From the Editor

by Krishna S. Dhir, Berry College

dhir

Mother Nature continues to harass the DSI community. Early on April 27th, 2011, a major storm spread destruction and loss of hundreds of lives through the Deep South, from Texas to Tennessee. The campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa took a direct hit. Sadly, six students were killed, including four from the business school. Berry College, too, was devastated, where a giant oak tree fell about 12 feet from my bedroom. Fortunately, there was no loss of life.

There is also good news! Over the past year, Decision Line has qualified as "Cabell's Commendable Journal" and has been included in the Cabell's Directory. I congratulate Hal Jacobs, our outstanding managing editor, and Decision Line's exceptional editorial board for this noteworthy achievement.

After a year as your president-elect, I became the president of our Institute on . . . er . . . April Fool's Day! Hmmm . . . ! In the President's Letter, I have described the strategic initiatives of the Institute over the next year. I look forward to hearing your suggestions and reactions. The Board of Directors has selected Maling Ebrahimpour of the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, to take over as editor of Decision Line from me on New Year Day.

May 24th marks the 22nd anniversary of the passing of our founder, Dennis E. Grawoig. To mark the occasion, his widow Marte and daughter Becky describe him, his interests, and his passions. Since his passing we have acquired an entirely new generation at the core of our membership.

The feature column In The Classroom brings you an essay by Jean Wilcox of Temple University in which she describes "The 10-10-10 Project." "The project concept originated from a discussion with a business colleague in January, 2010, about the upcoming date of October 10, 2010." To explore the potential of social media in her Entrepreneurial Marketing class, she challenged the students to develop a class project to start a social movement that would come to a head on the date 10-10-10. Read all about it!

In the International Issues feature column, Robert Jack of Macquarie University asks whether the divide between goods and services is redundant. "Consumers often buy a final product based on post-sales services such as a maintenance contract, installation, repairs, and training that are deemed indispensable to its utilization." He observes that, "a firm manufacturing an industrial product, which can be exported across international markets, may find that the embedded services essential to its use require the firm to consider a direct presence in the market for consistent and ongoing service delivery and value creation."

In his timely essay in the E-Commerce feature column, Kenneth Kendall of Rutgers University explores the Apple's iTunes App Store and Mac App Store. He discusses merits and demerits of this new approach to buying software online. Richard Donnelly and Prabir Bagchi of George Washington University, in the Deans' Perspective feature column, envision the business school of tomorrow: "The richest classroom experience would come from a student population that is extensively experienced . . . . The faculty need to represent the full array of disciplines relevant to global business . . . . The ideal structure of a global MBA program would involve study taking place around the world . . . ."

As always, please let us hear from you.