NASA - Organizational Change
A review of the external and internal threats will help determine the weakness of the problem analysis related to the launching of space shuttle Challenger. At the time of the accident, the country was experiencing an economic slowdown. Considering the economic climate, Congress wanted to know if the American people still support the huge requirements of the program. The government ruled out increase in taxes being an election year. Simultaneous to the congressional investigation was a launch of space shuttle Challenger. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) wanted a successful launch. A no-launch situation might convince Congress to slash the program’s budget. Furthermore, Americans were anticipating the first female astronaut-teacher crewmember. Internally, NASA undertook cost-cutting measures and approved the use of materials approved by sister industries. At the time of the launch, engineers expressed concern over two factors: a) The o-ring which is not designed to operate at the existing temperature of -32 degrees Fahrenheit; b) There was a question on the stability and predictability of engine propulsion.
Given the above problem considerations, NASA formulated two alternative decisions: launch now or wait for better weather conditions.
NASA was faced with decision traps, the framing trap and the confirming evidence trap (Langlois, H, 2007). Unfortunately, it was not able to identify and cope with them. NASA management argued a successful launch would guarantee congressional budget approval (framing trap). There was a presumption the launch will be successful, as previous launches before. This line of thinking blocked the consideration of safety factors....
... middle of paper ...
...fast forward, information will play a key part in the survival of organizations. It is essential that organizations have the capacity to learn as an organization so that new knowledge can be acquired, adopted and used.
Reference
CARALLI, R. 2006. Sustaining operational resiliency: A process improvement approach to security management. Networked systems survivability program, CERT coordination center. Available: http://www.cert.org/archive/pdf/sustainoperresil0604.pdf [7 January 2008].
LANGLOIS, H. 2007. The challenge of changing, part II. Massachusetts: Cambridge [Course notes.] Available: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic203996.files/Challenge_in_Changing092507B.ppt [January 8, 2008].
MCSHANE, S.L., VON GLINOW, M.A. 2005. Organizational behavior: Emerging realities for the workplace revolution, 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Education (Asia).
Before going any further with this paper, I would like to take a moment to thank the crew of the space shuttle challenger for their bravery, courage, determinations and and sacrifice for this great nation. Francis R. Scobee (2), Commander, Michael J. Smith (1), Pilot Judith A. Resnik (2), Mission Specialist 1, Ellison S. Onizuka (2), Mission Specialist 2, Ronald E. McNair (2), Mission Specialist 3, Gregory B. Jarvis (1), Payload Specialist 1, Sharon Christa McAuliffe (1), Payload Specialist 2 (science.ksc), were parents, friends, children, husbands and wives, heroes, smart human being that were killed on this tragic day. May God be with your soul and may your memories and courage and passion shall not be forgotten but instead drive future generation determination and passion. The crash of the space shuttle
Even though there were many factors contributing to the Challenger disaster, the most important issue was the lack of an effective risk management plan. The factors leading to the Challenger disaster are:
Collins and Pinch draw a distinctive line between what actually happened and the public’s perspective on what happened. The public had a compulsive desire to create a moral lesson and provide heroes and villains. Many people misconstrued this as a conflict between the knowledgeable engineers and the greedy management. The public believed that NASA and Thiokol’s managers were ignorant to the engineering, but this is not true, since they were all engineers before their promotion to management. The authors stress the phrase “after the event” to show that hindsight bias is contributing to the public’s view on what actually happened. The physicist, Richard Feynman, awed the public with a demonstration of putting rubber, the material of the O-ring, in icy water. Th...
It’s very hard to say what steps, if any, could have been taken to prevent the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster from occurring. When mankind continues to “push the envelope” in the interest of bettering humanity, there will always be risks. In the manned spaceflight business, we have always had to live with trade-offs. All programs do not carry equal risk nor do they offer the same benefits. The acceptable risk for a given program or operation should be worth the potential benefits to be gained. The goal should be a management system that puts safety first, but not safety at any price. As of Sept 7th, 2003, NASA has ordered extensive factory inspections of wing panels between flights that could add as much as three months to the time it takes to prepare a space shuttle orbiter for launch. NASA does all it can to safely bring its astronauts back to earth, but as stated earlier, risks are expected.
McShane, S. and Von Glinow, M. (2012). Organizational Behavior: Emerging Knowledge, Global Reality. 6th ed. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, pp.103 - 131.
Two tragic incidents, the Challenger Space Shuttle crash of 1986, and the Three Mile Island near meltdown of 1979, have greatly devastated our nation. Both these disasters involved failures of communication among ordinary professional people, working in largely bureaucratic companies. Two memos called the “Smoking Gun Memos,” authored by R. M. Boisjoly, of Morton Thiokol, and D. F. Hallman, of Babcook and Wilcox, will always be associated these two incidents. Unfortunately, neither of these memos were successful in preventing the accidents of the Challenger and the Three Mile Island near meltdown.
Organizations operate in a turbulent environment that forces them to change even against their will to do so. Every organization has a fair prediction of its future that is why they all spend time and resources to put in place strategic plans. More often they get challenged not to follow these plans because they fail to appreciate that change is a natural phenomenon which is intimately entwined with continuity and that change-continuity continuum is what defines organ...
Langton, Nancy, Stephen Robbins, and Timothy Judge.Organizational Behaviour: Concepts, Controversies, Applications. Fifth Canadian Edition. Toronto: Pearson Canada, 2009. 141, 574-84. Print.
The National Academies Press (2012) NASA’s Strategic Direction and Need for a National Consensus retrieved from http//www.npa.edu/openbook.php?record_id=18248&
In both cases, it was an acceptable business risk to proceed at caution by upper management. So the engineers and managers in lower positions took that as law (with a few objectors). These objectors later gained fame due to the catastrophes. Upper management has taken on a mindset of wanting to see proof of failure. When the engineers could not come up with proof, their concerns were dismissed as not creditable. Perhaps a program that allows workers to protest and not work in a chilled work environment would have given those engineers the voice they needed to cause NASA to take a second look at both shuttles prior to launch.
Kinicki, A., & Kreitner, R. (2009). Organizational behavior: Key concepts, skills and best practices (customized 4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Van de Ven, A.H. and Poole, M.S. (1995) defined “Change” as a type of event, which is an empirical observation of difference in form, quality, or stat over time in an organisational entity. The entity may be an ...
McShane, S.L., Olekalns, M. & Travaglione, A. 2013, Organizational Behavior: Emerging Knowledge, Global Insights 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, Sydney.
...fault with NASA’s top-down design and testing methods, “was designed and put together all at once with relatively little detailed preliminary study of the material and components. Then when troubles are found…, it is more expensive and difficult to discover the causes and make changes.…[A] simple fix…may be impossible to implement without a redesign of the entire engine.” The outcome of this simple issue as we all are aware could have saved billions on the project if time for safety was taken. Instead of the top down approach wouldn’t the outcome been a significantly less expense if we used a bottom-up approach. When we think of safety is there a reason to worry about price with the thoughts of the Challenger incident in mind. Safety has always been a part of the working community not only in aviation but throughout all industry. Aviation being the background of
Robbins et al. (2011, p. 186), states ‘Change is an organizational reality and affects every part of a manager’s job’. Today’s wave of change primarily created by economic condition so change is now such a constant feature of organization life (Goodman, E. 2011, p.243). Organizations need to be changed at one point or another in structure, technology or people. These changes are defined as organizational change (Robbins et al. 2011, p.18). Organizational change is important because changes can increase effectiveness and efficiency, the innovation of products, services as well as dealing with changes in external and internal forces (Goodman, E. 2011, p.243). However, ‘the bottom line is that organizational change is difficult because management systems are design and people are rewarded for stability’ (Lawler, E.E. & Worley, C.G. 2006, p.11).