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As part of an integrative model of leadership, transformational (versus transactional) styles are proposed to be related to subordinates' motivation and commitment to quality, the strength of empowering norms at the subunit level, and organizational productivity. Transformational and transactional styles also are proposed to be related to the self‐image of leaders. Hypotheses are tested in a military setting, the United States Army Recruiting Command, through the use of survey data provided by mid‐level leaders, station commanders, and recruiters. Data are supplemented by direct measures of subunit productivity. Results support some, but not all, of the proposed hypotheses. Implications for research and practice are presented, along with limitations of the research.

The purpose of this article is to reveal the reasons for pilot error. Surveys in aviation have attributed 70 percent of incidents to crew error, citing pilot error as the root cause of an aviation accident.

Uses ANT, a theoretical perspective, that has evolved to address the socio‐technical domain and in so doing reveals the “social” as defined by Latour. This perspective challenges the way that agency, the human and non‐human are conceptualised. In this work, complexity theory is used as an integrating concept to complement ANT thereby providing an explanatory framework (with particular emphasis on interrelationship) that enhances understanding regarding the accident aetiology of complex systems and the “social”.

The hegemony of “pilot error” is dispelled revealing a de‐centered causality that is resident within a network space “worldview”.

The network space “worldview” reflects the nonlinearity and complexity inherent within accident aetiology involving complex socio‐technical systems. It reveals how politics and power “inscripted” within the network actors interrelate, and in particular shape situation awareness challenging the hegemony of “blamism” that is associated with “pilot error”.

The paper moves beyond a Newtonian‐Cartesian worldview of accident aetiology to embrace a “relativistic” perspective characterized by nonlinear dynamics, emergent properties and complex interrelationships.

The emergence of “black swans” represents (according to Taleb) “[…] our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises”. The purpose of this paper is to study accidents and disasters and the inherent misunderstanding and absence of awareness associated with the existence of black swans and their complex aetiology. Red teaming and scenario planning provide a methodology to explore the uncertainties and challenge of the mental models associated with accident and disaster aetiology.

The argument draws upon the successful application of red teaming and scenario planning in various domains noted in the literature and lessons learned from the failure to recognize black swans. An analysis of the literature illustrates how the salient characteristics of red teaming and scenario planning can be applied to the illumination of black swans to support risk, crisis and disaster management.

Recognizing the uncertainty resident within the safety and security problem space opens up the notion that more than one future is potentially open. It is argued that the inherent properties of red teaming, within the context of scenario planning, facilitates an effective approach to bring risk, crisis and disaster planners/managers together to discuss their concerns and explore the factors creating uncertainty and the emergence of black swans.

The value of red teaming (scenario planning) to challenge linear thinking and recognize the inherent uncertainty in the space of possibilities is well supported. Applied to the risk, crisis and disaster management domain, red teaming and scenario planning can provide insights into the emergence of black swans and thereby shape mitigation strategies.

Maintaining a high level of situation awareness (SA) is considered one of the most essential elements for safe and effective flight operations. In a study of accidents among major air carriers, 88 per cent of those involving human error could be attributed to problems with SA. In complex domains such as aviation, SA is inherently distributed over multiple people and groups and over human and machine agents. The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative perspective to the hegemony of the cognitive approach to SA that focuses on the systemic nature of SA.

An alternative approach to the hegemony of the cognitive perspective of SA has been presented, that focuses on a systemic or holistic conceptualisation of SA through the application of Somerville's actor network theory (ANT). By advocating a seamless web composed of actors, the actor network approach dissolves the dichotomous relationship between humans and machines and society and technology into a non‐anthropocentric framework. This paper further develops this systemic perspective of SA through an analysis of the tragic 2002 mid‐air collision over Überlingen, Germany case study.

The application of ANT to this case study brings to light some insights with wide ranging consequences for how we think of SA and accident aetiology.

The systemic perspective of SA has far‐reaching design implications with regard to complex socio‐technical systems.

This paper facilitates the perspective that looks at the inter‐connectedness of the heterogeneous elements characterized by the technological and non‐technological (human, social, organizational, political) elements of complex socio‐technical systems.

Military operations today more than ever are carried out by large coalitions, usually distributed between several organisations and often separated by substantial temporal and spatial scales. To facilitate such military operations, network‐centric warfare is often cited as the panacea of command and control, possessing the characteristics of elevated speed of command, high levels of self‐synchronisation and shared situational awareness. A nation's ability to respond to infectious diseases resulting from an act of bioterrorism or naturally occurring pathogens depends on a framework that supports operations by a large number of distributed organisations facing inherent temporal and spatial challenges. The effects of infectious diseases, whether intentionally inflicted or naturally occurring, can threaten a nation's security. Syndromic surveillance is a detection methodology that encompasses systematic collection, analysis, interpretation and application of real‐time indicators for disease and outbreaks. This paper introduces the NCW paradigm and highlights the inherent characteristics that would facilitate syndromic surveillance in support of an expedient public health response in the event of a bioterrorist attack.

Human error is often cited as a major contributing factor or cause of incidents and accidents. Incident surveys in aviation have attributed 70 per cent of incidents to crew error. Although a large proportion of the accidents can be attributed to human error, Reason proposes a view that many accidents are catalyzed by persons not present at the time of the event. In fact, it is this source of latent conditions that pose a most significant threat to the safety of complex systems. Another dimension to human error in aviation are the active errors that can precipitate the alignment or trigger the latent conditions. The risk associated with aviation is a dynamic element that is affected by both latent conditions and situational factors. This dynamic nature is presented here using the cusp model from catastrophe theory. Using Reason’s latent failure model, the descriptive and predictive nature of the cusp model works as a map to illustrate the nature of aviation accidents in terms of “instability” resulting from the alignment of latent conditions and influence of active errors. The SwissAir 111 tragedy of 2 September 1998 is used as a case study to illustrate this model.

As South Africa (SA) increasingly becomes overwhelmed by natural disasters, understanding disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies, institutions, processes and practices and their effects on disaster risk management (DRM) are incumbent The study reviews and empirically analyses policies, institutional frameworks and processes for disaster management in SA. Content analysis is applied to review topical secondary data, while a structured questionnaire informed by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is used to collect quantitative data from a random sample of 228 disaster policy actors from five disaster-stricken metropolitan cities in five provinces in SA, namely North-West, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga. Empirical data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. Research findings reveal that SA is endowed with rich institutional policy and legal frameworks for DRM, based on the concepts of decentralisation and stakeholder participation. A positive and strong correlation between institutional framework, disaster risk identification and prioritisation, knowledge creation and management (KCM) as well as the disaster governance and DRM in SA (p = 0.000). Although the coefficient of KCM is not statistically significant, DRM behaviour was influenced at 87.2% by all four variables. Based on the recent disaster experiences and the above results, we advocate for DRR to be continuously prioritised at national and decentralised levels, to enhance effective preparedness, mitigation, disaster response and resilience building practices in SA.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has approved for publication a Supplementary Report presented to the Food Standards Committee by their Preservatives Sub‐Committee, making recommendations about the use of colouring matters in foods. An earlier Report on this subject by the Sub‐Committee was published in January, 1955. The main recommendation in that Report was that the Public Health (Preservatives, etc., in Food) Regulations, 1925–1953, should be amended so as to permit the use in foods of specified colours only. The present position under the Preservatives Regulations is that, with a few specified exceptions, the addition of any colouring matters to articles of food is permitted.

A thermal analogy method for the static and dynamic analysis of an electrostrictive beam by incorporating the nonlinear characteristics of the electrostrictive materials is described in this paper. The analogy between thermo elastic finite element formulation and the electrostrictive material finite element formulation developed in this paper was explored. Based on this analogy, the voltage actuation of the electrostrictive beam can be simulated accurately using the conventional elastic finite element model with the thermal actuation. The finite element model includes the quadratic dependence of strain with electric field, valid at constant temperature and mechanical prestress, and excludes hysteresis.

Times are indeed a‐changing. Once, the night‐owl, roistering the hours of darkness away, could claim that he “came home with the milk!”, but not any more.