From the editor.(health care management )(Editorial)

The Winter Issue of the Review of Business offers an interesting assortment of business-related articles beginning with a paper by Ray Haynes and Rajashi Ghosh on mentoring and succession management. After differentiating between formal and informal mentoring, they go on to describe how the role of mentoring within organizations has moved beyond the traditional one-to-one arrangement to become more network-based. They then explain the power of succession management programs in selecting an organization's next generation of leaders. Using the Strategic Collaboration Model (SCM), they take a systemic approach to matching a protege's developmental needs with the leadership needs of a given organization. Finally, they suggest a way to evaluate the SCM process to ensure that succession management efforts remain effective.

The next article, by Dana Hermanson, Daniel Ivancevich, and Susan Ivancevich, describes the importance of the internal audit function in light of Sarbanes-Oxley. While New York Stock Exchange companies are required to have an internal audit function, other U.S. companies are not. The authors make a compelling argument that all firms could benefit greatly from an internal audit function and apply case studies from the Audit Analytics database to describe how. In specific, they explain the concept of material weakness and provide suggestions for how managers and audit committee members can better develop their internal audit function.

The paper by Joseph Ugrin and Michael Pearson explores Internet abuse in the workplace. They explain and study the potential impact of Internet acceptable use policies (AUP) in the workplace. In addition to discussing the concerns of lost productivity, legal liability, and poor corporate image from non-work-related computing, they use General Deterrence Theory to justify AUP outcomes. They then describe their research effort to determine what makes an AUP effective. Last, they offer insights and suggestions for how to successfully develop and deploy an AUP.

The article by Pirkko Vartiainen uses the concept of "wicked problems" from social policy research to examine health care management reforms in Finland. Wicked problems are those which cannot readily be defined, described, or analyzed. They are complex by nature and have no evident or easily identifiable solutions. After offering an explanation of the characteristics inherent in all wicked problems, Dr. Vartiainen then describes each in terms of the Finnish health care management system. Not only does he highlight the issues and considerations important to any reform effort, but he also provides clever insights and guidance for thinking more comprehensively about health care concerns.

Last, Steven Maffei's paper looks at legal ways for an organization to guard against a departing employee taking the organization's contact and client lists when he or she leaves. In specific, he discusses three options organizations have: 1) apply trade secret status to the client list; 2) identify a breach in the employee's fiduciary responsibilities to the organization; and, 3) use a restrictive covenant. He provides examples of each approach and offers guidance for how each should be pursued.

Brenda Massetti, The Peter J. Tobin College of Business, St. John's University

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