The ”human factor” or Why social perspectives on technology development are important Marie Aurell Department of Industrial economics Blekinge Institute of Technology

Remember this?

The Challenger disaster Took place on the 28th of January Seven astronauts lost their lives on live TV. Years and years of work, billions of dollars, down the drain. Deep crisis for NASA and the space programme. How could it happen? What went wrong? And specifically: What’s to learn from this in relation to other types of technology development projects?

What do you do after a disaster? You investigate (the Rogers commission). You look for an explanation (and a scapegoat?) You want to learn, in order to avoid making the same mistake again. So, what was found to have caused the Challenger disaster?

Answer #1: The O-ring

Answer #2: Incompetent managers

Different layers of causes The O-ring had not been tested at low temperatures (as at the day of the launch). NASA’s managers were considered to have forced through the launch, although they knew about the risks.  scapegoats appointed. But, and this is where the social perspectives come in, how could this happen? Is there more to the course of events that can help us understand?

Diane Vaughan: The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA, 1996 Introduces the concept of normalization of deviance to explain how the decision to launch could be made.

Approach Focus on the course of events leading up to the decision to launch, seen through they eyes of the engineers and managers involved.

Vaughan’s findings No safety regulations were violated. No single individual was at fault. NASA-managers were not ”evil”. Instead: Engineers and managers jointly and slowly created a culture where the tolerance of risk rose, and deviations were normalized. Contributing factor: The engineers’ and managers’ lack of understanding of eachother. The result: Collective poor judgement, and a fatal decision.

Engineer/management relations So, how can we balance specialization with a general integrated understanding of other professional competencies? Integration does not happen just by putting different competencies in the same room, but requires more.

What does an engineer need? From the point of view of my role in educating future engineers (civilingenjör industriell ekonomi): Technical competence is central, obviously. But – the challenges the engineer faces in his/her profession, for instance in projects, are usually not in themselves technical.  Economic and social perspectives. Must be trained in education and in professional life.

An example from the educational perspective From year 1 we try to place courses of different types in parallell, and integrate them: Course: Technical specialization Course: Project management, leadership, communication Examination: Reports requiring integration of perspectives and presentations to an audience of different professions. What the students think of this? Painful! Difficult (never just one solution)!

Thank you!