Challenger and Columbia Hrm

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The Challenger and Columbia Shuttle Disasters Americans are all too familiar with disasters at NASA with space shuttle Challenger and later, the space shuttle Columbia. This paper looks at these disasters from a management perspective and the issues that NASA had with sustaining change. Discussed in this paper are the changes that NASA implemented after the Challenger disaster and how it was revealed later in the aftermath of Columbia that those changes were not sustained. Also discussed in this paper are the actions for sustaining change of redesigning roles, redesigning reward systems, linking selection decision, measuring progress, celebrating en route and fine-tuning may have contributed to the changes being sustained. Lastly discussed are the unanticipated outcomes that NASA failed to recognize. Discuss the changes that NASA implemented after the Challenger disaster. After the Challenger disaster “the Rogers Commission” was assembled to investigate the issues of the disaster. Not only was there physical and maintenance issues found, but there were severe management issues that needed to be addressed (Launius & Garber, 2000). In a news press in 1988 (Palmer et. al), NASA announced that there had been reorganization of its management to better manage and control the organization. It was found that important management functions were handled in many different locations that didn’t have clear channels of communication or work together properly to manage successfully, in fact they competed with one another. There were special teams put together to control shuttle safety and recognize hazards. (Palmer, Dunford & Akin, 2009) Discuss the aspects of NASA practice revealed in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster suggest that the change sought in the aftermath of Challenger were not sustained. In 2003 (Palmer et. al), when the world watched the

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