The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA Summary and Reviews

The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA
by Diane Vaughan

The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA
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Book Summary Information

Author: Diane Vaughan
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1997-04-15
ISBN: 0226851761
Number of pages: 592
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press

Book Reviews of The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA

Book Review: Excellent review of organizational theory of risky decisions
Summary: 4 Stars

This book reviews in great detail the processes that went into (and predated) the decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger. It takes a potentially "new" view of this decision, namely outlining how the problem wasn't 'a few bad managers willing to explicitly sacrifice safety for the sake of getting this particular shuttle off the pad' {my words}. Instead, the problem was an entire culture, at NASA, at Morton Thiokol, and in the country as a whole, that emphasized the production schedule, normalized deviance (i.e. rationalized the aberrant behavior of the O-rings in the joints of the booster), and constructed the "risk assessment" to suit a wide variety of needs. This book will join the shelf with a very few other works on decision making in high-hazard environments, particularly Perrow's NORMAL ACCIDENTS, and Scott Sagan's LIMITS OF SAFETY.

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