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Assessing NASA’s Safety Culture: The Limits and Possibilities of High‐Reliability Theory
Author(s) -
Boin Arjen,
Schulman Paul
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2008.00954.x
Subject(s) - reliability (semiconductor) , human spaceflight , safety culture , spaceflight , demise , benchmark (surveying) , space shuttle , reliability engineering , computer science , aeronautics , political science , management , engineering , law , spacecraft , aerospace engineering , geography , economics , physics , power (physics) , geodesy , quantum mechanics
After the demise of the space shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board sharply criticized NASA’s safety culture. Adopting the high‐reliability organization as a benchmark, the board concluded that NASA did not possess the organizational characteristics that could have prevented this disaster. Furthermore, the board determined that high‐reliability theory is “extremely useful in describing the culture that should exist in the human spaceflight organization.” In this article, we argue that this conclusion is based on a misreading and misapplication of high‐reliability research. We conclude that in its human spaceflight programs, NASA has never been, nor could it be, a high‐reliability organization. We propose an alternative framework to assess reliability and safety in what we refer to as reliability‐seeking organizations.