While an extensive body of research exists regarding the delivery of course knowledge and material, much less attention has been paid to the performance effect of seating position within a classroom. Research findings are mixed as to whether students in the front row of a classroom outperform students in the back row. Another issue that has not been fully examined in higher education is the effect of environmental factors, specifically seating type, on student performance. This study examines the impact of both factors-seating location and seating type-on overall performance. Data were collected over a 10-year period from 1,138 undergraduate senior business students during their capstone course. The findings suggest that student performance is not significantly altered by seating location or seating type.

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PurposeThis paper seeks to develop an ontological approach, in order to make it possible to share a common understanding of accounting theory, in this case, the specific structure of the profit and loss account among people or software agents.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents an ontology methodology (the Net technique) which represents a semi‐structured element in the domain knowledge of accounting. More specifically, ontology will be used to explain the profit and loss account as a representation of the potential use of this methodology.FindingsTo support ontology effectively, a strong accounting information support system in the organization is necessary. The ontology may be used by employees to navigate the information repository of an organization for the effective coordination. In addition, it might be possible for the WWW to be used to generate data, information and knowledge in the accounting domain.Practical implicationsSoftware agents could extract and aggregate accounting information from numerous web sites, which in turn might answer research questions or be used as input data for other applications.Originality/valueThe development of ontology expands the researcher's ability to generate information by using search methods beyond simple keywords. If only keywords are used in internet searches, then information that is retrieved will often lack the precision necessary for generating quality information. Therefore, in order to retrieve quality information more quickly and accurately, a broader and more extensive ontology development is required.

This study examines marketing planning styles among a sample of organizations in the health care industry. A taxonomy of marketing planning styles—limited marketing planners, constituency-oriented marketing planners, and comprehensive marketing planners—is derived and then related to the literature on planning. Differences among the marketing planning styles are tested based on hypotheses relating to planning comprehensiveness. The results suggest that: (i) marketing planning styles differ fairly distinctly in their attention to selected elements of the environment; and (ii) the marketing planning style employed is related to the level of competition and to organization size and complexity.

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