Banerjee, Preeta M. (U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) Mahoney, Joseph T. (U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Abstract
We review William Starbuck and Moshe Farjoun's Organization at the Limit: Lessons from the Columbia Disaster, a book that provides a unique look at a rare empirical phenomenon: the total failure of a high-risk, high-reward organization. The National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) is a large, elaborate, and mature organization, which operates risky and complex technologies in an environment that emits ambiguous signals. In particular, NASA's space shuttle, Columbia, disintegrated during re-entry, after completing its 16-day scientific research mission. All seven astronauts on board the Space Shuttle were killed. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB, 2003) stated that this disaster was a product of NASA's history, cultural traits, and long-term organizational practices. The multiple contributing factors give rise to eighteen chapters of various observers, interpretations, and evaluation criteria.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business in its series Working Papers with number
07-0101.