There are quite a few similarities between the Columbia accident and the Challenger accident. In both cases, self-interest may have been partly an impediment to responsible action by the managers for their image. According to the Impediments to Responsible Action, managers are claimed successful and advance their careers by being associated with promptness and on-schedule flights. Jerry Mason and the other managers sought out this “successful” image by allowing the shuttle to lift off, and in the ill-fated process, doomed the lives of the entire crew and the space shuttle.
One could also argue that Mason’s pressuring to launch the Challenger stemmed from multiple impediments. One of them is fear, this can be visualized as a branched impediment from self-interest as while Jerry Mason sought this successful image, he also feared the unsuccessful image a failure to launch would impose on him. Another is possibly self-deception since Mason probably realized that the shuttle was able to launch previously with insufficient O-rings located on the boosters of the shuttle. The next impediment from this situation is ignorance, or more specifically, microscopic vision. The concerns and uncertainty presented by the engineers to management should have been more alarming and taken into more consideration than it
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For example, fear can also stem from this situation as Mason tried looking successful by securing a contract for Morton-Thiokol, he also feared not being able to obtain the contract for his company. Like the first situation, a form of microscopic vision seems present in regards to the contract. If the launch was successful, Mason and also Morton-Thiokol would have benefited with a good chance of a renewed booster contract with NASA. However the consequences that a failure would have brought was not within Mason’s narrow scope at the
NASA has faced many tragedies during their time; but one can question if two of the tragedies were preventable by changing some critical decisions made by the organization. The investigation board looking at the decisions made for the space shuttle tragedies of the Columbia and Challenger noted that the “loss resulted as much from organizational as from technical failures” (Bolman & Deal, 2008, p. 191). The two space shuttle tragedies were about twenty years apart, they both had technical failures but politics also played a factor in to these two tragedies.
Lack of proper risk management process: NASA was using a simple risk classification system and the methods used were only qualitative. There was a lack of proper technical and quantitative risk management methods that could have helped them identify the risks and eliminate them.
The Challenger disaster of 1986 was a shock felt around the country. During liftoff, the shuttle exploded, creating a fireball in the sky. The seven astronauts on board were killed and the shuttle was obliterated. Immediately after the catastrophe, blame was spread to various people who were in charge of creating the shuttle and the parts of the shuttle itself. The Presidential Commission was decisive in blaming the disaster on a faulty O-ring, used to connect the pieces of the craft. On the other hand, Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, in The Golem at Large, believe that blame cannot be isolated to any person or reason of failure. The authors prove that there are too many factors to decide concretely as to why the Challenger exploded. Collins and Pinch do believe that it was the organizational culture of NASA and Morton Thiokol that allowed the disaster. While NASA and Thiokol were deciding whether to launch, there was not a concrete reason to postpone the mission.
Rodney Rocha is a NASA engineer and co-chair of Debris Assessment Team (DTS). When possibility of wing damage appeared he requested an additional imagery to obtain more information in order to evaluate the damage. This demonstrates that he actually tried to resolve the issue. However, due to absence of clear organizational responsibilities in NASA those images were never received. Since foam issue was there for years and risk for the flights was estimated as low management decided not to proceed with this request. After learning of management decision Rocha wrote an e-mail there he stated that foam damage could carry grave hazard and have to be addressed. At the same time this e-mail was not send to the management team. Organizational culture at NASA could be described as highly bureaucratic with operations under standard procedures only. Low-end employees like Rocha are afraid to bring any safety-related issues to the management due to delay of the mission. They can be punished for bringing “bad news”. This type of relationship makes it impossible for two-way communication between engineers and managers, which are crucial for decision-making in complex env...
Throughout history, there have been many tales of hubris. The grand “hero” of the tale makes an executive decision, often against the counsel of those around him. This decision, of course, leads to some sort of life-altering consequence, which will forever affect the leader and perhaps even teach him a lesson about a poor attitude. Some of these tales are exaggerated fiction, which are created in order to teach readers a lesson about poor attitudes and what they can cause. Yet, from time to time, these tales of hubris are true, and the consequences are real. Such is the case with Royce Oatman. If Royce had been less hubris and more willing to listen to the advice of others, his family would have survived and eventually gone on to live happy and successful lives.
Smith, Patrick. "The Untold Story of the Concorde Disaster." Ask The Pilot. Aerophilia Enterprises, 9 Dec. 2012. Web. 6 Nov. 2013. .
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.
Before we look at the images of managing change that were present in the NASA case study let us review a few of the key events in this case study. The case study for this assignment looks at Challenger and Columbia NASA space shuttle disasters and the commission findings on the disasters/recommendations. Now with a short review of the case study what image(s) of change are present in the case study? From the case study the changes introduced are images of managing. These changes are both management of control and shaping. As NASA recovered from the 1986 Challenger disaster, it used the classic Fayol characterization of management such as planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling to correct from the top-down the issues that had caused the Challenger disaster (Palmer Dunford, Akin, pg.24, 2009). NASA approached the changes that need to be enacted as a result of the Challenger and also the Columbia disasters from the change image of a director. NASA ...
...he firm foresaw the significant probability of harm to firefighters using the training facility and acted to communicate the discovered risks to the government organization awarding them the contract. Communication was essential in persuading the government to address the safety issues because the site met the requirements set forth by law, reducing the perception of risk, and the design choice of replacing jet fuel with liquid propane created the unintended consequence of an increased risk that otherwise may have gone unnoticed if not for the actions of Giffels’ consulting firm. Giffels’ strategy to remain persistent in refusing to complete the contract and highlighting the significant risk his firm discovered proved successful when dealing with a client that at first appeared to have taken a minimalist approach by staying with the minimum requirements of the law.
Alan Mulally’s development as a leader began at childhood and continued late into his career at Boeing. In an interview with scholars Prasada Kaipa and Mark Kriger (2010), Mr. Mulally attr...
Cultivating a taste for failure and chaos Schmidt encourages it: “Please fail very quickly—so that you can try again.. he had praised an executive who made a several-million-dollar blunder: “‘I’m so glad you made this mistake. Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough risk.’”
According to David Abrahams, senior vice-president of Marsh Risk Consulting Practice and an expert in brand risk, there is often a demonstrable link between the way in which a crisis is handled by a company and what happens to that business and its associated brand. 'The way in which any crisis is handled becomes a visible test of management capability,' he says. 'If that crisis arises from a fundamental breach of trust or performance, the compound effect of the bad handling can be devastating.'
The code says that engineers should always be aware that their first responsibility is to protect public safety, health and welfare. If their judgment is rejected in circumstances where under threat security, health, property or welfare of the people, they must notify the employer or client, and, if necessary, other authorities.
Mechanical engineers have a responsibility of ensuring they abide by general ethics as that have been laid down by engineering bodies such as the American Society of Mechanical engineers. Engineers have to sound alarm whenever safety violations are breached or when the organization does not perform required procedures that may endanger lives. It is the engineer’s duty to inform members of the public whenever legal bodies fail to nullify projects which may cause disasters.
Management today is an essential part in ensuring the success of the organisation on the whole. Without proper management, many unexpected and unfavourable events can take place, and jeopardise the stability of the organisation. For my research, I have chosen to use the article titled “Managing Motivation: Incentive Pay and the Pike River disaster” as I felt the Pike River disaster had a lot of impact on the society, not only when it happened, but also after it happened, when investigations were in place. Also it was one of the worst disasters in New Zealand’s history, with 29 deaths, which made it appear on the front page of international news outlets (Evans 2010). Also, this incident had highlighted many management lapses that led to the fateful event.