and Validation.

The admissions process for a graduate Master of Business Administration (MBA) program was modeled for 406 applicants to a newly designed MBA program. The decision process model was then applied to a sample of students admitted to and enrolled in an old MBA program, where less stringent admissions procedures had been used. Results supported the adequacy of both Graduate Management Admission Test scores and undergraduate grades in the prediction of admissions officer decisions as well as the validity of such information in the prediction of graduate performance and turnover. The results are discussed in light of the recent criticisms of the use of standardized tests as admissions criteria for programs of higher education.

Survival After Retirement.

A study of survival rates after retirement was conducted for a large corporation in the petroleum industry. A regression analysis was performed to control for age, sex, job status, and type of work differences that may influence longevity. Examination of the residuals showed a bimodal distribution: one group died (on the average) six and a half years after retirement, while the second group survived (on the average) nineteen years. Implications for health care management are discussed.

Employment-at-Will and the South Carolina Experiment

Thefollowing article addresses the doctrine of employment-at-will, in the context of one states attempt to mitigate the doctrines effects by the use of mediation. The authors discuss the early development of the at-will doctrine, and examine various judicially developed exceptions to it. They note the disadvantages of challenging atwill dismissals by litigation. They then proceed to examine the success of the South Carolina Labor Man agement Services Division of the State Department of Labor, which en gages in the mediation of at-will discharges. The authors find that the mediation of at-will discharges results in the reinstatement of a high number of discharged employees, at considerably less cost than litigation. The authors conclude that mediation is a viable alternative to the litigation of at-will discharges, and suggest that the statutory authorization for the establishment of agencies like that of South Carolina presently exists in many states.