Columbia’s Final Mission document. Social Sciences. Coursework

Columbia Final Mission Document
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Columbia Final Mission Document
The Columbia mission was a catastrophic space shuttle disaster in 2003 that resulted in the loss of all the lives of the crew members (Starbuck & Farjoun, 2005). When the shuttle began dropping, a couple of NASA engineers were concerned about the safety of the crew. Organizational disasters destroy a reputation, trust, and loss of credibility. Also, accidents demonstrate how things can be wrong, especially in large institutions, and, therefore, give a chance for the staff members to reflect, be creative, innovative, and create room for improvement. As Dinku et al., (2010) illustrated, a couple of hours after the catastrophic fall of the spacecraft, NASA administrator convened the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) with the sole purpose of finding out the events that led to the accident. According to CAIB, the primary origin of the problem was the destruction in the thermal transmitters as a result of insulating foam striking the left-wing of the spacecraft.
Factors that Led to The Catastrophic Failure of Columbia Mission
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) also identified that the failure of the Columbia mission was a result of both short and long-term challenges within NASA (Niewoehner & Steidle, 2009). The catastrophic failure of the Columbia mission is a result of a combination of leadership, organizational, and political processes. Some of the factors that contributed to the mission failure include:
a) Leadership traits
Leadership is a primary factor that determines the success of an institution (Dunbar & Garud, 2009). Poor leadership affects how employees relate with the team leaders, thus having direct consequences on achieving the set targets. Before the failure of the Columbia mission, NASA leaders and lead engineers had noticed challenges with foam strikes with launches of other spaceships (Starbuck & Farjoun, 2005). However, on launching Space Shuttle Columbia, Donald McCormack had seen the difficulties in previous reports. However, during the MMT meeting, he could not raise any questions concerning the foam strikes since the rest of the members present in the meeting did not raise any objections. Thus, as indicated by Starbuck and Farjoun, (2005), NASA administrator Linda Ham did not take into consideration employees' opinions regarding the status of the conference-leading to the loss of lives of the astronauts. Also, the poor communication within NASA led to a lack of priority in listening for employees and a lack of passing of necessary information to the team members. Linda Ham was not a visionary leader. As a team leader, Ham did not focus on the factors that contribute to the success of the mission. In the end, she chose the task rather than saving the lives of the crew members of the spaceship (Starbuck & Farjoun, 2005).
b) Leadership styles
According to Guthrie & Shayo (2005), leadership approaches describe leaders basing on their characteristics. As a result, leaders can be autocratic, democratic, bureaucratic, or charismatic. However, leadership styles vary depending on the organization. During the Columbia Space Missi...