ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the exploration of the human and managerial accommodations required by these complex systems with an intensive investigation of the US space program. Distinctive managerial techniques are associated with the various interlinkages necessary to align diverse segments of this work flow. Project managers, a host of "intermediaries" and methods of monitoring, intervention, and persuasion abound. Management provides pressure in the right direction so that most of the time the system will be brought back to its original course. Inevitably the manager comes to employ a battery of polar, or contradictory, strategies which serve to cause oscillations in the system. NASA continually demanded systemwide performance visibility and used a large battery of techniques to attain it—data banks, configuration management, endless performance-review meetings, and so on. NASA was able to penetrate the total work system that it had created in an almost unprecedented manner—contractor monitoring became a fine art.
