TUI
Module 5 – Case
Resistance to Change- Columbia Tragedy
Ronald Kroetsch
22 July 2014
Dr. McNaughton

Resistance to Change: Overcoming Individual and Structural
On 1st February, 2003, the Columbia space shuttle was expected to make its way back on earth without any mishaps. However, this never happened because the shuttle broke apart in the Texas skies. NASA had eagerly waited for the Columbia to bring back various important research results after completing its 16 day mission in space. NASA has faced three major crises that are well documented and accessible to the public. The first tragedy took place in 1967 involving the Apollo 1 Spacecraft. In 1986, exactly after two decades, the Challenger space shuttle tragically exploded off the Florida coast. The most worrying trend is that NASA has a well-documented history about the accidents and it was expected that they would have learned something from the previous crises. NASA has totally undermined its credibility with resistance to change. The Columbia mishap can be attributed to resistance to change the individual and structural culture of the organization.
Individual and organizational sources of resistance
The loss of lives and disintegration of the Columbia shuttle can be traced to the resistance of the NASA leaders to change. The cause of this accident can partly draw its roots to the policy environment that followed the turbulent post-Cold War era. In the period between 1960s and early 1980s, both the Soviet Union and USA were fighting to show their supremacy in every aspect of their lives. The space was one area where these battles took place. This means that NASA was allocated a huge chunk of money because the United States government considered it an important political underpinning in the Human Space Flight Program. However, the Cold War came to an end in the late 1980s and NASA lost its political objective and importance (CAIB, 2003) The leaders of the organization could no longer justify the need for a huge budget to satisfy its projects with the urgency that was experienced during the super power struggle era. Throughout the 1990s, the agency failed to get any budget increases from the United States government. However, the leaders failed to adjust to this leaner budget and continued with their ambitious agenda. More than ever, NASA was committed to space exploration and science, which culminated in an extremely expensive Space Station program (CAIB, 2003) Indeed, the individual leaders of the organization totally ignored the budgetary constraints and continued with their ambitious agenda. In fact, the organization simply became complacent. In as much as NASA aimed at improving the efficiency of the organization operations, they did not take into consideration fully investigating all. The leaders failed to emphasize on the need to change the goals of the organization and objectives to fit the post-Cold War era (Duane, 2004). The human spaceflight program within NASA still continued on focusing on meeting the launch date of the Node. Indeed, the computer screen of this program had a countdown clock that depicted the seconds, minutes, hours, days and months that were remaining before the launch. The leaders and individual employees at NASA were operating as they had during the Cold war era, without taking into consideration that the budget costs had led to outsourcing various shuttle program responsibilities to contractors. This means that when the organization set the launch deadlines earlier, there was a preoccupation to stick to the schedule, negating the basic principle of ensuring all necessary safety precautions are undertaken. There were concerns by the engineers before the launch that the foam may have damaged the wing of the shuttle (Duane, 2004). They requested the top shuttle managers to get some help to deal with this issue from an outside agency, but their offer was turned down. The shuttle manager received an official report from various consultations and Boeing and decided that the foam was not a major security concern.
However, during the investigation into this mishap, it was concluded that foam injection that took place during launch was actually a long historical problem. Previously, other shuttle launches had been faced with this foam problem and engineers had tried to come up with ways to eliminate through changing design without any success. NASA had not been able to eliminate this structural failure because of not learning from other previous mishaps that it had encountered (Chen, 2003).
Additionally, the organization never changed after the Challenger accident aftermath or fully implemented recommendations from the Rogers commission that investigated it (CAIB, 2003). NASA was still basking in the glory of the Apollo launch during the Cold World era, and the staff had faith in their organization culture. They failed to realize that their organization was no longer considered politically strategic and that the world around them had changed considerably. Moreover, they also did not realize that the new subcontracting period necessitated extensive oversight programs and more effective communication (CAIB, 2003)
Impacts of board recommendation
The board was clear that the Columbia mishap was mainly caused by the organizational and technical failures of NASA. It was apparent that the foam problem in the bipod, which is blamed for causing the disintegration of the Shuttle, has been in existence for many years, although NASA has failed to eliminate it (Chen, 2003). The engineers had raised this concern to the managers of the program, but they declined the request to have it inspected by another agency. Another recommendation is that NASA should have a backup to fix the shuttle in space to ensure the safety of the crew in case of any damages to the wings during the flight. The investigation board recommended improving photography of launches, using telescopes to photograph shuttles while they are in space, and adding the ability to repair a shuttle while in orbit. One of the launch pad cameras that were out of focus could have captured the best images of the craft's left wing. The U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency has agreed to use spy satellites to photograph shuttles in orbit on future missions. The photos would be made automatically without a special request from NASA. During the 2003 flight, photos of the three-inch insulating tiles beneath Columbia's left wing might have helped engineers assess the danger before the shuttle started to land. Not just managers but higher level senior leaders also failed to develop simple contingency plans for a re-entry emergency; rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, to become fluent from the most minor to the most extreme emergency situation. People being incapable of stepping back and gauging its biases and letting bureaucracy trumped reason. Signals of potential danger, anomalies, and critical information should, in principle, surface in the hazard identification process and be tracked with supported risk assessments. All these recommendations are a clear indication that NASA must take a paradigm shift that will bring organizational changes. They have not factored the changes that have been happening over the years with bad decision making and poor risk assessments. These recommendations are a wakeup call to the leaders and employees of NASA to accept the reality that the world has changed and they need to as well. NASA must accept that there organizational structure and processes were sufficiently flawed and significant changes in processes and organizational culture must and will change.
Conclusions
The Columbia accident did not only cause the loss of priceless experimental results and seven prominent astronauts, but also cost the nation four billion dollars. This also eroded the confidence and pride of the space program, which is funded by the taxpayer. To solve the internal problems facing NASA, the government should come up with a program to privatize the space program in which they have. Privatization would improve the efficiency of the organization and finally resolve the issue of resisting change. Private sector advances are also being made toward manned missions to the ISS. NASA will be selecting companies for certification contracts, which offer $10 million in seed money to develop their technologies, and will start accepting bids for its commercial crew contract later in the year. The contract will be awarded in early 2014, with manned missions expected within the following few years SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and other private space companies promise to offer significant cost savings over NASA and the space shuttle program.

References

Chen, Y. (2003). Columbia Shuttle Tragedy. ProQuest CSA Journals. Retrieved on 14th July, 2014 from http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/shuttle/overview.php
Columbia Accident Investigation Board. (2003). Columbia Accident Investigation Board. Retrieved on 14th July, 2014 from http://www.caib.us/news/report/default.html
Duane, B. (2004). Beyond the Widget: Columbia Accident Lessons Affirmed. Air War College. Retrieved on 14th July, 2014 from http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj04/sum04/deal.html
http://reason.org/news/show/apr-2013-space-privatization#sthash.6iq7DoOV.dpuf