NASA When One Does Tend

NASA When one does tend to think of the NASA space program, perhaps the thought of the proud 1969 Apollo Moon landing are conjured along with the success that NASA subsequently had with the Voyager spacecraft mission that has so far been on track with regard to the predicted trajectory of its mission (Broad, 1990).

Therefore, what type of problem would the elite organization, an organization that assembles the most educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists, could these individuals have internally? The history of NASA funding has always been of issue as the program receives its budget from the executive branch of the federal government (Broad, 1990).

Therefore, NASA funding has been subject to cuts, at times extensive, for the federal government to divert funding to programs within departments such at the Department of Defense, that yield a more direct return to the military industrial complex that supports and protects its corporate backers.

"As NASA pushes toward returning the shuttle fleet to space, some current and former employees are questioning how serious the space agency is about fixing the "broken safety culture" that investigators have said was a major cause of the loss of the Columbia and its crew two years ago." (Schwartz, 2005) Subsequent lack of funding has rendered cuts to the budget of NASA, which has developed into administrative cutbacks and subsequently the recruitment of talent that may not be capable of handling the arduous and complicated mathematical and scientific rigor that is requisite to many of the programs within NASA.

Fiscal cutbacks to NASA has ostensibly forced the hand of the human resources, as well as capital resources and technology which have seem to correlate with major catastrophes and critical mission miscalculations leading to damaged craft and delayed shuttle launches.

"The shuttle Columbia, its countdown abruptly halted three times by technical problems, is now undergoing repairs to fix a new type of fuel leak that recently forced a flight postponement of 11 days." (Broad, 1990) The technical issues ostensibly are stem from the fiscal cutbacks to the National Aeronautical and Space Administration's budget which caused the operating budget for these missions to be stretched in ways that would cause errors and miscalculations, most likely in the areas of materials science and the ability for chosen materials to handle certain stresses.

Such stresses potentially include prolonged exposure to high heat and cold temperatures, and dramatic changes in pressure. "It's a workforce subject that has suddenly gotten deadly serious.

Investigators seeking answers to the Columbia disaster say human resources issues may be at least partly to blame for the tragedy." (Shuit, 2003) Statement of the Relevant Principles to be applied The principles appertaining to the understanding and the functionality of NASA are broad and dynamic in that human resources must facilitate internal training programs to ensure that proper training to the level of ability show in past NASA employees.

Additionally, a thorough and rigorous six sigma program should be instituted at NASA as process control and the limitation of variation is extremely important when considering the very limited range of acceptability regarding the variance of the successful operation in comparison to the unsuccessful. Therefore critical areas include; Strategy and Management, Organizational Management, Institutional Innovation, Human Resources Management, Change Leadership and Planning Processes, and Applied Strategy. Inclusively, these areas of managerial function incorporate a top down management of human and capital resources linked by information and other forms of technology.

Program and Project Management are critical to identifying the most urgent and important programs that should undergo funding given the budget constraint NASA faces each year. Often, NASA must choose between research expeditions and surveillance missions where the benefit to human kind is more innate and intangible than capitalists are accustomed. NASA is seen as an effort of excess, that is, the federal government had generated a large enough tax base to fund programs that enable the exploration of space.

NASA is a publicly funded program, as tax payer dollars enable the development of the NASA program. Henry Mitzberg is a pioneer in the area of strategy and management and therefore his ideas are applicable to the renovation of NASA. "Even though anybody in the organization can come up with new strategic ideas (and everybody should be encouraged to do so), it is the responsibility of top management to make the final choices.

There have been many calls lately to make the process of strategy development democratic and flexible to bring everybody in the organization into the process. The thinking here is that the odds of conceiving truly innovative ideas are increased if thousands of people, rather than just five or ten senior managers, put their minds to work." (McCarthy, Markides, 2000) Additionally, Mitzberg addresses public policy as a function of applied strategy that is necessary to guide political systems. NASA is guided by a political system, there is no question.

"Mitzberg argues that organizations display eight structural configurations and corresponding coordinating mechanisms. Such structural configurations are shaped by a variety of contingency factors, especially power and environmental ones. Using Mintzberg's work, eight policy modes, corresponding to structural configurations within government organizations and political systems, are identified and placed on a matrix that comprises two dimensions: standardization and centralization." (Matheson, 2009) The standardization within NASA has always been the process of mechanical and administrative planning to yield a framework that can be replicated, ostensibly possessing internal and external validity.

However, standardization would have eliminated problems inherent to the processes of the internal and external operations of NASA and therefore many of the issues with respect to human resources inefficiencies at NASA and the operational disasters should not have occurred. Max Weber has contributed greatly to the area of organizational management and has participated in identifying trends within economics and strategy. "Three approaches are dominant in contemporary research on the economics of strategy.

These are (1) the industry analysis approach associated with Michael Porter, (2) approaches based on the new industrial organization and game-theoretic reasoning, and (3) the resources-based view. In 1980s, a 'strong wind from economies' (Mintzberg, 1994) buffeted the strategic management discipline, represented by the publication of Porter's Competitive Strategy (Porter, 1980). The neglect of the resource and capability side of firms was the major weakness of Porter's analysis." (Fu-Lai Yu, 2003) The principle of institutional innovation as a function of management and leadership is described by the renowned management scholar, Peter Drucker.

"Peter Drucker often said there are no facts about the future, which begs the question, "How does an organization manage it?." In Managing in Turbulent Times, Drucker argues that given the certainty of a turbulent future, the most important task for management in such times is organizational survival (Drucker, 1980). While the task is daunting, Drucker left a legacy that provides guidance about how to manage the future; a legacy grounded in the concept of institutional innovation." (Wallman, 2010) Further analysis by Drucker identifies the concept of institutional management.

"In 1954, Drucker invented the concept of institutional management, combining the management of the organization and the management of the institutional processes used by the organization. Similarly, institutional management strategy is defined as the organizational processes and belief systems used to achieve strategic goals (Steidlmeier, 1993)." (Wallman, 2010) Analysis and Application of Principles The NASA space program has been subject to cost reduction as a function of its budget as approved by the executive branch of the federal government.

The demand to maintain and improve on the current level of quality and successes of the program's past has caused NASA to make lofty promises that may not be entirely out of the realm of possibility if the right process control and management of program activity is in place. Using Drucker's Institutional Innovation is requisite to have a budget that can enable the development of internal processes necessary to facilitate innovation.

Given the increase in the budgetary constraint with regard to hiring new employees and retaining skilled employees due to the high cost of retirement packages and the level of salary associated with senior pay structures, the organization saw it mandatory to offer buyout packages to the senior employees and to reduce the salary of the entry level staff and management.

Such cutbacks have caused the most appropriate human talent to seek employment at rival departments such as the Department of Defense, or to enter into private contracting to the federal government or work with private organizations. Reviewing Max Weber's Organizational Management theories, the culture of the organization has been reported as in major need of reintegration into a holistic and supportive collective that is symbiotic in its approach to one another and to its affiliation to the organization.

The focus on safety and on the importance of safety throughout the process of administration and development appeared to be no longer a primary objective in the daily operations of the staff.

Specifically, "An organization's safety culture is defined as the shared values, beliefs, assumptions, and norms that may govern organizational decision-making, as well as individual and group attitudes about danger, safety, and the proper conduct of hazardous operations." (Wong, Desai, Madsen, Ciavarelli, 2005) The notion regarding NASA from outside observers was that the culture within NASA was not reflective of the aforementioned, underlying fabric that governs relationships and unites a workforce toward achieving a common goal.

The practice of change leadership is important to the overall contiguous development and success of programs within NASA. As leadership within successful programs are able to transition to new programs within NASA, new methodologies and a more comprehensive framework that governs and directs the operations of a particular operation become inherent to the operations and administrative fabric of the organization.

Management than only needs to ensure that those requiring further training are able to receive training and that process management techniques are adhered to and findings from the results are implemented. Ostensibly, the human resources deficiency and the design failures that have led to the problems associated with events of disaster or delay for NASA can be addressed via the six sigma methodology. "As Larry Mulloy, one of the launch officials 'stated', "We were lucky-just dumb-ass lucky-that we hadn't had a disaster like this before" (personal communication, May 15, 1991).

(Maier, 2002) The ability to address precisely where the deficiencies inherently lay with the daily activity and integration of the NASA workforce with the internal and external environment subject to the continuous facilitation of project goals. For instance, a project may involve a workgroup with the job of ensuring the cabin pressure is properly regulated at all times and is properly integrated with all systems that enable its function and not interfering with concurrent operations.

Additionally, there are political processes from executive branch officials and within NASA that parlay into the operations of NASA. Contractors that establish a relationship with NASA are often investigated when a problem arises regarding the operations of the material.

"NASA launch officials proceeded over the objections of a second prime contractor, Rockwell, that were expressed the morning of the launch itself, when the senior Rockwell aerospace manager, Rocco Petrone alarmed by reports of ice chunks covering the launch gantry-instructed his on-site representative, Bob Glaysher, "to make sure NASA understands that Rockwell feels it is not safe to launch" (Rogers, 1986, p. 1800). Internal training programs within NASA should have been within the budget from an early period.

The program does not adequately train its employees subject to the responsibility inherent in the operations of the administration. The appearance of NASA relying on the innate capability of its workforce upon arrival to NASA is insufficient to enable the future activity of the organization. This is due to the lack of improvement in the education of subsequent generations since the peak of NASA success at the time of Apollo 13.

With less in the budget and increasing challenges facing NASA, the inability to address the issues of training a sustainable workforce to handle the technical workload will inevitably result in additional failure for NASA. The hiring process is additionally a function of human resources management. The notion is to remove all non-fundamental aspects of recruitment, evaluation, and training such as searching social media websites for 'dirt' on the potential new hire or by monitoring communications and testing bodily samples to monitor outside work activities.

The fundamental aspects are then in focus which are directly a function of the job design that is inherently facilitated by the role within process design and control. Conclusion NASA has seen a period of phenomenal success and subsequent accolades for the technical and scientific nature of the program. The benefit of NASA has been the development of technology that has trickled into the consumer markets, such as materials used in clothing and new operations and technologies now used in laptop computers.

These advancements are attributable to NASA yet with drastic cuts to the funding of the program, the level of technology that is a derivative of the program may be eliminated. The recommended managerial approaches which focus around human resources management all the way down into the supply chain are designed to address all facets of the comprehensively integrated yet someone disenfranchised managed operations and programs within the administration. Most importantly, the culture of safety must be reintegrated into the fabric of the organizational management.

Without the reintegration of safety as the unifying force, there is likely to be continued failure as the motivation to remove variability in terms of the psychological component is absent and therefore fatigue and stress become larger components within the probability for human error and failure. The budget may not allocate funding to finance all that NASA would like to undertake. However, investment into extensive training programs will assist to prepare employees to understand the very intricate nature of the mathematical modeling that is inherent to the proper functioning.