Critical Perspectives on Management and Organisations - Essay Example

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the groupthink implications, which could easily be pointed out as one of the reasons leading to the crisis. The decisions were either taken alone or by the group in totality, but if the decisions taken are imperfect, then outcomes have huge implications on the society. This study discusses the way in which Janis’ theory of groupthink can be linked to the space shuttle disaster. Groupthink can be described as a psychological process of the group members, where people end up taking an erroneous decision that affects them adversely.

This implies that the group unanimously takes a decision, despite the existence of another correct course of action. The proponent of this theory is Irving Janis and his researches show that, at times, group of individuals takes successful decisions and at other times, they are unsuccessful. The root cause for failing to analyse the problem comes from the inability of group members to challenge the traditional understanding. This is because they feel empowered if all members agree to a certain perspective (even if it is erroneous) and fails to provide alternative, critique or a new opinion.

This essay will first establish a thorough understanding of the groupthink theory and various critiques that has been proposed by other eminent researchers. The next section deals with application of the groupthink theory on the Challenger space shuttle disaster. This is followed by an alternative theory developed by Whyte in order to explain the Challenger disaster. The recommendations and conclusion are mentioned in the last section. Firstly, the managers of NASA were fully aware of flaws in the design of Morton Thiokol’s O-ring.

NASA had tried to underplay the problem at hand and the managers decided to stay on schedule. There were also evidences that data, which was provided to the Group Decision Support System (GDSS) of NASA from Thiokol, had declared that it would be safe to launch the mission.