Columbia Shuttle Disaster as a Leadership Issue

Columbia Shuttle Disaster as a Leadership Issue

On January 16, 2003, the Columbia space shuttle set out on its 28th flight into space, in what was characterized as a routine scientific mission. The shuttle disintegrated 2 weeks later while reentering the earth's atmosphere, killing the seven astronauts onboard (Gavetti, 2005).The investigators did not simply conduct a technical analysis of this catastrophic failure. They went on to evaluate the organizational systems, processes, and behaviors that enabled the tragedy to occur (Deal, 2004). They wanted to understand why NASA kept launching the shuttle despite a lengthy history of foam strike problems. They sought to determine why management had concluded that the astronauts were safe, despite some engineers' serious concerns about the foam strike (Park, 2006).

In contrast to normal accident theory, another stream of researchers has studied the cognitive, group, and organizational processes that lead to the failure to detect errors and/or the failure to address errors before they lead to a catastrophic failure (Park, 2006). These researchers have focused much more attention on behavior, rather than solely focusing on the structural dimensions of organizational systems. They also have focused much more on the historical evolution of catastrophic accidents. They do not examine only the momentous decision that might have immediately preceded a tragedy (e.g., the critical eve-of-launch meeting that took place prior to the Challenger accident), nor do they focus exclusively on the immediate chain of events that led to a failure (Deal, 2004).

Just minutes before it was scheduled to land on February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas, killing seven astronauts. This film focuses on that disaster and, in the process, summarizes much of the history of NASA's shuttle program (Gavetti, 2005). The causes of the tragedy are attributed to the scaling back of ...