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Title: The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at Nasa by Diane Vaughan ISBN: 0-226-85176-1 Publisher: Univ of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.46 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Reveals NASA's engineering culture & risk management in 80s.
Comment: It's been a couple of years since I read this book, but the work remains in my mind much as the television images of the explosion itself.
Diane Vaughan is a sociologist and her in-depth research dicusses and goes beyond the technical causes of the disaster. She doesn't stop at the "frozen, brittle O-ring". She reveals the culture of NASA and its contractors' engineers, their assessment of risk and monitoring of deviations from standards.
The story reminds us that there are humans behind the advanced technology used in space exploration. And humans often unknowingly make mistakes. Engineers and technicians often have a different work culture or mind-set than do their managers. So there are bound to be misunderstandings.
The book is very detailed both with technological terms and sociological terms, so reading it can be a bit daunting sometimes - unless you really want to understand what happened on January 28, 1986.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Eye-opening Look at NASA, Bureaucracies, and Risk.
Comment: Until you read this book, you don't really have an appreciation of how much the public perception of NASA is set up by PR and hangover love for the Apollo program.
Vaughan has done an amazing job of looking at the psychology of the decision to launch Challenger despite the known risks and the repeated warnings. It is exhaustively researched and includes tons of primary source material.
Saddest of all is the recent history that seems to indicate that NASA has not learned from its mistakes.
Anyone who works in a managment situation or is part of a "management chain" should read this. Anyone who is familiar with the term "normalizing risk" should be required to read this. It gives a lot of insight into the human nature of bureaucracies.
It is one of those books that will really change the way you look at things.
Rating: 3
Summary: Fascinating account, tortured writing
Comment: Penetrating account of the organizational causes of the Challenger disaster. The author shows that the engineering mistake that led to the disaster was not the result of intentional wrongdoing ("amoral calculator" thesis = managers overruling engineers due to economic and/or political pressures) but that quite on the contrary that the NASA and contractor teams played by the rulebook to a fault and that the mistake was "systematic and socially organized". A must read for everybody interested in organizational dynamics or in how to manage risk in the development of technological innovations.
Given the fascinating subject matter and revisionist thesis it's a pity that the writing is very uneven. Most of the "thick description" of the decisions around the booster joint from the early design days to the post-mortem by the Presidential Commission is quite readable. This core of the text, however, is embedded in an unbearably repetitive and plodding overall narrative flow (the account could probably be reduced in length by 50%) which in places degenerates into (sociological?) opaque language. Taking a cue from the author's concept of "structural secrecy" (things are hidden not on purpose but due to organizational compartmentalization), the argument of the book loses a lot of its force due to the undisciplined way of telling it; the author could profit from a strong editor.
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Title: Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow ISBN: 0691004129 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 27 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Inviting Disaster: Lessons From the Edge of Technology by James R. Chiles ISBN: 0066620821 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity by Karl E. Weick, Kathleen M. Sutcliffe ISBN: 0787956279 Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: 03 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia by Michael Cabbage, William B. Harwood ISBN: 0743260910 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner, Rita Kimber, Robert Kimber ISBN: 0201479486 Publisher: Perseus Books Group Pub. Date: 15 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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