Several factors contributed to NASA and Columbia disasters, one of them being assumptions that everything was perfect. The main guy said everything was fine; thus, the company did not believe they could fail at any point and focused on their mission. They were reluctant to consider the costs and deadlines because they focused on the primary mission. Also, overconfidence from the previous history of success made the company not to focus on what the engineers were doing. The management deviated from the known chain of command and used unusual methods to validate the progress of activities. The employees at NASA also spent time on multiple projects, thus could not provide quality. Focusing on many projects shifts attention and puts employees at the pressure to meet deadlines.
Critical cultural makers are relying on previous organization’s success making people assume they will produce quality. Also, organizational barriers where there was a lack of a formal chain of command may have contributed to the failure. Perhaps some individuals realized the mistakes but did not open up because they were not among the top authority.
- Cultural change was difficult at NASA. Can you think of specific things that could have been done to make cultural changes more lasting or more effective?
Several factors contributed to NASA and Columbia disasters, one of them being assumptions that everything was perfect. The main guy said everything was fine; thus, the company did not believe they could fail at any point and focused on their mission. They were reluctant to consider the costs and deadlines because they focused on the primary mission. Also, overconfidence from the previous history of success made the company not to focus on what the engineers were doing. The management deviated from the known chain of command and used unusual methods to validate the progress of activities. The employees at NASA also spent time on multiple projects, thus could not provide quality. Focusing on many projects shifts attention and puts employees at the pressure to meet deadlines.
Critical cultural makers are relying on previous organization’s success making people assume they will produce quality. Also, organizational barriers where there was a lack of a formal chain of command may have contributed to the failure. Perhaps some individuals realized the mistakes but did not open up because they were not among the top authority.
Cultural change was obviously difficult at NASA. Can you think of specific things that could have been done to make cultural changes more lasting or more effective?
In the text, some of the critical changes that organization can make include having a transparent communication, having a quality assurance team to supervise on a specific task, focus on good values and acknowledge failure (Miller, 2015). Following consecutive success history, NASA did not acknowledge success; thus, they were reluctant to have a strict quality assurance team that would report any mistakes in the project. If NASA could have different people to supervise projects, then it would be easier to highlight mistakes. Also, the company did not have good employee values. The environment was not permeable to allow highlighting mistakes to the management team and correcting them. A transparent communication would allow any employee to give comments on ongoing projects and tell the supervisors on any cited problems. The organization should have a more widespread decision-making team and an improved set of quality control officers