The ”human factor” or

Why social perspectives on technology development are

important

Marie Aurell

Department of Industrial economicsBlekinge Institute of Technology

Remember this?

The Challenger disaster• Took place on the 28th of January 1986. • 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 findingsNo 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!