THE NASA DECISION-MAKING ENVIRONMENT
This research examines the decision-making environment within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In part, this examination is based on Case No. 25, ôThe NASA Space Shuttle Disasterö (Marx, Stubbart, Traub, & Cavanaugh, 1987, pp. 829-844).
NASA is an organization that owes its beginning to a political crisis in the United States. Early Soviet space successes further fueled Cold War fears among the American population; fears that were maintained at high levels by American politicians at the best of times.
The success of the Soviet Sputnik program caused the American government to rush head-long and ill-prepared into a ôme tooö effort that resulted in both embarrassing failures and modest successes. In the wake of these efforts, NASA was formed to provide some cohesiveness to the American space program, which, in turn, was intended to restore American confidence and salve a wounded national pride.
President John F. Kennedy, who campaigned in part on the basis of a false claim of a ômissile-gapö that placed the United States at a dangerous disadvantage in relation to the Soviet Union, was compelled to do something in this area after his election, even though the United States was well ahead of the Soviets militarily. Further, the Kennedy Administration, soon after assuming office, was forced to accept responsibility for the ôBay of Pigsö fiasco in Cuba. A program to land a man on the moon, thus, was a perfect political vehicle to take the mind of the American public off of each of these issues, even if it did not rank particularly high as a scientific priority (Fishman, 1992, p. 27).
Regardless of what the underlying political purpose might have been, President Kennedy set an understandable and realizable goal for NASA, communicated that goal to both the organization and to the American public, and worked with Congress to assure that the...