The Challenger Disaster: Poor Leadership And Groupthink

The Challenger disaster is a prime example of poor leadership and Groupthink. When examining the disaster that took the lives of 7 people, this occurred do to multiple forms of neglect and pressure felt by leaders (UK Essays, 2015). This disaster occurred due to numerous defects within NASA’s engineering leaders, pressure from the media, public opinion, and the relationship with leaders at Morton Thiokol, makers of the defective O-rings that ultimately destroyed the Challenger into pieces (Dimitroff, Schmidt, & Bond, 2005).
The main components that led to the disaster all involved poor leadership, a majority involving examples of Groupthink. Groupthink not only played a role when engineering leaders from NASA and Morton Thiokol spoke the day of the incident, but it also took place within NASA as well involving their leadership, and under management. The major decisions on January 28th 1986. Along with prior ones by top management were brought to light after the disaster. One of the multiple reasons was poor leadership within NASA itself. At the start in 1986 NASA was ill equip with an effective,
Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a historic flight to send the first civilian, an American school teacher, into space (Ajith & Chakrabarti, 2012). Approximately 73 seconds after the launch, the Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven astronauts on board (Ajith & Chakrabarti, 2012). Investigations following the incident discovered faulty O-rings that had reduced resiliency in colder weather, which caused a series of events that led to the explosion (Dimitroff, Schmidt, & Bond, 2005). Many researchers have studied and analyzed the circumstances surrounding the disaster in order to better understand the human errors that caused the deaths of seven people. One theory behind the disaster is groupthink among NASA and Morton Thiokol Corporation engineers and