Our data collection process consisted of two steps.

The first step was selecting a sample of cities from which to

collect
information on joint venture agreements and the factors that are expected to influence their establishment. Three
criteria were used to select the MSAs from which a sample of local governments would be surveyed. First, MSAs
were selected from the 56 MSAs with a 2000 population of at least 1 mil-lion and less than approximately 5
million. The Los Angeles and New York MSAs were excluded because of their very large central cities (3.7 and
8.0 million, respectively). Second, MSAs were then grouped into the four census regions (Northeast, Midwest,
South, and West).
Third, in each of the four census regions, at least one MSA with an unemploy-ment rate below the census region
average and one with an unemployment rate higher than the census region average were selected. Twelve
metropolitan areas were selected through this process (see Table 2).
Our second step in the data collection process consisted of mailing a survey to the economic development directors of
cities with at least 10,000 residents in each of the metropoli-tan areas. If a city did not identify an economic
development director, or did not have an economic development office, the survey was mailed to the chief
elected/appointed official. The survey listed a series of questions on current efforts to promote development and
collaborative activities with gov-ernment and nongovernment organizations within the metro-politan area. Of the 425
local governments that were mailed the survey, 206 (48.5%) surveys were returned
We developed the structure of policy networks in each of the 12 metropolitan areas through a “snowball survey”
pro-cess. This was done to develop measures of the network of relations among local economic development
administrators and other government and nongovernment organizations within the MSAs. Survey respondents
were asked to identify “the top three government or nongovernment organizations that you have relied on the
most when carrying out your city’s economic development activities during the past year.” We then contacted
each organization listed by the respondent and asked the same question. This snowball survey process was
repeated three times and resulted in a total of 277 orga-nizations engaged in economic development across the 12
MSAs
Analyses were run using both versions of the SES variable, separatelyAs the significance patterns of these
analyses were the same, we report the results from models that use the streetblock-level SES variable created by
Weisburd et al. (2012)
Workers are not simply ranked according to their competency and contribution scores; rather, this
ranking is intended to measure overall value to the organization, accounting for previous performance
and future potential. Although no established guidelines dictate how finely managers should distinguish
workers, these sessions typically create ‘‘buckets’’ of employees; a group of 100 employees may not
be ranked from 1 to 100, but the top five employees may receive a 1, the next ten a 2, the next 25 a 3,
and so on
Accordingly, this study utilized IDJ lists of AACSB-accredited business schools to assess the quality of business
ethics journals. The project pro-gressed through two phases. In the first phase, journals were identified as being
potential outlets for business ethics articles, and the relative standing of these journals was then determined. In
the second phase, the potential busi-ness ethics journals from the first phase were subjected to further assessment
to establish a set of business-ethics-centric (BEC) journals whose primary focus is on the field of business ethics.
These journals were then ranked. Following an overview of the sources of data used in the study, the methodol-
ogy and results from both phases are presented.