Nasa Case

Joe Rottinger

Organizational Behavior

Prof. Ambuske

NASA Video

1. How did escalation of commitment influence the final decision to launch?

- Escalation of commitment influenced the managers and engineers to launch the space shuttle because everyone was watching already and if the shuttle wasn’t launched they were afraid of losing the support of the public. Although there were previous delays, which should of stopped the shuttle from being launched; individuals in NASA still supported to proceed in this unsuccessful course of action.

2. How did the availability heuristic influence the decision to launch?

- The managers had to make a decision based of the information given to them by the engineers, which may have been inaccurate. Although, they never practiced a launch in the temperature the day of the launch, they still proceeded to go through with the decision of launching. This is because they already knew the weather conditions for the day, they were already prepared for the launch, and because they did not want the government to not support NASA or question their abilities. The launch also proceeded because NASA has been successful in everything else they have done.

3. How did negative framing effects influence NASA engineers to launch?

- Since they were already prepared to launch that day, NASA continued the launch because of the fear of potentially not getting any more tax money from the government and they did not want to lose the publics support. Since the day had perfect weather conditions NASA did not want to lose the opportunity to have another day like the day of launching the space shuttle. The negative framing effects should have had a great impact on the decision making