'Leadership in Practice: the Columbia Accident Essay\r'

'Introduction:\r\nFor this paper, I tolerate chosen to analyze the leading performance of Linda ham, Chair of military commission perplexity aggroup, and Daniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator, 1992â€2001. two, in my estimation, were dowery of the problem, and non part of the solution. Both succumbed to distant political forces and put much more(prenominal) emphasis on meeting self-imposed dead descents than astronaut safety. Both graduall(a)y dismissed the vast bulk of the recommendations of the Rogers Commission later the loss of the contest and doomed NASA to repeat history.\r\nBackground of draw #1:\r\nLinda ham, Chair of the Mission c ar police squad for the last capital of South Carolina mission, was employ by the National astronautics and lieu Administration (NASA) soon after she gradatory college. She began her move with NASA as a actuation Systems Monitor at the Lyndon B. Johnson infinite total in Houston, Texas. Over the geezerhood she lift through the ranks of NASA to Chair the Mission heed group for STS-107, which was the failed mission of the Space skirt capital of South Carolina that broke up upon re-entry into the res publica’s atmosphere.\r\nBackground of leader #2:\r\nDaniel S. Goldin, NASA Administrator, 1992â€2001, was hired by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) soon after he graduated college. He began his course at NASA’s Lewis Research place in C aimand, Ohio giveing in electrical propulsion systems for pitying interplanetary travel. He left NASA a few years later and began working for the TRW Space and engineering Group. Over his 25 year career at TRW, Goldin rose through the ranks to get under ones skin the Vice President and General omnibus of TRW. Goldin then returned to NASA and became its longest tenured Administrator. Goldin was know for beingness able to cut cost and still provide many lay programs.\r\nHis â€Å"crusade for efficiency” (2004) ended up being the nigh visible faulting in an administration philosophy that incapacitated a nonher seven astronauts. A nonher glimpse into what kind of man and leader Daniel S. Goldin is, neverthelesstocks be ready in a showcase by the Department of legal expert that â€Å"that seeks more than $170 million from TRW Inc., which is incriminate of padding brass outer space contracts with research-and-development cost ‘that should give up been paid out of TRW’s profits.’ The lawsuit contends that Daniel S. Goldin, who ran the company’s Space & ampere; Technology Group during the aboriginal 1990s, participated in the alleged overcharges by authorizing mistrustful accounting practices.” (1998)\r\nLeadership styles:\r\nBoth Goldin and overplay clearly pushed the NASA agendum which was set by Goldin. Both appear to fit into the despotic lead style in that they demanded compulsive obedience. Neither fostered a culture where respective(a) opin ion was welcome. Both created an atmosphere where assorted or dissenting opinion was do by and unwelcome. Goldin and Ham forced many NASA employees, specifically engineers and safety personnel, to become â€Å"organisational bystanders” (2008) because they were averse to put on the line their career to challenge the agenda of Goldin and Ham. NASA became a workplace with administrative blinders on. â€Å"NASA is not functioning as a nurture governing” (Gehman, 2003). â€Å"[NASA mission managers] were convinced, without study, that nothing could be done nearly such an emergency.\r\nThe clever remnant and skepticism that a unhurt safety culture requires was almost solo absent. Shuttle managers did not embrace safety-conscious attitudes. Instead, their attitudes were mold and reinforced by an organization that, in this instance, was incapable of stepping back and gauging its biases. Bureaucracy and answer trumped thoroughness and argue” (Gehman, 2003 ). Ham’s learn on STS-107 is most clearly depict in this excerpt from the Case look at on the Columbia Accident by Maureen Hogan Casamayou, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia:\r\nHam did inquire about the foam strike, but: not to look into what action to take during Columbia’s mission, but to understand the implications for STS-114. During a Mission focus Team meeting on January 21, she asked about the rationale put fore at the STS-113 Flight Readiness appraise passed muster not because of their inherent severeness (and hence greater safety for the crew) but simply to launch another doll into space on schedule. As the CAIB answer for states, Ham’s focus on examining the rationale for continuing to fly after foam problems with STS-87 and STS-112 indicates that her attention had already shifted from the brat of the foam posed to STS-107 to the d avowstream implications of the foam strike. Ham was due to serve . . . as the launch integration mana ger for the neighboring mission, STS-114. If the Shuttle Program’s rationale to fly with foam loss was found to be flawed, the flight, due to be launched in about a month, would collapse to be stoped per NASA rules that require serious problems to be resolved before the next flight.\r\nAn STS-114 delay could in turn delay shutting of the International Space Station’s Node 2, which was a high precedency goal for NASA managers. Further severalise of her engrossment with meeting the designated launch schedule was reflected in Ham’s fearfulness about the length of time to process photos of the Columbia on-orbit. accord to the CAIB, on January 23rd: Ham raised concerns that the extra time fagged maneuvering Columbia to rescue got the left filename extension visible for imaging would unduly collision the mission schedule; for example, science experiments would have to stop while imagery was taken. According to personal notes obtained by the Board: â€Å" Linda Ham said it was no longer being pursued since even if we saw something, we couldn’t do anything about it. The Program didn’t want to spend the resources.” (CAIBR 2003)\r\nFurther evidence of the unchallenged assumptions and lack of intellectual curiosity at NASA is described by Niewoehner & Steidle, â€Å"At the January 24, Mission Management Team meeting at which the â€Å"no safety-of-flight” remainder was presented, there was little engineering backchat about the assumptions made, and how the results would differ if other assumptions were used. technology solutions presented to management should have included a quantifiable range of uncertainty and risk analysis. Those types of tools were readily available, routinely used, and would have benefactored management understand the risk involved in the finish. Management, in turn, should have demanded such information. The very absence of a clear and overt discussion of uncertainties and ass umptions in the analysis presented should have caused management to probe further.” (2009) A divers(prenominal) outcome:\r\nIn reviewing this case study, I am nearly certain that leadership style played a substitute(prenominal) role in the situation. The primary expose appears to be that the leaders, Goldin and Ham to be specific, take into accounted the outside influence of cypherary constraints imposed by Congress and the presidential Administration to imprint their mission and vision for NASA. In practical(a) terms, the amount of money in the budget and the self-imposed goals of the number of shuttle missions to storage area that budget from decreasing over-road concern for safety. not only did it over-ride that concern for safety, but it created an organizational culture that ignored any line of thinking that challenged or threatened NASA’s goals. We must remember that there are drawbacks in stating specific determine government organizational goals.\r\nWhe n a government, or a component of government, forecasts where it wants to be in the futurity, it binds itself to those identified goals. Administrators become personally attached or emotionally involved and are averse to change for fear of appearing to accept failure. This certainly affected the leadership and constitution decisions of Goldin and Ham. Rocha could have done more to represent the safety concerns to light, however in retrospect, he clearly would have risked his career in doing so. We need more leaders, and followers, who are ordain to risk their career especially when human life is at stake. A antithetical outcome for STS-107 is very likely if NASA had real functioned as a â€Å"High dependability Organization”, which Weick and Sutcliffe (2001) say is characterized by:\r\n•A preoccupation with failure\r\n•Reluctance to simplify interpretations\r\n•Sensitivity to operations\r\n•Commitment to resiliency\r\n•Deference to expe rtise\r\nGoldin and Ham could have implemented the quintuplet key dimensions of collaborationism: governance, administration, organizational autonomy, mutuality, and norms of trust and reciprocity. They could have created a team or committee to review, research, and assess each and every safety concern that was raised by any NASA employee. This team should have negotiated, committed, and then implemented those commitments. at that place was no trust and reciprocity amongst the NASA engineers and the NASA mission managers. Goldin and Ham should have embraced a more Democratic Leadership Style. â€Å"Although a Democratic leader will make the final decision, he/she invites other members of the team to contribute to the decision making process.\r\nThis not only increases job satisfaction by involving employees or team members in what’s going on, but it also help to develop people’s skills. Employees and team members feel in control of their own destiny, such as the promotion they merit and so are motivated to work hard by more than vertical a financial reward. As affair takes time, this approach offer lead to things misadventure more slowly but a great deal the end result is better. The approach can be most suitable where team work is essential and quality is more important than speed to market productivity.” (2012)\r\nYes, they would have likely missed future deadlines, believably scratched future missions, and maybe even deep in thought(p) some of NASA’s precious mount from Congress, but the strengths of the five key dimensions were never given a chance to prevail. The reason why is glaringly clear: â€Å"The most costly resources of collaboration are not money but time and energy, incomplete of which can be induced.” Huxham (1996) With NASA’s unblemished function hinging on budgetary concerns that became unbending deadlines, time trumped safety and everyone from Congress and the Presidential administra tion to NASA management and the entire workforce, all have â€Å"blood on their hands.”\r\nMy wit:\r\nAs a future leader, I am most profoundly taken with(p) by the impact of bureaucracy. I deal that even Goldin and Ham would have changed their decisions had they had the gather of hindsight and knew that seven astronauts would lose their lives because of their lack of leadership, management, and administrative capabilities. We must listen to alternative viewpoints and elevate open dialogue as future government leaders. We must strive for objectiveness in our perspective and not allow our vision to be narrowed by clinging too tightly to a idea or idea that was good in another setting. If human safety is in any way a factor, our level of scrutiny in gathering facts for decision making must be to the utmost. My biggest acquire from this assignment is learning the definition of a â€Å"high reliability organization” and the five bullets that must be embraced to be a true â€Å"high reliability organization”. I will take this idea with me for the rest of my career.\r\nRoberts, A. (2004). The reform bubble bursts. earthly concern Administration Review,\r\n64(5), 625-629. 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San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Bhatti, N., Ghulam, M. M., Shaikh, N., Muhammad, A. H., & Faiz, M. S. (2012). The impact of commanding and democratic leadership style on job satisfaction. International Business Research, 5(2), 192-201. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/963357720?accountid=27965 Huxham, Chris. 1996. quislingism and Collaborative Advantage. In Creating Collaborative Advantage, edit by Chris Huxham, 1â€18. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. (Stillman cccxxiii)\r\nStillman, Richard. Public Administration, 9th Edition. Cengage Learning US, Aug-04. .\r\n'