A metasystemic view of a disaster: Example of the Space Shuttle Challenger failure

Article type: Short Communication

Authors: van Gigch, John P. | Borghino, J.A. | Le Moigne, J.F. | Logan, A.R. | Vervilos, V.

Affiliations: School of Business and Public Admin., California State University, 6000 J. Street, Sacramento, CA 95819, USA

Abstract: This paper summarizes a portion of reports written by members of a graduate seminar in Complex Systems Design whose assignment was to study the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster as a system failure. This article follows another report recently published in HSM (6(4), (1986)), where the connection between image and technology was used to provide another perspective of the Challenger accident and system failure.

Keywords: Technological failure, systems, metasystems, general system theory, modeling, metamodeling

DOI: 10.3233/HSM-1988-7310

Journal: Human Systems Management, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 259-264, 1988