In this reading, Winsor approaches the Challenger’s explosion event to discuss the validity of knowledge as well as the communication failures in organizations. The leading question of the analysis is: “why did it happened that various people in the organizations involved knew about the faulty O-rings that caused the Challenger to explode but failed to pass on the information to decision makers.” Winsor presumes that a vital role that led to the Challenger’s explosion was the failure of knowledge between engineers and managers. The engineers had evidence that the O-rings weren’t capable of performing their task as they were designed for, which could lead to failure. In the other hand, the managers gathered their facts by stating that regardless the flaws of the O-rings, they could still perform the launch effectively. These managers based their knowledge on the previous 24 “adequate” launches performed with the defective O-rings. Winsor incorporates the research of two sociologists (Gilbert and Mulkay) were they explain how knowledge is accepted in a community. Gilbert and Mulkay interviewed two biochemists regarding how they interpreted knowledge and error. According to these biochemists, they base knowledge upon evidence, whereas error was based on the insufficiency of understandment about the concept and the usage of inadequate instruments. Given this information, Winsor asserts that many researchers fall to believe that the evidence supplied by the engineers was plain enough to prevent the Challenger’s launch. These alternative researchers deduce that managers were pressured by outsiders to effective launch, which caused them to disregard the engineer’s evidence on the O-rings. Winsor demonstrates that both sides were grounded on evidence, though different types of evidence. Further more, Winsor discusses that knowledge is established upon the acceptance of its community. He insists that for an idea to become knowledge, it has to be validated by the majority of the members of the social groups. Winsor provides a statement, from Gilberts and Mulkay’s interview, stating, “Truth Will Out Device”. This means that the truth will always be present and it will be eventually discovered. Winsor explains that if an idea lacks of support in organizations, then the idea is merely an idea and it doesn’t compose knowledge. In an organization, an idea becomes knowledge until it is recognized as such. Winsor comments that both, the engineers and the managers, held information about the O-rings reliability, but none constituted knowledge yet. Moreover, Winsor depicts another problem that led to the Challenger’s explosion, was the communication about the O-rings from the engineers to the managers. We are told that knowledge is not passed from the writer to the reader as the writer always intends. Members of a community share different assumptions and they can come recognize knowledge differently. The validity of information differs among groups. This notion can be perceived as the conduit model of communication. Winsor explains that the engineer who sent the memo to the managers about the O-rings’ defectiveness believed that his memo would be understood as he intended to. The information in the memo was not acknowledged by the managers and proceeded with launch. Winsor states that the information about the defective O-rings was not passed to the decision makers because they construction of the memo was not adequately organized to pass on the information. Overall, the challenger’s explosion derived from the failure of knowledge about the O-rings reliability and the communication between engineers and managers about the O-rings.
Synthesis
Winsor suggests that the challenger’s explosion stemmed from the construction of knowledge and a misinterpretation in the channel of communication between engineers and managers. Engineers at MTI believed that the O-rings were defective due to the various tests that they had performed on them. This constituted as knowledge for the engineers. In the other hand, managers had facts about the O-rings that backed up their reliability through past launches that claimed to be “adequate”. Both groups sustained significant information that supported the O-rings’ effectiveness. Winsor adds that no machine can be perfect and thus a machine that works “adequate” is enough which supports the manager’s notion. The acceptance of ideas in communities also plays an important role in the face of this event. As we have discussed before, a community grants access to new ideas and evaluates these, in order to recognize them as knowledge or just ideas. For this reason, I deduct, is that the managers weren’t as interested in the capability of the O-rings since they already had a perception about. Therefore, the engineers’ knowledge was not so well welcomed or interesting fro the managers. If the managers would have been interested in the capability of the O-rings, then they would’ve waited until having strictly confirmed the outcome of the tests. Their knowledge about the O-rings differed. Winsor adds that alternative researchers about the challenger’s explosion imply that it was the manager’s fault for not accepting the evidence granted by the engineers. Winsor states the following, “These researchers, then, see the problem as having been caused by the managers who based their actions on factors other than evidence about the flawed O-rings.” These researchers, now presume such thing for the fact that the challenger exploded. In other scenario, if the challenger would’ve adequately succeeded as the previous 24 launches, then it would’ve not been perceived the same. As Winsor argues, it would then be recognized as knowledge. The second factor in the organization that led to he this event was the conduit model of communication utilized. The memo sent by the engineer to the managers, lacked of urgency and was weak in passing on the information effectively. Managers came with their own assumptions about the message and disregarded it. The writer, in this case the engineer, assumed that its reader would had been able to understand the intention of the memo. Winsor explains the situation by discussing the following, “If one thinks in these terms, the writer of a report should not conclude that the recipient of the report, just by reading this report, will automatically come to posses the same knowledge the writer possesses. Even if the evidence is given for the writer’s position, the recipient of the report is free to differ, since shared knowledge does not necessarily create shared knowledge.” Winsor’s analysis on the challenger’s explosion demonstrates the significance about constructing a strong conduit of communication within organizations as well as the the validity of knowledge.