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Standards for products and procedures shape every facet of contemporary American life. Yet despite their pervasivenes and their centrality to the process of rationalization, standards have been virtually ignored by sociologists. This paper argues that the evolution of standards promulgating organizations and their struggle for control of the standards-making process is a neglected feature of societal rationalization. Specifically, the history of ANSI and other standards-making organizations illustrates how a shift in the engine of organizational rationalization may have taken place and how, as part of that shift, the "power to set premises" was successfully claimed by the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies indicate that about one-third of Korean immigrant families in the United States are engaged in small business. This paper attempts to explain why such a large proportion of Korean immigrants turn to small business. The data are based on personal interviews with 159 randomly selected Korean businessmen in Atlanta. The data analysis shows that neither Korean immigrants' sojourning orientation nor their perception of host discrimination is an important factor in their decision to start a business. It instead indicates that Korean immigrants' perception of disadvantages in nonbusiness occupations, their sense of status inconsistency, and their anticipation of economic mobility through business are three major factors which lead them to small business. The findings are theoretically important since neither the concept of status inconsistency nor that of mobility has been applied to minority small business, while sojourning and host discrimination have been emphasized as explanatory variables for minority members' entry into small business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]