The White House and Congress both applied external political pressure on NASA to launch the Columbia space shuttle (cited in the case study). First, the White House had resorted to cut down on the expenditure to fund NASA’s space exploration projects. Both Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush had cut down the funding to NASA significantly because they had cited that the funds were unnecessary and that NASA needed to use the most efficient methods of operation to fund its projects on the allocated budget. Specifically, NASA feared that President Clinton would have favored his current option of purchasing Russian hardware to promote the US (Cited in the case study). In addition, Congress was on the lookout; it wanted to regulate the activities of NASA as much as it could through legislation on funding. These two forces exerted much pressure on NASA to prove to Congress that it would meet the operational deadlines as well as operate within the allocated budgets during its space exploration programs. The public was also at the back of the political pressure; the case study reports that most of the public found pride in the fact that the US was the most dominant nation in space exploration. Therefore, NASA felt the pressure not to let down Congress and the White House in return since it would mean a letdown of the populace. For such reasons, NASA was involved in a constant update of Congress about the progress it had achieved since the management at the organization thought it was a way of impressing both the public and the White House.
Q2
The perception that NASA’s space exploration projects were consuming much of the valuable resources of the federal spending as well as the need to uphold a good image for the organization were the most significant sources of pressure. First, the political regime under Presidents Clinton and Bush reduced the federal expenditure considerably since they had considered that they were almost too expensive to justify their outcome. President Clinton considered that NASA had been overspending in the name of safety, which it would have achieved on smaller budgets. Therefore, the political pressure forced NASA to accept the funding allocated to it and it hoped to still achieve the same levels of progress as it had done in the past. In addition, NASA was out to uphold a reputable image to the public, which was to give its citizens more pride by launching yet another space shuttle into space (cited in the case study).
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Q3
The administrator at NASA was responsible for the decision to launch the space shuttle. For instance, the administrator was engaged in a direct communication with the engineers and the rest of the staff that worked on the project. This placed him in a good position to understand the progress levels and assess the levels of preparedness that the organization had attained. It means that the administrator had the ability to negotiate more time before the scheduled launch of the Columbia space shuttle. He would have cited the managerial decision-making breaches that had led to the air disaster that involved the Challenger space shuttle in 1986 (Starbuck and Farjoun, 2009). This way, Congress would have treated the issue of safety inspection anew considering that it was one of the most common cause of failure in NASA’s projects. Instead, the administrator pushed the employees to work and meet the deadline, which he updated both the White House and Congress. The extra pressure from the external political environment had spilt to the internal environment. The rush to launch the space shuttle in time, therefore, meant that the project team ignored the need to consider safety inspection, which NASA had lain down as a resolution after the Challenger incidence. In fact, the resolutions had been ignored completely since Congress had instituted the cut on federal funding to such projects (Starbuck and Farjoun, 2009).
It is noteworthy that the Administrator had the responsibility of communicating with the stakeholders during the project’s course, which means that he was responsible for the launch decision (Starbuck and Farjoun, 2009). The administrator had the power to control the launch; perceived from the perspective that he ought to have ensured its responsible use by instructing the employees to ensure safety measures were adhered to as much as possible. He should also have asked for the perspective of the employees and engineers about the organization’s readiness to meet the deadline since some of them felt they were being pushed too far (cited in the case study). This conclusion also draws reference from what the case study indicated as a contradiction in the report that NASA gave after the catastrophe and what the employees reported. According to the case study, NASA reported that it was not under any pressure to launch the space shuttle, but the employees reported the existence of such pressure.
Q4
Political dimensions are often ignored because organizations have the task of meeting the interest of different groups (Stillman, 2010). For instance, NASA should have heeded to the safety needs of the astronauts aboard the Columbia space shuttle as well the effects that a possible failure would have cost the taxpayer. In addition, political dimensions are often ignored because of administrative rationality. It means that administrators need to have their own decision-making processes, which do not necessarily rely on the political pressures from outside their organizations. For instance, the NASA administrator should have had a rational decision-making approach that would have avoided the disaster since it occurred because of the same poor decision-making approaches of former administrators that preceded the Challenger space shuttle (Stillman, 2010). Political dimensions are also ignored on the fact that they are potential sources of conflict within organizations. For instance, the case study highlights the extent of the political pressures placed by the Congress and White House on NASA, which led to a conflict between the Engineers and the administrator during the process of completing the project. For this reason, political dimensions might result in organizational fragmentation since it might cause a division among the organization’s members according to their perception of the political environment (Stillman, 2010).
Q5
The case study is a perfect example that NASA would have used the RADAR model to solve it ethically. For instance, the model’s first component is recognize, which NASA should have used to identify the possibilities of a mechanical failure in design because of the political pressure to launch the space shuttle within the specified deadline (Ferrell and Fraedrich, 2015). The second component is avoid, and it should have directed the management at the organization to avoid hasty decision making because it had caused the occurrence of the challenger project about 17 years before the Columbia project (Stillman, 2010). This component should also have directed the administration to avoid yielding to political pressure and practice ethical decision making. The discover component would have led the team to realize that political pressures would put much pressure on the employees and cause them to ignore delivery pushes from the government (Ferrell and Fraedrich, 2015). The answer component of the model should have been used by the organization after the project failure to respond to the causes of the catastrophe. The team should have analyzed all the reports on the accident and the issues that prompted it and used such information in the recover component to reach the best resolutions to avoid future accidents.
References
Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases . Nelson Education.
Starbuck, W., & Farjoun, M. (Eds.). (2009). Organization at the limit: Lessons from the Columbia disaster . John Wiley & Sons.
Stillman, R. J. (2010). Public administration: Concepts and cases . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
