Editor's Letter
By Kathy Williams

How Large Corporations Use Data Mining to Create Value
By Thomas G. Calderon, Ph.D.; John J. Cheh, Ph.D.; and Il-woon Kim, Ph.D.
Sixty-five percent of Fortune 500 companies responding to the authors’ survey use data mining for a variety of ways to solve business problems. The authors present the survey results, discuss the most prevalent software tools, and take you through a data-mining problem.

Best Practices in Target Costing
By Dan Swenson, Ph.D., CMA, CPA; Shahid Ansari, Ph.D.; Jan Bell, Ph.D., CPA; and Il-woon Kim, Ph.D.
The Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing-International (CAM-I), the AICPA, and the University of Akron recently sponsored a major study to benchmark best practices in target costing. The authors present the results and highlight practices at four top companies: Boeing, Caterpillar, DaimlerChrysler, and Continental Teves.

The Role of Strategy and Culture in the Performance Evaluation of International Strategic Business Units
By Priscilla O’Clock, Ph.D., CPA, and Kevin Devine, Ph.D.
When designing a management control system for an overseas strategic business unit (SBU), companies need to consider the joint impact of that country’s culture and strategy to help ensure the SBU’s managers make decisions that are aligned with corporate objectives.

Applied Learning in Graduate Business Education
By Hector A. Quintanilla, Ph.D., CPA, and J. Lee Whittington, Ph.D.
Faculty, students, and industry professionals can benefit from working together on real-world projects outside the classroom. Here is a guide to such projects and highlights from projects conducted by Texas Wesleyan University.