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A reliability analysis of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system is presented for applications with strict constant power supply requirements, such as data centers. The purpose is to demonstrate the effect when moving from a module-level to a system-level in terms of reliability, also considering effects during start-up and degradation.

In-house experimental data on a system-level are used to capture the behavior during start-up and normal operation, including drifts of the operation point due to degradation. The system is assumed to allow replacement of stacks during operation, but a minimum number of stacks in operation is needed to avoid complete shutdown. Experimental data are used in conjunction with a physics-based performance model to construct the failure probability function. A dynamic program then solves the optimization problem in terms of time and replacement requirements to minimize the total negative deviation from a given target reliability.

Results show that multi-stack SOFC systems face challenges which are only revealed on a system- and not on a module-level. The main finding is that the reliability of multi-stack SOFC systems is not sufficient to serve as sole power source for critical applications such as data center.

The principal methodology may be applicable to other modular systems which include multiple critical components (of the same kind). These systems comprise other electrochemical systems such as further fuel cell types.

The novelty of this work is the combination of mathematical modeling to solve a real-world problem, rather than assuming idealized input which lead to more benign system conditions. Furthermore, the necessity to use a mathematical model, which captures sufficient physics of the SOFC system as well as stochasticity elements of its environment, is of critical importance. Some simplifications are, however, necessary because the use of a detailed model directly in the dynamic program would have led to a combinatorial explosion of the numerical solution space.

The legend of Porsche Chief Executive Peter Schutz pacing the pits at Le Mans with tears in his eyes after a motor racing success is very much the stuff corporate cultures are reared from.

To provide an informative and stimulating view of some key issues in interdepartmental conflict.

Based on the first study in the German‐speaking world, of the impact of interdepartmental conflict, in the period 2002‐2003, 300 enterprises participated. Respondents were at all levels of business hierarchy and all sizes of enterprise and ranged from junior manager to chairman and from the smallest firms to global market leaders.

Several conclusions: it is a common illusion that an enterprise is one big happy family. It is a mixture of groups and people with aims, perceptions and preferences which can easily and frequently conflict with one another. This is clearly a major and often underestimated source of stress, demotivation and inefficiency.

Demonstrates ways of using conflict productively. The first step is a self‐critical appraisal of one's own role in terms of interdepartmental cooperation. The next step of self‐reflection entails the reader coming to terms with any possible prejudices he/she may have towards other departments. These stereotypes form and colour behaviour at departmental interfaces and frequently become self‐fulfilling prophecies. A limitation of the study is that small firms with up to ten employees were not included.

The paper offers many new insights through the survey and primary research on which it is based. Also, the German experience is highly relevant to the UK and USA, while at the same time, providing some useful bases for cross‐cultural comparison.

The idea of “leadership” has occupied an important position in the study of management, so that text‐books on organisational behaviour routinely allocate a chapter to discussion about it. It is invariably handled by recourse to a review of the major schools of thought and empirical findings associated with the concept. More specifically, writers of such texts are typically concerned with those aspects of leadership studies which have focused on its possible linkage with various indicators of performance or effectiveness. In addressing such issues, such writers focus on whether it is possible to isolate the personal characteristics of the effective leader, and whether it is possible to discern effective leadership styles.

This paper discusses Frank H. Knight's thought under three major themes, namely subjectivism, interpretation and social economics. Knight's economics starts with a conscious mind construct which is able to infer under partial knowledge. Conscious human action is purposive, forward looking and extends towards other individuals. Rejecting neoclassical positivism, Knight points to the need for economics to reconceptualize itself as an interpretative study, a methodology in the Weberian tradition. Furthermore, his allure for phenomenological economics opens a methodological possibility for the Austrian School of Economics. This paper concludes that Knight's insight earns himself a place in the history of subjectivist economics.

This articles provides a managerial framework to examine and analyse factors that may influence government decision making in less developed countries. In order to market successfully to these buyers, a series of hurdles has to be cleared. These include meeting eligibility, following procedures, establishing critical linkages, developing competitive offers and exerting appropriate influence. International firms can enhance their success and profits by taking a serious, long‐term approach to these markets.

While the strategic planning process of leaders is well understood, firms in lower market share ranks tend to have a planning process of a follower. Instead of trying to influence their environment, they normally copy the strategies of the industry leader or even serve niches neglected by the leader. Outlines, through numerous examples, the changes followers can make in their competitive profiles to become alternative leaders. The smaller firms may thrive serving a limited demand which would normally be unattractive to the leading firms; the larger company could do well by concentrating on products for market niches that are neglected by the industry leaders. Discusses several implications for small as well as large firms which wish to be followers in their industry. Also examines approaches to attaining long‐term economic viability such as forge linkages, protective factors, geographical parameters, personnel policies, product offerings, customer selection, purchasing, production and marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the US society’s insignificant mitigation of climate change using Niklas Luhmann’s (1989) autopoietic social systems theory in ecological communication. Specifically, the author’s analysis falls within the context of Luhmann re-moralized while focusing on particular function systems’ binary codes and their repellence of substantive US climate change mitigation policy across systems.

The author achieves this purpose by resituating Luhmann’s conception of evolution to forgo systems teleology and better contextualize the spatial-temporal scale of climate change; reinforcing complexity reduction and differentiation by integrating communication and media scholar John D. Peters’s (1999) “communication chasm” concept as one mechanism through which codes sustain over time; and applying these integrated concepts to prominent the US climate change mitigation attempts.

The author concludes that climate change mitigation efforts are the amalgamation of the systems’ moral communications. Mitigation efforts have relegated themselves to subsystems of the ten major systems given the polarizing nature of their predominant care/harm moral binary. Communication chasms persist because these moral communications cannot both adhere to the systems’ binary codes and communicate the climate crisis’s urgency. The more time that passes, the more codes force mitigation organizations, activist efforts and their moral communications to adapt and sacrifice their actions to align with the encircling systems’ code.

In addition to the conceptual contribution, the social implication is that by identifying how and why climate change mitigation efforts are subsumed by the larger systems and their codes, climate change activists and practitioners can better tool their tactics to change the codes at the heart of the systems if serious and substantive climate change mitigation is to prevail.

To the author’s knowledge, there has not been an integration of a historical communication concept into, and sociological application of, ecological communication in the context of climate change mitigation.

The paper seeks to understand the formation of mutual knowledge in the online world using the phenomenological framework that Alfred Schutz and his associates constructed for the examination of the lifeworld.

This study consists of three parts: reviewing Schutz's theory of the constitution of intersubjectivity in the lifeworld; extending Schutz's analysis to the acquisition of mutual knowledge in the online world; and applying the extended version of Schutz's theory to the booming blogosphere on the internet.

Schutz divided the contemporaneous lifeworld into two realms – consociates and mere contemporaries. Schutz maintained that people came to know one another based on shared life experiences through “growing older together” in the realm of consociates and based on objectified schemes of interpretation through “ideal typification” in the realm of mere contemporaries. This article extends Schutz's analysis to human interaction on the internet, showing that in the emergent online world people become mutually familiar based on the biographic narratives they recount to one another through self‐disclosure. Mutual knowledge obtained online also contributes to the total stock of knowledge people come to accumulate in an increasingly distanciated lifeworld.

This article argues that the spread of the internet has changed the structure of the lifeworld Schutz depicted, and such changes have produced ways of getting to know others that were previously impossible. In light of those changes, this article seeks to update Schutz's theory of mutual knowledge.