The Challenger Tragedy and Organizational Pressure

On January 28, 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger launched and tragically broke apart 73 seconds into its flight killing all seven crew members.

For a recent assignment in my Organizational Behavior class I read Diane Vaughn's article on the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy: "The Trickle-Down Effect: Policy Decisions, Risky Work and the Challenger Tragedy". Vaughn has written extensively on this incident in American history and has conluded (as have others) that the Challenger tragedy was largely the result of an organizational failure, rather than solely caused by the malfunction of an O-ring seal, as it was originally attributed. Central to Vaughn's arguement is that NASA and its contractors failed to properly assess the risk associated with the O-ring seal and, because of overarching political and bureacratic pressures, normalized the gradual acceptance of risk over time leading to this catastrophic accident. Furthermore, Vaughn contends that these pressures trickled down through management to the engineers charged with making the final safety assessments, and ultimately contributed to a breakdown in communication resulting in an improper launch decision. Vaughn and others have so thoroughly vetted this arguement that it has become a commonly cited example of an organizational failure in educational institutions. I bring it up here because it illustrates an important issue that a variety of managers stand to learn from.

The Challenger tragedy is a highly visible reminder that managers must fully understand the risk implications that each decision has on every member of the organization. Allowing pressures to infiltrate all levels of the organization can encourage groups and individuals to push the limits of safety or risk. A pizza restaurant that promises an unreasonably fast delivery time may encourage its drivers to speed; a TV news company that permits frenzied market competition to pressure field crews may also be encouraging compromised safety. Other examples may include risky lending practices or the sale of unsafe used equipment... One way in which managers can ensure that they are protecting the organization from this type of risk is to make sure that two-way communication lines are fully open and that each employee has a clear understanding of the firm's code of ethics and risk management proceedures. Vaughn's article is an excellent analysis of an organizational failure that could have been prevented and could have saved seven lives.