Case analysis Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 6

Analysis - Case Study Example Specifically, there was immense pressure from the US government for this program to be declared operational and to beat its deadline as part of the space race with the USSR (Edmondson; A 1). Finally, there was pressure from Congress for the program to become financially self-supportive. The environment NASA was operating in forced them to operate pseudo-commercially (Edmondson; A 2), which resulted in a culture of short-cuts, stress, and conflict between and within different contractors and NASA. Pressure increased before the launch of the Challenger, although they were still confident after conducting 24 successful launches. However, prior to the Challenger launch, NASA was faced with territorial battles and internal strife due to competing interests and political pressure. In short, NASA seems to have been operating in a semi-controlled decision making phase as they tried to serve industry, scientific, and military demands with a shuttle that was declared operational prior to completion of development. The decision-making process was also open to political manipulation (Edmondson; A 2), which left an impression on the employees that decision making was a political directive, leading to complacency among employees with safety decisions traded for keeping political deadlines. Roger Boisjoly was an engineer working under the Director of the Solid Rocket Motors project at Morton Thiokol (Edmondson; A 4), which was one of NASA’s contractors. His opinion on the decision to launch was that Challenger’s launch should be stopped. He gave this opinion based on data he had found about the rocket boosters meant to lift the Challenger into space, writing a memo to the Vice President of Engineering Robert Lund that the O-rings in the SRM joints were eroded and that this should be rectified (Edmondson; B 9). During the teleconference just before the Challenger launch, Boisjoly made a presentation to managers