Challenger Launch Decision

The case describes and outlines the group process in the Challenger Launch decisions. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in midair, taking the lives of six astronauts. The night before the launch of the Challenger shuttle, thirty two individuals from Morton Thiokol and NASA and other supporting agencies, participated in a teleconference to discuss whether to postpone the shuttle launch due to predicted low temperatures at Kennedy Space Center. It was recorded that engineers at Morton Thiokol, the contractor responsible for building the solid rocket booster, had strongly opposed the launching of Challenger, but their warning had not been heeded by management. These engineers suspected what the Rogers Commission would later support, that the immediate cause of the explosion was a burn through of the solid rocket booster joint O-rings, which were the same O-rings that engineers had been concerned about.

Roger Boisjoly, an engineer of 27 years, was among the engineers who instigated the issue to the top managers at Morton Thiokol. He had been extremely vocal over the past few months about the performance of the design of the shuttle and its' O-Rings in low temperatures. It was documented that Roger wrote a letter to top management about the critical issue concerning the O-ring and its' potential failure. Yet it was ignored.

After the accident, the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident was formed to examine the accident and reported a number of findings. The findings include a few interesting facts that will eventually be discussed in more detail. Despite this concern, top NASA decision makers told the Rogers Commission that they had no knowledge on January 27 that these matters had been the subject of intense controversy within Thiokol and between Thiokol and the Marshall Space Flight Center in the decision-making process (Dimitroff, Schmidt, & Bond, 2005).

Irving Janis, from Yale University, defined groupthink as "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when members striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008). He also included that groupthink refers to a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008). Members of groups mistreated by groupthink tend to be friendly and tightly knit. According to Janis's model, there are eight classic symptoms of groupthink. Symptoms of groupthink include invulnerability, inherent morality, rationalization, stereotyped views of opposition, self-censorship, illusion of unanimity, peer pressure, and mind guards (Dimitroff, Schmidt, & Bond, 2005).

In the Challenger case we see some of those symptoms recognized. It appears the decision to launch in colder temperatures was brought about by feelings of invulnerability due to the success of the Apollo program, as well as the fact they had flown previously in somewhat similar conditions. NASA management still pushed to meet its schedule and subconsciously relegated safety and quality to a minor role (Dimitroff, Schmidt, & Bond, 2005).We can see the effects of groupthink, where Morton Thiokol collectively rationalized their earlier decision and reversed it, all due to pressure and rationalization from NASA. The end result was that Morton Thiokol agreed there was no additional concern for flight safety. Verifiable documentation is available that sums up the Challenger incident as thus: "The decision to launch the Challenger was flawed." Communication failures, incomplete and misleading information, and poor management judgment all figured in a decision-making process that permitted, in the words of the commission, "internal flight safety problems to bypass key shuttle managers (Dimitroff, Schmidt, & Bond, 2005).

With the Challenger explosion, one has to look at some of the key reasons that led to the disaster. As documented by the commission, there was not necessarily conflict at NASA

or at Morton Thiokol, but more a hesitancy to "raise a red flag." Questions were raised, but the flag was not waved high enough. NASA had conflicting goals of cost, schedule, and safety. Safety lost out as the mandates of an "operational system" increased the schedule pressure. Scarce resources went to problems that were defined as more serious, rather than to foam strikes or O-ring erosion (Dimitroff, Schmidt, & Bond, 2005). During the course of the investigation, it was discovered that NASA and Morton Thiokol had vigorously debated the wisdom of operating the shuttle in the cold temperatures predicted for the next day. The investigation also revealed a NASA culture that gradually began to accept escalating risk and a safety program that was largely silent and ineffective (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2008).

There were several measures that could have been practiced to prevent groupthink from developing. The diversity of viewpoints is one effort towards eliminating groupthink by attempting to structure the group so that there are different viewpoints. Diverse input will tend to point out non-obvious risks, drawbacks, and advantages that might not have been considered by a more standardized group (Von Bergen & Kirk, 1978).

Another is each member of the group should be assigned the role of critical evaluator (Von Bergen & Kirk, (1978).This role involves aggressively voicing objections and doubts. Roger tried to voice his concerns about the O-rings but no one was assigned to allow voice objections. Different