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Caring Steel Company was a major producer of advanced state-of-the-art aircraft radars. The company had always been able to design and build the best equipment that the industry could offer, but it had always operated under defense cost reimbursement contracts. When it started a commercial division to supply civilian airports with similar equipment, it consistently lost money. Lief Gilder had called Hank Heisenberg, Mike Johnson, and Marvin Swerley to a meeting in his office to try to find out why the performance of the commercial products was so poor. The time was 8:30 A.M. in Lief’s office.

International Chemicals, Inc., was a major supplier of industrial chemicals and for many years had operated an internal applied research and development (R&D) group that was closely associated with the marketing branch. Whenever a customer had a particular problem, that customer would call the local salesman, who in turn would contact the marketing group. This group would then get the problem defined and bring it back to corporate headquarters for the engineers, scientists, and technicians to solve.

From Machiavelli to modern times, the conundrum of leadership has tantalized the human intellect. Philosophers and researchers have approached the leadership question from varied perspectives, often reaching discrepant conclusions. Despite its generally elusive character, two qualities of effective organizational leadership emerge with considerable consistency:1 task orientation and people orientation.

Recently the organizational behavioral ramifications of management accounting and information systems have come under the scrutiny of both practitioners and academics in this field. Some evidence is surfacing to suggest that accounting systems have been creating effects within organizations we had not bargained for. Our systems, it seems, are not always embraced warmly by organizational participants; and the magnitude of the unintended negative consequences is alarming.