Launching Into Unethical Behavior: Lessons from the Challenger Disaster
Ann E. Tenbrunsel is a professor of business ethics at the University of Notre Dame. Max Bazerman is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. The guest post below is adapted from their new book Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do About It.
Launching into Unethical Behavior
By Ann E. Tenbrunsel and Max H. Bazerman
The 25th and last flight of the shuttle Endeavour has come and gone. Which means there’s just one shuttle flight left: July 8’s Atlantis launch will be the 135th and final mission for the program, 30 years after the first shuttle test flights occurred.
For anyone who was around on Tuesday, January 28, 1986, it’s difficult to watch a shuttle launch without remembering the Challenger disaster, when the space shuttle disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members. While the most commonly referenced explanation for what went wrong focuses on the technological failures associated with the O-rings, an examination of the decision process that led to the launch through a modern day “behavioral ethics” lens illuminates a much more complicated, and troubling, picture. One that can help us avoid future ethical disasters.