Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating account, tortured writing
Review: Penetrating account of the organizational causes of the Challenger disaster. The author shows that the engineering mistake that led to the disaster was not the result of intentional wrongdoing ("amoral calculator" thesis = managers overruling engineers due to economic and/or political pressures) but that quite on the contrary that the NASA and contractor teams played by the rulebook to a fault and that the mistake was "systematic and socially organized". A must read for everybody interested in organizational dynamics or in how to manage risk in the development of technological innovations.
Given the fascinating subject matter and revisionist thesis it's a pity that the writing is very uneven. Most of the "thick description" of the decisions around the booster joint from the early design days to the post-mortem by the Presidential Commission is quite readable. This core of the text, however, is embedded in an unbearably repetitive and plodding overall narrative flow (the account could probably be reduced in length by 50%) which in places degenerates into (sociological?) opaque language. Taking a cue from the author's concept of "structural secrecy" (things are hidden not on purpose but due to organizational compartmentalization), the argument of the book loses a lot of its force due to the undisciplined way of telling it; the author could profit from a strong editor.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Should be read by all people who make decisions. Explains how well educated people can discommunicate when under pressure and make decisions that risk lives. Also explains how logical thought can be severely missused to justify actions. Shows how cost, schedule and performance trade-offs are made. Frequently 'senior management' are driven by cost and schedule and engineers are put in the position of proving that performance failure will result. The sad thing with this particular case is that the necessary information was available BEFORE THE LAUNCH and a gamble was taken.
Rating:
Summary: Institutions Create and Condone Risk
Review: The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. To millions of viewers, it is a moment they will never forget. Official inquiries into the accident placed the blame with a "frozen, brittle O ring." In this book, Diane Vaughan, a Boston College Professor of Sociology, does not stop there. In what I think is a brilliant piece of research, she traces the threads of the disaster's roots to fabric of NASA's institutional life and culture. NASA saw itself competing for scarce resources. This fostered a culture that accepted risk-taking and corner-cutting as norms that shaped decision-making. Small, seemingly harmless modifications to technical and procedural standards propelled the space agency toward the disaster. No specific rules were broken, yet well-intentioned people produced great harm. Vaughan often resorts to an academic writing style, yet there is no confusion about its conclusion. "The explanation of the Challenger launch is a story of how people who worked together developed patterns that blinded them to the consequences of their actions," wrote Dr. Vaughan. "It is not only about the development of norms but about the incremental expansion of normative boundaries: how small changes--new behaviors that were slight deviations from the normal course of events- gradually became the norm, providing a basis for accepting additional deviance. Nor rules were violated; there was no intent to do harm. Yet harm was done. Astronauts died." For project and risk managers, this book offers a rare warning of the hazards of working in structured and institutionalized environments.
Rating:
Summary: Institutions Create and Condone Risk
Review: The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. To millions of viewers, it is a moment they will never forget. Official inquiries into the accident placed the blame with a "frozen, brittle O ring." In this book, Diane Vaughan, a Boston College Professor of Sociology, does not stop there. In what I think is a brilliant piece of research, she traces the threads of the disaster's roots to fabric of NASA's institutional life and culture. NASA saw itself competing for scarce resources. This fostered a culture that accepted risk-taking and corner-cutting as norms that shaped decision-making. Small, seemingly harmless modifications to technical and procedural standards propelled the space agency toward the disaster. No specific rules were broken, yet well-intentioned people produced great harm. Vaughan often resorts to an academic writing style, yet there is no confusion about its conclusion. "The explanation of the Challenger launch is a story of how people who worked together developed patterns that blinded them to the consequences of their actions," wrote Dr. Vaughan. "It is not only about the development of norms but about the incremental expansion of normative boundaries: how small changes--new behaviors that were slight deviations from the normal course of events- gradually became the norm, providing a basis for accepting additional deviance. Nor rules were violated; there was no intent to do harm. Yet harm was done. Astronauts died." For project and risk managers, this book offers a rare warning of the hazards of working in structured and institutionalized environments.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent review of organizational theory of risky decisions
Review: This book reviews in great detail the processes that went into
(and predated) the decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger.
It takes a potentially "new" view of this decision, namely outlining how the problem wasn't 'a few bad managers willing
to explicitly sacrifice safety for the sake of getting this
particular shuttle off the pad' {my words}. Instead, the problem was an entire culture, at NASA, at Morton Thiokol, and
in the country as a whole, that emphasized the production schedule, normalized deviance (i.e. rationalized the aberrant
behavior of the O-rings in the joints of the booster), and constructed the "risk assessment" to suit a wide variety of needs.
This book will join the shelf with a very few other works on
decision making in high-hazard environments, particularly Perrow's
NORMAL ACCIDENTS, and Scott Sagan's LIMITS OF SAFETY.
Rating:
Summary: great analysis-must read for managers in high risk industry
Review: This is the most comprehensive, thorough and believable analysis of the Challenger shuttle disaster that is available. Diane Vaughn goes far beyond the newspaper accounts or even the capitol hill hearings and really gets to the root causes of this incident found in the management culture of NASA and contractors. I would definitely recommend this to anyone involved in managing risk whether in the aircraft / aerospace industry or any other fundamentally risky industry (refining, chemical manufacturing, construction, etc...)
Rating:
Summary: great analysis-must read for managers in high risk industry
Review: This is the most comprehensive, thorough and believable analysis of the Challenger shuttle disaster that is available. Diane Vaughn goes far beyond the newspaper accounts or even the capitol hill hearings and really gets to the root causes of this incident found in the management culture of NASA and contractors. I would definitely recommend this to anyone involved in managing risk whether in the aircraft / aerospace industry or any other fundamentally risky industry (refining, chemical manufacturing, construction, etc...)
Rating:
Summary: An Eye-opening Look at NASA, Bureaucracies, and Risk.
Review: Until you read this book, you don't really have an appreciation of how much the public perception of NASA is set up by PR and hangover love for the Apollo program. Vaughan has done an amazing job of looking at the psychology of the decision to launch Challenger despite the known risks and the repeated warnings. It is exhaustively researched and includes tons of primary source material. Saddest of all is the recent history that seems to indicate that NASA has not learned from its mistakes. Anyone who works in a managment situation or is part of a "management chain" should read this. Anyone who is familiar with the term "normalizing risk" should be required to read this. It gives a lot of insight into the human nature of bureaucracies. It is one of those books that will really change the way you look at things.
Rating:
Summary: Who would have thought....
Review: Who would have thought that the most cognizant explanation of the Challenger accident would be written from an industrial psychology perspective? I've worked for NASA contractors for 24 years and have dealt with all of the types of various reviews and "overhead chart" engineering and management discussions and telecons she studied. I read this book when it first came out and have referred others to it as one of the best texts on management, technical decision making, and quality assurance that I can think of. Years of education led me to think that I was a "professional" but, as Ms Vaughn so eloquently demonstrates, there is no real aerospace engineering profession in the context of the NASA/Industry partnership.
Rating:
Summary: Who would have thought....
Review: Who would have thought that the most cognizant explanation of the Challenger accident would be written from an industrial psychology perspective? I've worked for NASA contractors for 24 years and have dealt with all of the types of various reviews and "overhead chart" engineering and management discussions and telecons she studied. I read this book when it first came out and have referred others to it as one of the best texts on management, technical decision making, and quality assurance that I can think of. Years of education led me to think that I was a "professional" but, as Ms Vaughn so eloquently demonstrates, there is no real aerospace engineering profession in the context of the NASA/Industry partnership.
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