Organizational disaster and organizational decay: the case of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Abstract

Organizational decay is a condition of generalized and systemic ineffective- ness. It develops when an organization shifts its activities from coping with reality to presenting a dramatization of its own ideal character. In the decadent organization, flawed decision making of the sort that leads to disaster is normal activity, not an aberration. Three aspects of the development of organizational decay are illustrated in the case of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They are (1) the institutionalization of the fiction, (2) per sonnel changes in parallel with the institutionalization of the fiction, and (3) the narcissistic loss of reality among management.

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