Why Are Good Engineers Sometimes Bad Decision Makers

MGMT 433.001

12 February 2015

Written Assignment 2: Answers to Questions from “Why Good Engineers Make Bad Decisions: Some Implications for ADR Professionals”

1. What is a socio-technical system?

The socio-technical system is the shared relationship between an individual, their job, work group, their organization and its infrastructure, and the external environment. It consists of two coinciding systems, the technical and social system. The technical system is the organization of the tools, machines, equipment, and techniques of using these. These are all linked by the constant flow of information, materials, and energy and are designed to maximize efficiency and profit and save time. The social system includes the people of the organization, how they interact as a group, and their responses to the external environment. The social system deals with people’s values, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions and how they relate to motivation, achievement, growth, and perceived control of the present and future. These systems influence one another, and must be aligned to ensure employee’s psychological and job satisfaction needs are met, while also giving them means of control over the technical systems they apply.

1. Why does the author believe the Challenger mission failed?

The esteemed author believes that the Challenger mission failed mainly because of a misalignment in NASA’s organizational structure that put their focus on following rules and standard procedures instead of achieving the overall goal of ensuring a safe and successful launch. The author believes NASA’s organizational structure became too rigid and bureaucratical over time.  NASA relied too much on outsourcing, which took away from their old methods strict quality control, analysis, and testing. The outsourcing also made NASA’s engineers less involved with the shuttle in order to oversee external contractors. The growing bureaucracy moved NASA’s top management out of the realm of risk, so they focused more on production, policy, and the demand for performance.  NASA’s goal became finding the “one best way” of doing things and standardizing that throughout the organization. With technology and the environment ever changing, a bureaucratic structure was a hindrance instead of an improvement. The detachment of top managers is what propelled them to dispute the warnings of the engineers on the day of the launch. Instead of focusing on safety and success, the managers were more worried about the costs of postponing the launch and on the demand for performance. This led management to incorporate a satisficing solution, meaning they sacrificed the need for optimal conditions to satisfy their needs for a timely launch. The top management argued with the engineers to avoid delay, and imposed a form of group think. Group think is a tendency of decision makers in a group dealing with high pressure situations to arrive at a decision at any cost, often by taking extreme risks, downplaying unfavorable information, and forcing collective rationalization.