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This article examines top level management leadership and its impact on organisational excellence. An organisational life cycle model of leadership is developed which posits that top level leadership requirements differ across different stages of an organisation's life cycle. Such requirements are expanded to include not only those with subordinates but those with external stakeholders. We argue that top managers operate from leadership scripts and utilise judgemental heuristics which tend to drive their leader behaviour and make it difficult to change in order to meet the differing life cycle requirements. A number of strategies that can be used to change these scripts and judgemental heuristics as required are discussed.

The literature on charismatic leadership in organizations has neglected the organizational context in which such leadership is embedded. The purpose of this article is to enrich and refine charismatic leadership theory by linking it to its organizational context. We argue that while charismatic leadership principles and processes potentially apply across a wide variety of situations, the emergence and effectiveness of such leadership may be facilitated by some contexts and inhibited by others. We develop and present a series of propositions linking contextual variable to the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leadership. Among the contextual variable we examine are the organizational environment, life-cycle stage, technology, tasks, goals, structure, and culture, as well as the leader’s level in the organization and the circumstances surrounding his or her appointment.

A control‐volume based method for the numerical calculation of axisymmetric incompressible fluid flow and heat transfer is presented. The proposed method extends the staggered grid approach to unstructured triangular meshes. The velocities are stored at the vertices and the edges of a triangle, pressure and temperature are stored at the vertices. Accordingly, velocities are interpolated in a quadratic way, pressure and temperature linearly. The accuracy of the proposed method is examined for a number of different testproblems. Compared to a linear interpolation scheme implemented in the same code, more accurate solutions and smaller computation times are obtained for the proposed quadratic scheme. The method was designed for and is about to be applied to the numerical simulation of crystal growth.

Management controls are the processes and mechanisms managers use to influence the behaviour of individuals and groups towards the organisation’s objectives and goals. Discrete management controls and management control system (MCS) frameworks have been extensively researched, but there is little research on organisation-level MCS types. This study aims to identify organisation-level MCS types.

This study draws on the MCS type literature, the competing values framework and the upper echelons theory to form organisation effectiveness and top management team constructs to characterise firms. Cluster analysis was used to group a sample of 318 firm-years into MCS types.

This study reports a theory-based measurement construct that is initially validated with new empirical data. The authors found from the empirical data four different categories of firms based on the general type of their MCSs labelled clan, adhocracy, market and hierarchy.

This study makes two contributions to the MCS literature. Firstly, it presents a theory-based measurement construct to identify organisational and top management attributes that can be used to classify organisations’ overall MCS types. Secondly, it demonstrates how information from annual reports and other publicly available data sources can be used to identify the overall MCS types of organisations.

This paper describes a framework in developing MIS‐user interfaces to highlight how generic management information systems can be made more useful to managerial decision making. The suggested framework has been implemented in a medium‐sized job shop manufacturing company. Object‐oriented programming technology is used to provide flexible access to information stored by a generic MIS, namely ManuSoft. To improve the usefulness of the MIS, 20 interfacing programs relating to the information requirements at operational, planning and strategic levels have been developed and implemented. For purposes of illustration, three such programs have been described in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to first present the key features of hybrid numerical methods that enable cost-effective simulations of complex thermofluid systems, and then demonstrate the formulation and application of such a method.

A hybrid numerical method is formulated for simulations of a closed-loop thermosyphon operating with slurries of a micro-encapsulated phase-change material suspended in distilled water. The slurries are modeled as homogeneous mixtures, with inputs of effective properties and overall heat-loss coefficients. Combinations of an axisymmetric two-dimensional (2D) control-volume finite-element method and a segmented-quasi-one-dimensional (1D) model are used to achieve cost-effective simulations. Proper matching of the solutions at the interfaces between adjacent axisymmetric 2D and quasi-1D zones is ensured by incorporating and heuristically determining suitable lengths of pre- and post-heating (and also pre- and post-cooling) sections.

In the demonstration problem, which would strictly require full three-dimensional simulations of the fluid flow and heat transfer phenomena, the proposed hybrid 1D/2D numerical method produces results that are in very good agreement with those obtained in a complementary experimental investigation.

The hybrid numerical methods discussed in this paper allow cost-effective computer simulations of complex thermofluid systems. These methods can therefore serve as very useful tools for the design, parametric studies, and optimization of such systems.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to present outcomes of efforts made over the last 20 years to extend the applicability of the Richardson extrapolation procedure to numerical predictions of multidimensional, steady and unsteady, fluid flow and heat transfer phenomena in regular and irregular calculation domains.

Pattern-preserving grid-refinement strategies are proposed for mathematically rigorous generalizations of the Richardson extrapolation procedure for numerical predictions of steady fluid flow and heat transfer, using finite volume methods and structured multidimensional Cartesian grids; and control-volume finite element methods and unstructured two-dimensional planar grids, consisting of three-node triangular elements. Mathematically sound extrapolation procedures are also proposed for numerical solutions of unsteady and boundary-layer-type problems. The applicability of such procedures to numerical solutions of problems with curved boundaries and internal interfaces, and also those based on unstructured grids of general quadrilateral, tetrahedral, or hexahedral elements, is discussed.

Applications to three demonstration problems, with discretizations in the asymptotic regime, showed the following: the apparent orders of accuracy were the same as those of the numerical methods used; and the extrapolated results, measures of error, and a grid convergence index, could be obtained in a smooth and non-oscillatory manner.

Strict or approximate pattern-preserving grid-refinement strategies are used to propose generalized Richardson extrapolation procedures for estimating grid-independent numerical solutions. Such extrapolation procedures play an indispensable role in the verification and validation techniques that are employed to assess the accuracy of numerical predictions which are used for designing, optimizing, virtual prototyping, and certification of thermofluid systems.

In this paper, we present a comparison of linear and exponential interpolation functions for control volume finite element method. The exponential interpolation function is expressed in the elemental local coordinate system whereas the classic linear interpolation function is expressed in the global coordinate system. The comparison is achieved in the case of the Green‐Taylor vortex, a flow from which we know the analytical solution. Firstly, the two functions are applied to a triangular element of the domain to compare the results given by each interpolation function to the exact value. Secondly, these two functions are compared when used to solve the discretized equations over the entire domain.