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Apollo, Challenger, Columbia: The Decline of the Space Program
provides unparalleled longitudinal insight into the organizational
successes and failures of NASA. The book treats NASA over its
45-year history from 1958 to 2003, concentrating on five "data
points":
* 1967: when Tompkins first served as a Summer Faculty Consultant
in Organizational Communication to legendary rocket scientist
Wernher von Braun during the Apollo Program.
* 1968: when he served in the same capacity to help reorganize
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
* 1986: when he investigated the communication failures that
caused the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
* 1987: when he researched NASA's highly successful Aviation
Safety Reporting System.
* 2003: when he interpreted the communication failures leading up
to the catastrophic failure of the space shuttle Columbia.
The result is a presentation of concrete communication correlates
of organizational success and failure. Tompkins is a master of what
Clifford Geertz called "thick description." The result is a
compelling, richly detailed, longitudinal case study concentrating
on processual changes in communication-as-organization. In this
book, Tompkins introduces theory subtly, inserting it to explain
details of the organization that would otherwise defy
understanding.
In considering other organizations in trouble, Tompkins identifies
ten "communication transgressions," one of which, for example, is
"ignorantia affectata"--an affected or cultivated ignorance of
organizational problems. In contrast to these failed organizations
and their pathologies, Tompkins offers a sketch of two healthy
organizations that live by "valuelogics"--applying ethical values
in the organizational workplace. There are lessons to be learned
from NASA's disasters. With all of the high-profile ethical lapses
in U.S. corporations, Tompkins advocates individuals and
organizations taking responsibility for their actions.
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