This paper provides a brief organizational analysis of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA). The analysis considers (a) history, (b) mission and vision, (c) goals and objectives, and (d) and assessment of organizational strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats (SWOT).
NASA's official history as an organization began on 1 October 1958. The United States government had been engaged in aeronautic research since 1915, and the government had been engaged in upper atmosphere research to advance technological knowledge and weapons development since the late-1940s (Garber & Launius, 2004). On 4 October 1957, however, the Former Soviet Union launched the Sputnik I, an action that frightened American politicians to the point that they declared that the Former
Soviet Union had opened a technology-gap that placed the United States at-risk. As a consequence, the United States Congress rather quickly by congressional standards enacted legislation enabling the creation of NASA, an organization that henceforth would coordinate all government aeronautical and space-related research (National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, 1958).
In the period since its creation, NASA has experienced spectacular successes and equally spectacular failures, all of which are well known to Americans and to most people around the world. While NASA's most spectacular failures have also been tragic, to be fair to the organization, it must be stated that the weight of NASA's successes far exceeds the effects of its failures (Klerkx, 2004; Gorn, 2001). Nevertheless, some critics think that NASA is failing to live up to its promise (Klerkx, 2004). It may be, however, that NASA is simply not living up to the dreams of some of its critics.
The mission statement and vision statement of NASA, as is true of most organizations, tend to change over time as the focus of the organization shifts. Shifts in focus most frequently occur because o...