Disaster Analysis: Challenger Disaster

calamity Analysis Challenger DisasterIt was the day in the history of the States wherein the plurality had a great expectation of a military mission that would believe a civilian for the first time into property. After twenty four successful launches by NASA, the Challenger come to the foreer space shuttle was a try of their experience as an giving medication. On January 28th 1986, the shuttle exploded briefly after liftoff, claiming the lives of all crew members on circuit board .The explosion could non be diabolical just beca procedure of the technical faults but similarly raised numerous separate issues such as organizational and ethical behaviour. It also questi superstard the leadership skills exhibited by the aggroups voluminous during the operation.This report discusses the organisational factor outs that contributed to the accident and reflects on the aftermath of the disaster explaining nigh space missions and the organisations associated with it. It a lso reflects on the role of screwment in sanctify to manage a labyrinthian locomotive engineering operation.NASA OPERATION REASONING ITS FAILURE there were legion(predicate) organizational factors which contributed to the accident. To start with, NASA was always a narcissistic form of organization, which believed in the number one spot. Since it landed the first man on the moon, prior to Russia, its technological ethos took backseat. It was to a greater extent of an organization, which concentrated on the public queer image rather than the true technology. The U.S. government decl ard to stop support the space shuttle programmes and asked NASA to raise their bear funds for each advance space programme. Also, for either difficult engineering project, to be a success, the feedback and recommendations of the engineers and technical staff is considered, as the nearly mandatory and classical requirement. In Challengers case, it was the most neglected aspect and thus leads to a disaster. in that respect were few unwavering forces of reason and emotions which influenced the decision to proceed with the launch. The highly visible public endanger of Americas success as a multicultural society was also one of the reason they included many minorities in the group. NASA just cherished to go ahead(predicate) with the launch as there was one lady school day teacher, Christa McAuliffe in the team, which made this space launch a special centre of attraction for the citizens of the U.S. The US president was payable with his assembly speech, which also roughly forced NASA to go ahead with the launch. There was huge media mash as the launch had been cancel direct several times before. There was also the neglect of leadershiphip in the organization as there was really no one with the courage to subscribe the right decisions, as it is one of the first requirements of a charismatic leadership.The dealingship between Morton Thiokol and NASA is one of t he strong reasons for the blow of mission. Both organizations managers were over com stationnt as they looked for evidence to support mission success rather than evidence indicating possible mission failure. The Thiokol precaution emergencyed to make sure it received future contracts from NASA. This is intelligibly evident from the dialogue, which took tooshie between the two organisations during the teleconferencing. Basically, both the parties were looking and were guided by their own selfish interests.SHUTTLE DISASTER WHO IS TO BE BLAMED?One virtuoso entity can non be held account adequate for the challenger disaster. Responsibility falls on the managers at NASA and Thiokol. These are the passel who made the decision to launch challenger and where the ones with the office staff and power. They did not comprehend to or take any real secern of the engineers at Thiokol who are the experts in the area and rich person the association origination regarding the rocket b oosters. There was a lack of chat and a superstar of desperation from the managers to make sure the shuttle launched as they did not want any further delay.The role that the polish at NASA played in this disaster was truly distinguished and indeed can be in a flash attributed to the disaster. Within NASA there had developed a climate where communication was genuinely closed. The culture did not encourage a free flowing trade of information between departments and people of different levels there was a cooperative effort to discourage creative thinking. This mind set was also transfeered to Thiokol which had a detrimental effect. The mission was the first of its kind to deal a non-astronaut aboard, this was make so that the space program would be more widely admit by the public it would capture peoples imaginations again with the possibility that a unbendable person could go up into space. Although there was a non-astronaut on board the shuttle and a mix of ethnic back g roundworks and genders this can in no way have had any bearing on the disaster as none of these people where responsible for giving the mission the go ahead that was purely down to prudence and once the shuttle was launched those on board would not have been able to do anything differently.The challenger disaster was for sure avoidable, the warning signs were there but the people in charge did not heed them. The engineers knew there was a problem with the O rings and many attempts were made to communicate this but management did not want to listen to the engineers as it was roughthing they did not want to hear as they clearly amaze financial gains ahead of the safety of the mission and its crew. NASA also could have stop the launch but because they had already delayed the launch twice management were under public press to not delay any further. The pressure to refer its targets led NASA to not follow the set down rules it had in place to stop something like this happening. All the pressures put on both NASA and Thiokol led to them taking risks which did not pay off. If the pressure to launch in happenstance with communication breakdowns had not occurred or had been managed better this disaster would not have happened.FACTORS INFLUENCING DISASTERCommunicationCommunication was considered to be an issue since the engineers were not able to convince the management team at NASA to stop the launch of the space shuttle. It was precise evident from the initial time that the management at summon Space centre contained already known problems and they were trying to resolve them familiarly instead of communicating them further.During the initial stages of the challenger project, the management of NASA had come up with certain guidelines and rules called the BURDEN OF PROOF wherein the technical team had to come up with exact proof to explain the consequences if there was a failure from their side. Robert Lund, an engineer and manager who played an important ro le during the challenger launch explainedwe had to manifest to them that we werent ready, and so we got ourselves into the thought forge that we are trying to find some way to prove to them it wouldnt work and we were unable to do that . We couldnt prove dead that the motor could not work (US Commission 1986)In any organisation communication decisions should not be set as rules and need to be flexible.LeadershipTaking leadership into account, according to Max Webers theory of bureaucracy explained the structure of an organisation. NASAs organisation exhibited a rigorous organisational structure wherein all the rules and regulations must be strictly adhered to and everyone should perform the role which they were assigned to. In this rigid fiber of organisation, the leadership exhibited by the NASA was a narcissistic approach.Narcissistic leadership occurs when leaders actions are principally motivated by their own egomaniacal need and beliefs, superseding the needs and intere sts of the constituents and institutions they lead (Seth A.R. Todd L.P., 2006)The leader becomes more concerned with public relations thereby concerning a lot about the organisations image and in the process it forgets about the other issues that were equally strong.Behaviour of peopleBehaviour of people within both organisations with respect to the risk management was un computer programned and NASA management had to make a decision at the last moment take downing when everyone agreed that a catastrophic possibility existed and it was known that responsibilities of the people were clearly defined. Much of the evidence pertaining to the disaster was dismissed. Behaviour of the entire team could be interpreted as group think. The concept of group think was theorise by Janis, according to his theory the member of the teams worked as cohesive groups and had net self-confidence in their project. During group think, the decision makers get an illusion that they are invulnerable and it makes people take extraordinary risks at crucial moments. (Janis, 1986)There was an illusion of unanimity among the group members. Regarding the judgement made, the individuals in the Thiokol team remained dumb and none of them had openly agreed to the launch. The silence from Thiokol was also worsened since it was a teleconference meeting wherein the body language was not noticed even if they had said no. Hence silence meant an agreement which explains the fact that the team were unable to voice their views.The influence of the mediaThe influence of the media played in study role in decisions that were made by NASA. NASA was under tremendous pressure to achieve flight rates and was so pervasive that it was undoubtedly alter the attitude towards safety. Scheduling pressures were playing a major role in fashioning NASA biased to launch the shuttle and overseeing the risks which were attached to it, it was mainly due to the medias 24/7 coverage on NASA which was putting them u nder pressure to launch the shuttle on time because they did not want further negative coverage which could harm their public image.SPACE SHUTTLE outcome OF THE DISASTERAll space exploration has a mission with some specific technical objectives. All missions are time bound, it takes years to plan and implement them. Highly motivated people are needed in the workforce. Astronauts are chosen for the specific missions and are trained for the specialised roles. The Rogers relegating provided nine recommendations to NASA after the challenger disaster to improve the safety of its shuttles. NASA not only considered these recommendations but also redesigned their space shuttles with new technical modifications including solidness rocket boosters which were the primary cause of the disaster.The role of engineering in interlinking projects could be analysed by studying the Burns and Stalker theory about mechanistic and organic structures. They studied two different organizations- framewo rk and electronics (Gabriel, 2007). The textile ships company was having more of a hierarchical structure as discussed by Marx Weber, as they were involved in the routine and bureaucratic assesss whereas the electronic company was more concentrated on the engineering work outs and thus were having more of a horizontal structure which demands more of verbal communications and slight paper work. The concentration is more on the Innovation and inter-departmental communications. Above all, the employees have more discretion and liberty to suggest changes and chance to come out with productive innovations (Gabriel, 2007). NASA, being an organization, dealing complicated engineering projects, should have provided their engineers with very much discretion, rather than applying the unsuitable bureaucratic approach. While handling any complex engineering projects, it is thus advisable, to provide more autonomy of power to its ground level staffs.Power and politics in the organizations c ould be understood by studying the two well known dysfunctions of bureaucracy and they are as follows-Rigidity- It means that bureaucracy is slow to take advantage of opportunities and avoid threats. They are averse to innovation and experimentation. They generally avoid, which is new. This aspect of bureaucracy is not commodity for the managers who work in the changing environment. NASAs failure as an organization, by not accepting the new engineering recommendations from its engineers and taking the matter lightly, resulted to the disaster.Departmentalization- As per Webers theory, in bureaucracy, there is a strong hierarchical structure, which gets followed. So, the communication is from top to fuck level and never goes across horizontal level and this leads to setting up of different sub goals by different departments. These sub goals are not in good faith of organization as a complete and also leads to clashes and rivalry among departments.MANAGING COMPLEX OPERATIONSIt is al ways very repugn to manage a complex engineering operation in any organisation. Generally complex organisation creates lot of problem and issues in management, so that management should consider the importance of culture, communication and leadership to manage this type of operation. According to our view following are the factors which should be considered while managing a complex engineering operation.Communication frameworkCommunication plays another key role in managing complex engineering solutions. A framework called as Leadership communication framework is taken into consideration wherein it starts with core communication skills represented in the centre of framework. It eventually expands itself from managerial communication skills which fix with emotional intelligence and cultural literacy. It finally leads to the concept of corporate communication skills where it becomes more complex and the organisation tends to become responsible to all internal and external stakeholde rs. The leaders who involve themselves within this type of communication mould become the companys face and have numerous responsibilities. Therefore in order to efficaciously get the advantages of this model an improvement plan has to be initiated with self-assessment of the process. point of reference Deborah J Barret, 2006CultureCulture forms the function, as the linking mechanism by which profits of understanding develops among the employees Trice, 1988. Culture works as the software of the mind and use of metaphor in the organisation. As especially strong culture became very useful to manage the project because people in strong culture know which things are right to do. In complex engineering attitude feedback is often ambiguous and interpretation is the main key. In any organisation culture play a main role in how ambiguity is discussed and resolved in decision making (schien, 1992). Mainly in complex engineering time becomes a very important decision factor so that highl y time urgent culture is very important in organisation. Management should consider the importance of culture in any operation.Leadership stylesLeadership style adopted by the management is very crucial in managing complex engineering operation.As Kurt Lewin suggested, there are three major styles of leadershipsAuthoritarian or autocraticParticipative or representativeDelegative or Free ReignIn the case of any complex engineering operations, Participative leadership should be the first choice among the management wherein the leaders include one or more of their employees in the decision making process. By doing so, the leaders eventually gain the respect of their employees thus leading to a mutual benefit among them (Robert N, L Christopher F, A, .2010).Leadership is activity of mobilizing people to understand adaptive challenges which cannot be resolved by expert knowledge and daily management. To motivate the people who are working under you is very important in leadership. Moti vation plays vital role to boost the confidence of the employee to do challenging task and also gave energy to perform their task better. As complex problems contain multiple system which includes technical analysis, to grasp this type of project requires capacity of individual to skilful intervene in complex system. So that adopting proper Leadership approach is very important in organisation to handle any project.CONCLUSIONHence we think that there was strong need for leadership in NASA that would have been opened of organisational change. Its culture has always reflected self interested decisions.NASA would have to flatten its organisational pecking order it should be going for rather than having a bureaucratic organisation. There should be a mechanism in place where engineers should be able to spread the bureaucracy and hierarchy, especially in the pre launch process. There words and ideas should also be respected and given some credence by the swiftness management.NASA wo uld have collaborate rather than contracting , its shuttle development and living programs are outsourced to contractors , but it necessary for NASA to form a production and economy oriented relationships with their subsystem contractors for a better future . There should be a collaborative model of interaction.NASA is still suffering from technical incompetences and narcissistic management, it has to make an overhaul change in its organisation for its best interests. It is essential for NASA to be able to use its resources as efficiently as possible to effectively develop, explore and promote space.ReferencesGabriel,Y., 2007. Leadership and Organizations. University of London press publicationGuthrie,R.,2005.The capital of South Carolina Disaster Culture, Communication and change, Journal of cases on Information technology, Online, 7(3) Available at http//www.infosci-journals.com Accessed 20 Jan 2010Moorhead,G.,1991.Group think Fiascoes Continues Space Shuttle Challenger, getable at http//ils.unc.edu/bwilder/inls500/challengerarticle.pdfJanis,I.L.,1986.Group think,(2nd edition). Boston Houghton. Mifflin issueSeth A.R. Todd L.P.,2006. Narcissistic leadership. The Leadership Quarterly,Volume 17, Issue 6,Online, Available at http//www.sciencedirect.com Accessed 18 Jan 2010Bella, D.A., 1987. Organizational Systems and the Burden of Proof. Thomson PublishingChallenger Disaster A NASA Tragedy.Online. available at http//space.about.com/cs/challenger/a/challenger.htm accessed 23 Jan 2010Deborah, B.,2006.Leadership Communication. NewYorkTata Mc Graw hillock PublicationDeborah,B.,2006.Strong communication skills a must for todays leaders.onlineAvailable at http//www.emeraldinsight.com accessed 18 jan 2010Robert.N,L Christopher F.A.,2010.Leadership Theory,Application learning Development.4th edition.Strategic Leadership and Decision Making.Online available at http//www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/strat-ldr-dm/pt4ch16.html accessed 15 jan 2010William H.S, Mosh e F.,2005.Organization at the limit lessons from the Columbia Disaster, Blackwell PublishingSharon D.P.,2005.Leadership can be taught a bold approach for a complex world. Harvard business school publishing