Organizational Innovation and Change - Critical Thinking Mod 8 - The Essay - 1

Organizational Innovation and Change - Critical Thinking Mod 8 - The contest and Columbia Shuttle Disasters - Essay ExampleBoth the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters were a result of weak organizational cultures a bulky with other critical factors.After the Challenger disaster of 1986, the Rogers Commission came up with a number of recommendations for NASA which included a restructuring of the management structure as well as a change in the organizational culture in point to carry out a more centralized decision making for effective safety measures. As a result of these measures and recommendations, NASA changed its organizational culture by focusing more on the implementation of safety measures and by assigning more professionals for these safety and quality assurance measures. However, the aftermath of the Columbia disaster revealed that NASA was ineffective to sustain these effective changes as it had actually implemented downsizing policies in response to a lack of fun ding. Instead, of employing specialized and trained labor from within the high society for these delicate and critical safety measures, NASA instead resorted to outsourcing these responsibilities. Furthermore, the emphasis on the safety measures was reduced as the policies were directed towards cost reduction rather than on exploitation and safety measures. The policies adopted relied on the past success of NASA and the problems associated with safety, rather than researched upon, were ignored. Instead of scheduling meetings for further improvements and developments, the management focused on short term operations.In order to gain competitive advantage and sustain effective changes in the organization, it is important to invest in long term opportunities and carry out long term planning. It was also observed that NASA missed a number of signals and if these would have acknowledged, the disasters of Challenger and Columbia could have been avoided (Oberg, J. 2013). NASA also faced p roblems in terms of its pecking order and organizational control.