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Graziadio Business Review Debuts New Issue

The latest issue of the Graziadio Business Review, the scholarly online journal of the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University, is now live at GBR.pepperdine.edu. This issue features a mix of articles, a video interview, and book reviews by Graziadio faculty and authors new to the GBR.

The topics cover creating brand advocates, the U.S. financial crisis and unemployment, and secondary meaning in trademark and trade dress law. Also included is a video interview with George Westerman, a research scientist at MIT's Center for Digital Business. The GBR blog will be rolling out podcast interviews with each of the authors on their research.

A Look Inside This Issue

The recent debt crisis in the United States did not raise confidence for creditors, and certainly not for Wall Street traders. Authors Donald M. Atwater and Neha Kotwani warn that the nation's unemployment numbers may suffer too. In their article, "Labor Pains: The Recovery of the U.S. Labor Market is about to be Pushed Back," they advise that the economic recovery cycle may take up to seven years rather than four or five if projected decreases in public sector employment become a reality.

Michael Crooke, a former CEO of prAna LLC, Revolution Living, and Patagonia, along with Craig Wilson, a loyalty architect and brand innovator, provide brand managers the tools to assure brand advocacy among their target audience in "Creating Advocates: A Values-Oriented Approach to Developing Brand Loyalty."

"Protecting Descriptive Brands in Trademark and Trade Dress Law: Why it's Important and How to Do It" is the final installment in a series of three articles on trademark and trade dress law written by the cross-disciplinary team of David Scalise, Alexa Koenig, and Brandon Carr. Scalise is a tenured full professor at the University of San Francisco; Koenig is a civil and human rights attorney and a PhD candidate in jurisprudence and social policy at the University of California, Berkeley; and Carr is a third-year law student at UC Hastings College of the Law, a member of the Board of Editors of the Hastings Law Journal and currently serves as the senior development editor.

"Leveraging Action Learning as a Talent Management Strategy during Economic Uncertainty" by Kevin S. Groves, and Jerald L. Monson, provides an overview of the "action learning" model. They posit that when economic times are tough, action learning can be the answer to developing high-potential employees into the leaders of tomorrow.

This issue also includes several great book reviews written by Graziadio faculty. Titles include Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin; Buy-in by John P. Kotter and Lorne A. Whitehead; and The Secret by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller.

Don't have time to read the articles? Each offers an audio version, which you can download from the media player located at the top of each article and upload them to an iPod or mp3 player.

For more information, contact the GBR editors at GBR@pepperdine.edu.