ABSTRACT

This chapter shows that the organizations responsible for regulating safety at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) failed to identify flaws in management procedures and technical design that, if corrected, might have prevented the Challenger tragedy. It aims to analyze NASA's safety regulatory system and specify the organizational bases of its ineffectiveness. NASA, like ail organizations, is subject to restraint and control that occur as a consequence of interaction with other organizations in its environment acting as consumers, suppliers, competitors, and controllers. Research on legally empowered agents of social control regulating business firms reveals how interorganizational relations constrain social control. The foundation of NASA's regulatory system was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. The consequences of autonomy and symbiotic interdependence between NASA and Congress would be the mitigation of Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel's efforts to bring a recalcitrant NASA into compliance. The NASA/contractor system's autonomy obstructed discovery, monitoring, and investigation of safety hazards.