For anyone else interested in how the organizational incentives and institutional culture at NASA helped to set the stage for the Challenger disaster, I highly

For anyone else interested in how the organizational incentives and institutional culture at NASA helped to set the stage for the Challenger disaster, I highly recommend The Challenger Launch Decision[1] by Diane Vaughan. From the New York Times review[2]: In "The Challenger Launch Decision" Diane Vaughan, a sociologist at Boston College, takes up where the Rogers Commission and Claus Jensen leave off. She finds the traditional explanation of the accident -- "amorally calculating managers intentionally violating rules" -- to be profoundly unsatisfactory. Why, she asks, would they knowingly indulge such a risk when the future of the space program, to say nothing of the lives of the astronauts, hung in the balance? "It defied my understanding," she says. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/995029.The_Challenger_Launch_Decision https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/995029.The_Challenger_La... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/13/nnp/19074.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/13/nnp/19074.html