| Organizational
Communication Imperatives: Lessons of the Space Program, by Phillip
K. Tompkins, provides unparalleled insight into the communication successes
and failures of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. It spans a 25-year
period--from the Apollo Program to the present-day dilemmas of the space
program. Much of the book focuses on communication problems involved in the
Challengerdisaster.
Tompkins is a master
of what Clifford Geertz called "thick description." The result is a compelling,
richly-detailed case study that brings alive the field of communication
to students. Organizational Communication Imperatives eases
the job of teaching by providing students with a narrative that stimulates
interest, contextualizes abstract principles, and leads students into theory
with greater understanding.
Through their study
of the Marshall Center, students are exposed to
- how complex organizational
structure changes over time.
- how employees are
affected by these changes.
- how an organization
may react to a major crisis.
- how an organization
responds to different types of leadership.
- what it takes to
bring an ailing organization back to health.
The text thus provides
a more comprehensive insight into the functioning of one organization--rather
than attempting to describe how all organizations function--than is offered
in any other book of this type. Yet the analysis offered can be applied
to any organization to improve communication.
Tompkins's work as
an organizational communication consultant to the Marshall Center during
the Apollo Program, under legendary German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun,
is well known. In 1990, Tompkins returned to Huntsville to interview top
management and assess the Center's recovery since the Challenger disaster.
The book takes the
shape of a first-person narrative, which gives it an accessible, personal
style rarely found in textbooks. Students will have no difficulty with comprehension.
It is also unusual
to present primary-source findings in a classroom text, as this book does.
Students gain a sense of how original research is conducted as they use
the book, which encourages development of their critical thinking skills.
Suggested questions
for discussion and essays, as well as class projects and exercises, are
included in an appendix to assist the instructor in using the book to maximum
advantage.
Table of Contents
1. The Challenger
Accident
Recounts the tragic
demise of Challenger and explores its meaning, relying on media
coverage of the accident and its use of "metaphorical engineering."
2. The Imperative
of Studying Organizational Communication
An overview of the
field, recounted through four anecdotes--two of which are drawn from Tompkins'
experience with NASA--that reveal the essence of organizational communication.
3. The Marshall
Space Center and the Apollo Project
The author's 1967
experience as a summer faculty consultant in organizational communication
under Wernher von Braun. Tompkins is charged with conducting a diagnostic
study of the Center as a communication system and searching for systemic
problems by means of interviews with top and middle managers.
4. Some Problems
of Communication at the Marshall Center
Tompkins is asked
to delve into several problem areas of communication at Marshall including:
the formalism-impersonality syndrome, the invisibility of the boss, lack
of lateral openness, the science-technology barrier, communication bottlenecks,
external interfaces, and the problem of staff offices.
5. Staff and Board
Meeting
On von Braun's bidding,
the author presents his findings to the Center's top managers, along with
a series of recommendations.
6. Reorganizing
the Marshall Center
In 1968, now that
the Saturn V moon rocket has proved itself, von Braun is pursuing new projects
and planning on how to communicate about them. Tompkins explores new schemes
of organizational communication that will give systems engineering a central
role in future R&D.
7. A Reading of
the Rogers Commission Report
A reconsideration
of the 1986 Challenger accident as documented by the Rogers Commission
Report and other published sources.
8. Feynman's Two
Experiments
Richard Feynman,
Nobel Laureate in Physics, was a member of the Rogers Commission and is
best known for his simple but dramatic experiment using a rubber washer and
a cup of ice water to demonstrate why cold weather kept the Challenger's
O-rings from functioning properly. His second experiment, one
which concluded that the Challenger accident was rooted in problems
of organizational communication, is recounted here.
9. Huntsville Revisited
Tompkins returns
in 1990, four years after the Challenger disaster, to interview top
management and assess the Marshall Center's recovery from an organizational
communication standpoint.
10. The Lucas Era
at MSFC
Marshall's problems
of organizational communication at the time of the Challenger accident
are analyzed.
11. Organizational
Forgetting
The author presents
a hypothesis that a kind of organizational "memory loss" led to the abandonment
of several highly successful organizational communication practices developed
under von Braun.
12. Death and Rebirth
This chapter examines
the Marshall Center in the aftermath of the Challenger explosion
and its effects on the employees. The organization went through the grieving
process and a time of purgation--followed by a remarkable transformation
and rebirth.
13. J. R. Thompson's
Response
The factors that
brought the Marshall Center back to life are discussed in an interview with
J.R. Thompson, who was named director after the Challenger tragedy.
14. The Meaning
and Future of the Space Program
The author's analysis
is brought up to date with a current look at NASA and the Marshall Center's
present leadership. Tompkins argues for a renewed national commitment
to a first-rate space program as an organizational model of excellence,
an examplar from which other enterprises can learn.
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