Abstract

At the urging of managers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on the night before the fatal launch of the Challenger, the managers at Thiokol reconsidered their judgment not to launch the next day. Although there were no new data, and although their engineers still objected, the Thiokol managers took off their “engineering hats” and put on their “management hats” and decided to launch anyway. The urging of Marshall management and pressure from other sources intimidated Thiokol management and at least one Marshall engineer to do what their superiors wanted them to do. Four conditions created the intimidation: (a) a fear of retaliation, (b) a lack of justice, (c) Marshall's tradition of discouraging the reporting of bad news, and (d) an objectionable act, that is, overruling the engineers on a life or death technical decision.