Content area
Full Text
Dysfunctional leadership and organizations. Dr Alan Goldman, Arizona State University, Arizona, USA
Introduction
The dysfunctional organization, much like a dysfunctional individual, is so characterized because it exhibits markedly lower effectiveness, efficiency, and performance than its peers or in comparison to societal standards. While environmental considerations are important for individuals as well as organizations, internal forces often play a more pivotal role. With the individual, this can be cognition. With the organization, we contend, it is the culture. Consider the following two examples that illustrate how an organization's culture can foment dysfunction.
In the aftermath of the Columbia space shuttle accident, we learned (again) that there were people inside NASA who were discussing critical information with each other, but not with senior decision makers. This life-saving knowledge might have saved the spaceship and its crew. Following the earlier Challenger accident, a nine-year study of NASA's standard operating procedures regarding risky decision-making - in which technical anomalies were repeatedly considered to be of "acceptable risk" - showed that the organizational culture created an environment in which conformity to the rules led to the fatal errors (e.g. [83] Vaughan, 1996, [84] 2003). The causes of the Columbia and Challenger disasters were not due to intentional managerial wrongdoing, safety rule violations or any type of conspiracy. Rather, the nature of NASA's organization was such that the decisions to launch Challenger and land Columbia were inevitable - and inevitable mistakes. NASA's organizational culture, routines and systems are designed to allow for a process of normalizing signals of potential danger. Thus, known technical problems become an operating norm and did not prevent NASA managers from giving the go-ahead to proceed with problematic operations ([83] Vaughan, 1996, [84] 2003).
Examining the multi-organization system that oversees the air travel industry, a Gannet company investigation of the American Airlines Flight 587 crash in Belle Harbor, New York, found widespread cultural and structural impediments at Airbus Industrie, the National Transportation Safety Board, and American Airlines. Although these information technology-intensive organizations are components of the nation's aviation safety system designed to prevent crashes by learning from close calls, the system is dependent on airlines and aircraft manufacturers sharing their knowledge and experience with the same federal regulators charged with their oversight ([81] USA Today ,...