Business News

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After extensively studying models of Internet pricing among competing networks, researchers at the University of Texas found that usage-based pricing can be far more profitable than the flat pricing scheme introduced by America On Line (AOL). The customer dissatisfaction with on-line congestion and pending law suits against access providers highlight the short-sightedness of this current pricing strategy.

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Equity investments in entrepreneurial firms continue to grow in number and dollar amounts from both venture capital and private investment sources. Increasingly, these two sources of capital play an important role in the development of new and existing entrepreneurial ventures. Due to the sometimes hurried attempt to turn their dream into a reality, entrepreneurs may fail to consider similarities and differences in the value-added benefits supplied by venture capital firms and private investors. Who the entrepreneur gets his/her money from is just as important as how much capital is obtained initially.

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Research Triangle Institute and Adams Consulting Group, Inc. have announced the availability of a tool that will help organizations evaluate whether Virtual Reality (VR) training programs are appropriate for specific training needs. VR Training Decision Tool gives managers and professionals in training, performance improvement, information technology, human resources, multimedia development, safety, manufacturing and other fields a way of quantifying the decision to use VR. This tool is available free of charge.

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One of the hot new trends in management -- worker participation -- has been touted as a boon to employees because it allows them to play an active role in making decisions involving their jobs. But such management systems, which often involve workplace teams, may hurt relations among co-workers, a new study suggests.

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The biggest winners in an investment market may be playing the game according to their own rules, rather the "rational" economic rules followed by most investors.

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The 1959 Ford and Carnegie reports on business schools caused severe and probably permanent damage to business education, forcing it into a narrow and overly-theoretical mold, says dr. Carter Daniel, of Rutgers Graduate School of Management, in his forthcoming book "MBA: The First Century."

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Black women managers exhibit characteristics that give them exceptional strength, says Assistant Professor DT Ogilvie of Rutgers Graduate School of Management. They are more likely to have male-associated traits as well as female ones, to sense gender inequality strongly, to be able to handle several roles at once, and to break down traditional constraints.

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Researchers from Resources for the Future in the United States and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand today announce the start of their collaborative investigation of a proposed dam's impact on local forest communities -- an impact that is often not accounted for in development planning in Southeast Asia.

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Unless the world's food-growing nations improve their resource-management practices, life in the 21st century will be as tough as it is now in the 80 countries that already suffer serious water shortages, a new Cornell University study warns. As a start, governments should end irrigation subsidies that encourage inefficient use of water and instead reward conservation.

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Economic cooperation offers the Middle East such clear benefits that it will eventually prevail over hostility. Jerry Rosenberg, Professor and Chair of International Business at Rutgers, and an active participant at mid-east economic summits, has a model for such cooperation.

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Japanese managers are more likely to use reason, reciprocity, and rewards--and to be more controlling--in dealing with Western subordinates, says Asha Rao, Assistant Professor of Managemnent at Rutgers Graduate School of Management.

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In a 15-month study, more than 50 leading U.S. manufacturers joined with academic researchers and government experts to identify forces likely to shape competition into the next century. Rapid marketplace change, the Next Generation Manufacturing Project concludes, will require an unprecedented shift in how manufacturers employ and train workers, use information technology, and design plants and equipment.

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Wildlife Conservation Society researcher develops a new trawl net that drastrically reduces the number of undersized fish caught in the high-volume commercial pollock fishery -- the world's largest trawl fishery. In the U.S. alone, pollock catches $6 billion in 1994. This new net will affect this industry with in the next year.

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The new Intel Pentium MMX microprocessor may lure buyers because a new study shows a majority of current World Wide Web users have begun to experience hardware and software problems when attempting to test new innovations.

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National tax reform may have a substantial impact on the environment as well as on economic growth, researchers at Resources for the Future and Stanford University suggest. They have recently launched a study of the environmental implications of three alternative tax plans -- the flat tax, the national sales tax, and the unlimited savings account tax -- now under discussion in Congress.

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Purdue University's Center for Agricultural Business (CAB) is celebrating its 10th year as a link between the university and the agricultural marketplace.

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Relatively small U.S. companies probably should not invest the money that is needed to develop industrial products which are technically superior and have superior performance.