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Current Army doctrine stresses a need for military leaders to have the capability to make flexible and adaptive decisions based on a future unknown environment, location and enemy. To assess a military decision maker’s ability in this context, this paper aims to modify the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test which assesses cognitive flexibility, into a military relevant map task. Thirty-four military officers from all service branches completed the map task.

The purpose of this study was to modify a current psychological task that measures cognitive flexibility into a military relevant task that includes the challenge of overcoming experiential bias, and understand underlying causes of individual variability in the decision-making and cognitive flexibility behavior of active duty military officers on this task.

Results indicated that non-perseverative errors were a strong predictor of cognitive flexibility performance on the map task. Decomposition of non-perseverative error into efficient errors and random errors revealed that participants who did not complete the map task changed their sorting strategy too soon within a series, resulting in a high quantity of random errors.

This study serves as the first step in customizing cognitive psychological tests for a military purpose and understanding why some military participants show poor cognitive flexibility.

Forecasting the number of bed days (NBD) needed within a large hospital network is extremely challenging, but it is imperative that management find a predictive model that best estimates the calculation. This estimate is used by operational managers for logistical planning purposes. Furthermore, the finance staff of a hospital would require an expected NBD as input for estimating future expenses. Some hospital reimbursement contracts are on a per diem schedule, and expected NBD is useful in forecasting future revenue.

This chapter examines two ways of estimating the NBD for a large hospital system, and it builds from previous work comparing time regression and an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA). The two approaches discussed in this chapter examine whether using the total or combined NBD for all the data is a better predictor than partitioning the data by different types of services. The four partitions are medical, maternity, surgery, and psychology. The partitioned time series would then be used to forecast future NBD by each type of service, but one could also sum the partitioned predictors for an alternative total forecaster. The question is whether one of these two approaches outperforms the other with a best fit for forecasting the NBD. The approaches presented in this chapter can be applied to a variety of time series data for business forecasting when a large database of information can be partitioned into smaller segments.

Competitive advantage in the service industry is achieved through superior customer service. This paper looks at the ways in which IT is being used to support superior quality customer service initiatives in the highly competitive Australian banking industry. The extent to which the need to improve service quality influences IT planning and purchases, and shifts in the level of influence over recent years, are detailed. The link between IT‐supported quality customer service improvements and organisational performance is then discussed.

Although dependence of contact surface temperatures between rough sliding bodies on surface topography is more explicitly described in terms of three‐dimensional (3D) topographic parameters, no work has yet been reported on this aspect. The paper seeks to carry out experiments to systematically correlate the 3D surface parameters to the contact temperature rise.

The surface temperatures at the contact between a relatively smooth zinc sulphide pin held against a rotating mild steel disc of varying surface topography were measured using an infrared thermal imaging system under different load and sliding velocity conditions. The main objective was to study the effect of 3D surface roughness parameters on the contact temperature rise.

The results indicate a rise in maximum contact temperature with the increase in a number of 3D parameters, such as, average surface roughness Sa, ten‐point height parameter Sz, skewness of the surface height distribution Ssk, mean summit curvature Ssc, and developed interfacial area ratio parameter Sdr while temperature was found to decrease with increasing values of another set of parameters, such as, kurtosis of the 3D surface texture Sku, summit density of the surface Sds, surface bearing index Sbi, core fluid retention index Sci, valley fluid retention index Svi, and root mean square slope of the surface Sdq.

In any sliding system, with mixed or boundary lubricated conditions, it can be attempted to find the optimum value of the roughness parameters so that on suitable processing of the surfaces a lower contact temperature rise can be achieved.

No work has yet been reported on the effect of 3D roughness parameters on contact temperature.

Drawing on methods and metaphors from complexity science and organizational systematics, this chapter outlines a model for bringing about positive organizational transformation through the alignment of strategy, culture, and social networks. A key concept behind this model is that uncertainty and volatility arising from within or outside an organization must be met with purposeful and informed leadership intervention. The act of organizational alignment must become a core skill for the modern manager. Finally, the process and outcomes of taking such an approach to organizational change are illustrated through a case example.

This paper examines the influence of corporate culture and organisational commitment on financial performance in Malaysian companies. Based on the work of Deshpande and Farley on corporate cultural types and Allen and Meyer on organisational commitment, a structured questionnaire was developed and self‐administered to managers in Malaysian companies. A total of 202 managers in public listed companies participated in the study. The results show that there is a significant correlation between corporate culture and organisational commitment. Both corporate culture type and organisational commitment have an influence on the financial performance of these companies. The implications of the study are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to help boards of directors to find ways of establishing continuity in the strategic plan when strategists are employed on contract leave before the end of the strategic plan period.

The author has conducted research in organisations that have executives on contracts of three to five years, and identifies how strategic plans are negatively affected when executives on contract – especially top management – leave organisations when their contracts ends. Research in organisations has shown that strategic plans usually have longer periods than the contract of the strategist, and contract renewal is sometimes not obvious.

The length of the strategist's contract and the length of the strategic plan have not been taken into account when crafting strategic plans in organisations and appointing executive directors. This scenario has caused a lot of strategy failures.

Ways are provided for boards of directors and organisations to foster a culture of continuity of the strategic plan even when executives leave the organisation unceremoniously or when their contracts end and are not renewed.

This paper gives practical advice from situations in organisations and helps boards of directors to take into account the duration of strategic plans when employing executives.