Like a Phoenix from the Ashes: Management Control and Organizational Resilience During NASA's Apollo and Space Shuttle Programs
The authors express their appreciation for the suggestions made by participants at the ‘What Is the Future of Public Accountability in the Aftermath of Crisis?’ workshop organized by the International Centre of Public Accountability, Durham University; the Wards accounting seminar series at Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow; and attendees at the Finance and Accounting Research Group, University of Alabama at Huntsville, for their insightful and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The constructive suggestions of the anonymous reviewers and, in particular, the editors of the special issue are also much appreciated.
Abstract
This study draws on archival sources to investigate the ways in which management control may contribute to and support organizational resilience by analyzing crises from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Apollo (1961–1972) and Space Shuttle (1972–2011) programs. Both programs suffered significant events with tragic consequences. A fire killed three astronauts during a launch rehearsal test of Apollo 1. During the Space Shuttle program, the Challenger broke apart shortly after launch, and the Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere; both tragedies resulted in the death of all seven crew members. NASA's recovery from the three disasters and subsequent achievements exemplifies organizational resilience. This study analyzes and discusses how management control contributed to such efforts, which enabled the space programs to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of crises which could have very well led to the abandonment of the United States’ spacefaring endeavours.
Arguably, a comprehensive understanding of accountability in crisis management would exude both practical importance as well as academic significance. Recent events such as the global recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters attest to the practical relevance of the need to understand crises and their management. From an academic perspective, the topic of crises and crisis management has piqued the interest of a multitude of disciplines including strategic management (Dowell et al., 2011), organizational behaviour (Sherman and Roberto, 2020), and entrepreneurship (Doern et al., 2019). Also, research noting the significance of managing and accounting for crises include investigating the role of accounting in organizational upheavals and change (Hyndman and Liguori, 2019), the global financial crisis (Al Mahameed et al., 2021), extreme events (Wilson et al., 2010), and natural disasters (Lai et al., 2014).
One of the most commonly researched areas examining the role of accounting in crises is that of financial resilience (e.g., Ahrens and Ferry, 2021). That accounting research should focus on financial resilience is unsurprising. Broadly defined as the ability to handle shocks impacting finances (Barbera et al., 2020), the emphasis of financial resilience is on the organizational capacity to effectively manage how a crisis influences an entity's financial condition (Leonie et al., 2021). However, the effects of shocks or crises are not exclusively confined to financial repercussions, but rather have broader implications in terms of resources available, principles valued, routines established, and structures to utilize (Williams et al., 2017). In this broader context, accounting can be conceived as a tool for organizational resilience—‘an organization's ability to anticipate potential threats, to cope effectively with adverse events, and to adapt to changing conditions’ (Duchek, 2020, p. 220). Specifically, the frame of reference of management control provides a compelling reason to suggest that accounting may play an important role in crises and their management, beyond that of solely financial management. Broadly, management control can be considered as ‘those systems, rules, practices, values and other activities management put in place in order to direct employee behaviour’ (Malmi and Brown, 2008, p. 290), which are ‘… designed to help an organization adapt to the environment in which it is set and to deliver the key results desired by stakeholder groups’ (Merchant and Otley, 2006, p. 785). Thus, management control is likely to inform the broader view of organizational resilience rather than the narrower understanding of financial resilience. It is therefore organizational resilience with which the current investigation engages.
The pivotal importance of adaptation, common to understandings of both management control and organizational resilience, are particularly salient in environments characterized by uncertainty and more prone to crises. Indeed, management control through accountability measures such as feedback mechanisms, the detection of errors, performance monitoring, and consequent adjustment of organizational, institutional, and operational routines (Wee et al., 2014) are intrinsic in typical responses to crises (Levitt and March, 1988). Surprisingly, however, the ways in which management control is implicated in organizational resilience have not yet become the subject of explicit investigation in the management accounting literature, despite recent calls to further examine how management control systems (MCS) can influence how resilience can be achieved (Vasileios and Favotto, 2022), as well as the part played by MCS in supporting and managing resilience at the organizational level (Weber and Roetzel, 2021). Prima facie then, the intended outcome of management control resonates very closely with that of organizational resilience. In fact, this argument suggests that management control may be a tool that enables or facilitates organizational resilience. This study, thus, seeks to better understand the ways in which management control—formal accounting systems, rules and practices—may contribute to organizational resilience in response to crises.
The context within which we frame our investigation is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. These two programs were selected as examples of organizational resilience that management control arguably shaped as a consequence of the tragic crises of Apollo 1, as well as the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters. In addition to their tragic outcomes, all three crises were highly profiled and threatened to derail the US's space program with possible abandonment, arguably resulting in not only a major blow to national pride and prestige, but also raising questions relating to the technological and economic virtuosity of the US. However, the Apollo program recovered from the Apollo 1 tragedy and achieved its aim of ‘… landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth’ (Kennedy, 1961). Similarly, despite the shuttle disasters, NASA also successfully achieved the Space Shuttle program's primary objective of providing a transportation mechanism to space that serviced various uses (Logsdon, 2019). That NASA not only recovered from the three crises, but also succeeded in achieving its stated aims amongst the most momentous examples of human achievement suggests a considerable degree of organizational resilience was at play.
This study addresses a knowledge gap in the literature by more fully exploring the propensity of management control to build and support organizational resilience. This propensity could possibly have been manifested in attempts to bounce back to the status quo (Bartuseviciene et al., 2024) had NASA determined that the crises were the results of failures to implement established controls that were deemed sufficient within established risk tolerances. However, this propensity was instead reflected in NASA's capacity to bounce forward (Bartuseviciene et al., 2024) from the three crises through all-encompassing examinations of the crises’ causal agents, leading to the learned responses aimed at preventing similar management control failures from reoccurring when achieving future strategic objectives. Findings also answer calls in the literature to explore how organizational practices evolve over time in crisis situations and learn from unexpected events (Duchek, 2020) by explicitly finding and analyzing management control roles that contribute to organizational learning that subsequently built organizational resilience through NASA's crises responses and resulting adaptations.
ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE AND MANAGEMENT CONTROL
The term ‘crisis’ may, in general terms, be thought of as ‘… a process of weakening or degeneration that can culminate in a disruption event to the actor's (i.e., individual, organization, and/or community) normal functioning’ (Williams et al., 2017, p. 739). As unanticipated events that significantly impact stakeholders and operations, crises have a very real proclivity to threaten the continued existence of organizations (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011). The need to better understand the ways in which organizations can manage crises and respond to the nature and extent of adversity resulting from crises has given rise to an increase in studies connecting crisis management to resilience.
Conceptualizing Organizational Resilience
In the accounting literature, Barbera et al. (2020) define organizational resilience as ‘both a capability for reaction to crises, “bouncing back” to an original state, and … as the development of new capabilities’ (p. 532). More recently in the innovation literature, Bartuseviciene et al. (2024, p. 13) adopt the view that in both public and private organizations, organizational resilience can be ‘modelled as the result of an organizational capacity to bounce-back and bounce-forward’. Whereas the idea of ‘bouncing back’ refers to the amenability of an entity to return to its pre-crisis state, the notion of ‘bouncing forward’ reflects the idea of crises as an opportunity to develop enhanced and improved capacities. The notion of ‘bouncing back’ relates in some sense to conformance to pre-specified targets and standards, whilst the notion of ‘bouncing forward’ evokes a sense of capitalizing upon opportunities that may not have been envisaged or expected. We underline the point, however, that ‘bouncing back’ and ‘bouncing forward’ should not be considered to be alternatives—as constituting either/or dynamics—but rather serve as anchors as part of a continuum. The continuous rather than discrete nature of organizational resilience allows for more nuanced approaches to dealing with crises, and, therefore, greater opportunities for management control to be exercised.
Finally, we also underline the importance of anticipating future contingencies in foresight as far as possible, so that if those contingencies eventuate, an appropriate response can be made. Indeed, this attitude underpinned the practice that had become established at NASA since the early days of the Mercury program where spaceflight capability progressed incrementally with each mission building on and informed by preceding missions (Launius, 2006). Such a view in which anticipation—the ‘prediction and prevention of potential dangers before damage is done’ (Wildavsky, 1991, p. 77) may in itself be considered a form of management control and has been argued to facilitate the achievement of resilience (Duchek, 2020; Kendra and Wachtendorf, 2003). However, it is clearly impossible to anticipate all possible risks, difficulties, and threats in advance, and in addition to an ex-ante evaluation of potential challenges, it is necessary to accept the reality that in some instances, crises are unavoidable and not able to be easily predicted in advance. In recognition of the inevitability of unanticipated events that will lead to a crisis, strategies to bounce back or bounce forward become important.
Management Control: A Facilitator of Organizational Resilience
Relatively recent research (Weber and Rötzel, 2021; Vasileios and Favotto, 2022) has examined how MCS are used in relation to organizational resilience, primarily through the lens of Simons’ (2000) Levers of Control (LoC) framework. These studies provide the current study's point of departure for further investigating the nexus between management control and organizational resilience. Specifically, the current study responds to the call to ‘… focus on additional MCS frameworks to integrate organizational resilience into MCS’ (Weber and Rötzel, 2021, p. 46) by considering a broader range of control types beyond that of the LoC that influence/support organizational resilience. In so doing, the current study seeks to illustrate the variety of ways in which management control generally supports or contributes to organizational resilience. By pointing to practices informed by various management control frameworks as supporting the process of ‘bouncing back’, and the process of ‘bouncing forward’, the prime ‘message’ is that different ways of looking at control can be seen to influence organizational resilience. In short, the nexus between organizational resilience and management control is not reliant on one single control framework or paradigm; rather, it appears as though a number of typologies of management control can be seen to support the outcome of organizational resilience, be it through bouncing back or through bouncing forward.
Management Control to Support ‘Bouncing Back’
The notion of ‘bouncing back’ is consistent with the tenets underpinning at least four forms of management control: cybernetic control, coercive control, and the diagnostic and interactive uses of control.1 Implicit in each of these four forms of control is an emphasis on returning to the status quo or level of baseline functioning, which is central to the notion of bouncing back from a crisis, as it is the status quo or baseline functioning to which the organization seeks to return. Consequently, each of the four forms of control described below can be argued to support organizational efforts to ‘bounce back’ in response to a crisis.
The cybernetic approach to management control is grounded in the recognition of a need to establish expected (or desired) levels or standards of performance (Merchant and Otley, 2006), where ‘goals and standards are set, inputs and outputs are compared with goals and standards and, as a consequence, appropriate corrective actions are taken or goals and standards are revised’ (Chenhall and Moers, 2015, p. 10).
In a similar way, in emphasizing centralization and preplanning reflecting a ‘stereotypical top-down control approach’ (Ahrens and Chapman, 2004, p. 271), the coercive form of control points to the importance placed on adhering to standards and preplanned objectives and processes (Adler and Borys, 1996). Coercive forms of control specify ‘a vast range of eventualities with which the system can deal automatically’ (Ahrens and Chapman, 2004, p. 279) in order to coerce compliance through the use of preset detailed instruction, and rigorous and strict command and control (Chenhall et al., 2010). Similar to coercive control (Chenhall et al., 2010), the diagnostic use of management control signifies the ‘traditional feedback role (of control) … used on an exception basis to monitor and reward the achievement of pre-established goals … by focusing on and correcting deviations from preset standards of performance’ (Henri, 2006, p. 533). Finally, a repeatedly observed outcome of the interactive use of control is its ability to foster organizational learning (Henri, 2006; Widener, 2007, Kominis and Dudau, 2012), a prerequisite to effectively bouncing back (Bartuseviciene et al., 2024).
Management Control to Support ‘Bouncing Forward’
Management control can also be seen as a means by which organizations may ‘bounce forward’. This means of management control occurs primarily through two related roles—through the interactive use of control, and as an enabler of organizational learning. The use of control interactively ‘focuses attention on the constantly changing information that top-level managers consider to be of strategic importance’ (Bisbe and Otley, 2004, p. 711). This focus of attention is achieved by stimulating dialogue ‘between different levels of the organizational hierarchy, allowing for creative debate on how to respond to changing conditions as they unfold in unpredictable ways’ (Kominis and Dudau, 2012, p. 144). In very general terms then, with its focus on strategic uncertainties, changing conditions, and opportunity-seeking, the use of management control interactively would seem to offer support in organizations seeking to ‘bounce forward’ in response to crises.
In addition, as discussed above, the use of control interactively has been repeatedly shown to stimulate organizational learning (e.g., Albertini, 2019), conveyed by Fiol and Lyles (1985, p. 803) as ‘… the process of improving actions through better knowledge and understanding’. Organizational learning may be seen to be more a means to an end than an end in itself, with the end being organizational improvement. Indeed, as Huber (1991) contends, learning can be regarded as organizational when it makes possible knowledge become collectively acquired, thus changing the entity's behaviour. The significance of organizational learning in supporting organizations seeking to bounce forward from crises is that it permits knowledge creation and retention. It also encourages the creation of new ideas and initiatives in response to challenges presented by the changes in the environment by tapping into the financial and non-financial information available through management controls (Wee et al., 2014).
Our discussion to date has speculated that management control may conceivably support organizational resilience efforts via ‘bounce-back’ as well as ‘bounce-forward’ approaches following a crisis. Outside of these speculative inferences, however, there is little published research that has investigated the nature and extent to which management control contributes to and supports organizational resilience.
RESEARCH CONTEXT
The Apollo Program
The Apollo program (1961–72) aimed to realize NASA's primary objective of landing a human on the moon and returning that human safely to Earth. The objectives more broadly related to a ‘Space Race’ between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Americans ‘won’ the race during the Apollo 11 mission with astronaut Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon's surface on 20 July 1969.
This study's first research context pertains to a crisis on 27 January 1967, when a fire occurred during a launch practice run of the Apollo program's first crewed mission now known as Apollo 1. The mission objective was to test the Apollo program's command and service module in low Earth orbit. Since the practice run aimed to simulate actual launch conditions, the three-astronaut crew operated in the command module while fully suited up for launch and connected to the communications and oxygen systems. The environmental simulation included sealing the command module hatch and pressurizing the cabin air with pure oxygen. About five-and-a-half hours into the practice session, a spark occurred in the command module. The resulting flame grew quickly and intensely due to the presence of flammable nylon material in the cabin, combined with the pressurized cabin's pure oxygen atmosphere. Efforts to open the hatch failed due to the cabin's internal pressure. The fire lasted just over 25 seconds, but killed all three astronauts (Kranz, 2000).
- ‘A sealed cabin, pressurized with a high-pressure oxygen atmosphere
- Extensive combustible material in the cabin
- Vulnerable wiring
- Inadequate provision for escape or rescue’ (Seamans, 2005, p. 77).
The Space Shuttle Program
NASA's Space Shuttle program (1972–2011) consisted of five reusable space shuttles, with crewed flights beginning in 1981. The program's 135 total missions included a wide variety of objectives, such as transporting astronauts and materials to the International Space Station (NASA, 2017). The Challenger and Columbia shuttles suffered tragic accidents. First, on 28 January 1986, Challenger lifted off on a seven-day mission. Less than a second after liftoff, smoke was observed from a joint on the right solid rocket booster. The smoke became blacker and more intense within a couple of seconds, and a small flame in the same area was observed within a minute. The flame spread, reaching and breaching the external tank within five seconds, leading to its mixture with hydrogen. Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, an explosion resulted in catastrophic damage that destroyed Challenger, killing all seven crew members (NASA, 2005a). Investigations found quality failures in the O-rings used to seal joints on the right solid rocket booster. The O-rings were not designed to function properly in cold temperatures. Launch temperature was 36 degrees Fahrenheit, and the improperly sealed joints allowed for hot gases to bypass insulation protections and eventually penetrate the external tank, leading to the failure of the craft's structural integrity (Rogers Commission, 1986).
Columbia's disaster occurred during re-entry. Columbia launched on 16 January 2003, for a 16-day research-intensive mission (NASA, 2007). About 82 seconds into liftoff, some insulation foam detached from the external fuel tank and contacted the spacecraft's left wing. During re-entry into the atmosphere on 1 February, sensors indicated a damaged left wing. The spacecraft lost control and broke apart, killing all seven crew members (CAIB, 2003; NASA, 2008). Investigations indicated that the accident's cause was insulating foam breaking off the external fuel tank and contacting the orbital's left wing (CAIB, 2003). This damaged the wing's outer tiles that were installed to protect the wings from excessive heat that would be experienced during the re-entry phase at the end of a mission. The orbital indeed lost structural integrity upon re-entry as the hot environmental gases penetrated the unprotected left wing (CAIB, 2003).
RESEARCH DESIGN
Research Methods
To investigate the research question, we draw primarily on NASA publications relating to the research context. This study also draws on over 50 years of academic literature and popular commentary covering the three disasters. As an historically informed exploration, the current study can assist in explaining prevailing processes (Cobbin et al., 2013), with the ‘processes’ of primary interest being the management control used by NASA to ‘bounce back’ and/or ‘bounce forward’ from the three crises it experienced.
Data Collection
Mindful of the necessity to demonstrate the ‘credibility’, ‘authenticity’, and ‘dependability’ of qualitative research (Parker, 2014), and in line with accepted procedures in archival/historical/qualitative research (Parker, 2012), we followed the process described by Covaleski et al. (2017) to ensure the findings’ trustworthiness. First, the research team individually interpreted the same archival material, and then discussed any discrepancies until its meaning was agreed to. Second, multiple archival sources were scrutinized whenever available to obtain deeper insights into the issue under consideration. Third, this paper includes exact quotations from the literature consulted to help avoid quoting out of context, and to validate the analysis offered. Finally, the research team examined literature until saturation was reached and no new themes emerged around the questions of interest (Lincoln and Guba, 1985).
Data Analysis
We adopted a thematic approach in the analysis of the data collected to find patterns of meaning through a rigorous self-critical and reflexive approach involving data familiarization, data coding, and theme development and revision (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2011). The examination was independently carried out by each research team member. First, all documents were screened by using the keywords ‘Apollo 1’, ‘Challenger’, ‘Columbia’, ‘NASA’, ‘resilience’, and ‘control’. Second, each researcher read the documents to evaluate how both control and resilience were related throughout the missions. This entailed scrutinizing the data and detecting shared themes, unique understandings, and the extent of any discrepancies. Throughout the investigation, we cross-checked archival sources wherever possible, and used these references to calibrate our interpretation of matters surfacing in our understanding of the data. Our observations were thematically ordered, and from these procedures, developing codes shaped the groundwork for the identification and scrutiny of patterns and themes in the data. The main themes that were coded were procedures, learning, risk, control(s), and safety. In addition, each team member assessed how control and resilience had been portrayed within the documents, for instance, by noting how controls were designed and modified, by whom, under what circumstances, and how controls were evaluated. They took particular note of the role of management control in ‘bouncing back’ and ‘bouncing forward’, and indeed if this role emerged as a relevant theme.
Finally, a thorough review, debate, and discussion of the team members’ interpretations was then undertaken in order to reach agreement about the themes, their meanings, and the storyline emerging as a consequence of the multiple viewpoints canvassed in this process of analysis, as reported below.
FINDINGS
In considering how management control was implicated in and supported organizational resilience at NASA, we reflect on the control mechanisms exhibited in the Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia disasters and how these control mechanisms supported NASA efforts to bounce forward and/or to bounce back. We organize our findings by the five main themes that emerged in the data analysis phase: procedures, learning, risk, controls, and safety. Tables 1, 2, and 3 provide a number of illustrative examples of management control mechanisms exhibited in relation to the Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia tragedies, respectively.
| Examples of management control | Reference |
|---|---|
| Overriding North American Aviation recommendation on the atmospheric environment within the Apollo 1 capsule
|
Brown (2009, p. 116) |
Gene Kranz's ‘tough and competent’ dictum to his flight control team after the fire
|
Kranz (2000, p. 204) |
Tighter control exerted by NASA Administrator James E. Webb in response to the fire
|
Waldman (2020) |
The slowdown of the program in the aftermath of the Apollo 1 fire as a critical element in the success of the Apollo program as a whole
|
Slayton and Cassutt (1995, p. 195) |
Formation of a Spacecraft Incident Investigation and Reporting Panel and a Problem Assessment Room
|
Johnson (2001, p. 706) |
Formation of the Office of Flight Safety
|
Huls and Meehan (2005, p. 35) |
Approach to undertaking modifications recommended by the Review Board (George Low, Deputy Director of the Manned Spacecraft Centre)
|
Lindsay (2001, p. 159) |
| Examples of management control | Reference |
|---|---|
NASA personnel pressuring contractor Morton Thiokol to recommend launch
|
McDonald (2009, pp. 103–4) |
|
McDonald (2009, pp. 108–9) |
Concerns that NASA's culture hindered sufficient communications needed for effective management control
|
Trento (1987, p. 286) |
Government stakeholder oversight actions taken after the Challenger disaster
|
Vaughan (1996, pp. 388–9) |
Creating a more democratic culture in response to Challenger launch decisions
|
Vaughan (1996, p. 419) |
NASA responds to recommendations to review the Shuttle program's management structure and to improve communications
|
NASA (1987, p. 27) |
Applications of changes at NASA due to Challenger disaster
|
Jensen (1996, p. 360) |
|
|
NASA personnel changes as part of reorganizational efforts
|
Lewis (1988, p. 220) |
|
|
Examples of NASA's changes to enhance flight safety
|
Howell (2022) |
| Examples of management control | Reference |
|---|---|
NASA's warrant system as part of establishing an Independent Technical Authority
|
NASA (2005b, Part 1, p. 90) |
Post-disaster analysis of Columbia crew training
|
NASA (2008, Part 3, p. 64) |
NASA management using the Columbia disaster as a permanent learning opportunity
|
Cabbage and Harwood (2004, p. 262) |
Astronaut confidence on flight safety from NASA management's responses to crises
|
Houston (2013, pp. 245–6) |
Application and understanding of changes at NASA due to the Columbia disaster
|
Heiney (2005) |
|
|
|
NASA (2005c, Part 2, p. 1) |
|
NASA (2005d) |
CAIB-ordered NASA report on sensitivity analysis of Columbia rescue options
|
NASA (2003, p. 391) |
The classification of many of the illustrative examples is particularly subjective in those instances that pertain to multiple themes. In those cases, we choose what we believe to be the primary theme to consider, although the subsequent discussion section will synthesize points made across the themes.
Procedures
The three astronauts’ deaths in the Apollo 1 fire and subsequent investigation into the cause of the accident put the piloted phase of America's lunar landing program on hold for 21 months. In this period, NASA's immediate priority was to establish a review board of officials to investigate the accident. ‘The Apollo 204 Review Board was charged with the responsibility of reviewing the circumstances surrounding the accident, reporting its findings relating to the cause of the accident, and formulating recommendations so that inherent hazards are reduced to a minimum’ (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1967, p. iii). In addition, Dr. Floyd L. Thompson, Director of the Langley Research Center, and Chairman of the Review Board, formally established 21 task panels investigating various facets of the disaster to support the investigation (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1967, pp. 3-5–3-6).
Also, increased processes via the fire investigation and resulting redesign efforts resulted in Apollo program slowdowns that would allow for adaptations that would be pivotal for future mission success (Slayton and Cassutt, 1995), including George Low, Deputy Director of the Manned Spacecraft Centre, using processes in determining and undertaking improvements to the Apollo spacecraft design to execute Review Board recommendations (Lindsay, 2001). In addition, organizational structural responses included the establishment of a Spacecraft Incident Investigation and Reporting Panel, a Problem Assessment Room (Johnson, 2001), and the Office of Flight Safety (Huls and Meehan, 2005).
The Challenger disaster also triggered a pause—this time in shuttle missions for 32 months. Immediately following the loss of crew and shuttle, the presidential-level Rogers Commission was established to determine the cause of mission failure as well as to make corrective recommendations on space shuttle safety going forward. On 6 June 1986, the Commission's report was submitted to US President Ronald Reagan (Rogers Commission, 1986), who then asked NASA Administrator James Fletcher for a report within 30 days to indicate how NASA would address the Commission's recommendations and a timeline of corrective actions that would be used for performance assessment (NASA, 1986). Also, congressional hearings provided oversight on how recommendations were responded to and implemented by NASA to help determine when shuttle missions may safely proceed (House of Representatives, 1986; Senate, 1986).
Similar to the Apollo 1 tragedy but unlike the Challenger disaster, the primary investigative actions related to the Columbia catastrophe was instigated internally by NASA. The agency established the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) on 1 February 2003—the same day as the explosion. The Shuttle program was suspended for over two years as the board's recommendations were explored and implemented (e.g., NASA, 2005b).
Learning
In all, 21 recommendations from Apollo 1's Review Board led to around 1,500 changes being made to the design of the Apollo spacecraft (Newman and Wander, 2018), principally relating to ‘a review of life-support systems, investigation of effective ways to control and extinguish cabin fires, severe restrictions on combustible material, and reducing the time required for astronauts to egress in emergency’ (Seamans, 2005, p. 77).
After the Challenger disaster, the Rogers Commission suggested nine categories of recommendations for NASA, including: overhauling the design of the area involving the O-ring malfunction and the independent oversight of this redesign; a review of the shuttle program and its management; a critical safety review of items and hazards that must be improved before flights; the establishment of an office focusing on safety that reports directly to the NASA Administrator; improving communication within the space program; improving launch safety, crew abort, and crew escape processes; establishing a reasonable flight rate for the shuttle program that reduces scheduling and resource pressures; and establishing more rigorous maintenance procedures for critical parts (Rogers Commission, 1986).
After the Columbia disaster, upper management statements indicated commitments that the disaster would be used as a permanent learning opportunity (Cabbage and Harwood, 2004), and astronaut confidence in how NASA addressed CAIB safety requirements indicate successful use of control mechanisms in convincing stakeholders that the shuttles had eventually reached return-to-flight status a couple of years after the tragedy (Houston, 2013).
However, some findings in the Columbia literature suggest that organizational learning was not maintained, as detailed below. The CAIB drew analogies in their report on the similarities in NASA's organizational behaviour between the Columbia and Challenger tragedies. In fact, a subsection of the board's report was titled ‘Echoes of Challenger’ (CAIB, 2003, p. 195). The known consistent issues with the foam shedding during launch echoed the known consistent issues with Challenger's O-rings. Also, both disasters involved management not weighing safety concerns by engineers on these issues enough to affect change in their flight readiness decisions. Even with some engineering concerns noted, there was an overall tendency for both technical personnel and management to normalize flight component parts that had deviated from functional acceptability into acceptable safety risk factors for flight (see Vaughan, 1996).
- Safety issues with shuttle component quality were glossed over again in in-flight readiness reviews (CAIB, 2003; Vaughan, 1996)
- A proposed system-wide Shuttle program risk management plan did not include methods that were created by NASA post-Challenger (McDonald, 2000)
- There was a shift back towards an Apollo-era more centralized organizational structure that was implemented post-Challenger which had reverted to a more decentralized structure similar to pre-Challenger (Mahler, 2009)
- Related to #3, there was an erosion of organizational communication improvements that were initiated post-Challenger (CAIB, 2003; McDonald, 2000)
- There was an acknowledged need for NASA to not become complacent (Myers, 2021)
Risk
[CAIB's analysis of the third incident of foam shedding] … Note the difference in how the [sic] each program addressed the foam-shedding problem: While the Integration Office deemed it an “accepted risk,” the External Tank Project considered it “not a safety-of-flight issue”. (CAIB, 2003, p. 124)
Also, sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess claims that management could not have done anything about the Columbia disaster even if they had known about the foam damage early in the mission (NASA, 2003). This type of investigation would help inform the agency whether the way management controls were used during the mission inadvertently prevented optimal decision outcomes (a rescue in this case).
Controls
For the Apollo 1 disaster, NASA's controls in place yielded a catastrophic outcome when Head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office Joe Shea overrode the concerns of North American Aviation on the atmospheric environment within the Apollo 1 capsule (Brown, 2009), which eventually contributed to the tragedy. As other examples of control after the fire, Chief Flight Director Gene Kranz gave a ‘tough and competent’ dictum to the flight control team in an effort to control the organizational cultural (Kranz, 2000, p. 204), and NASA Administrator James Webb's management style pivoted to a tightening of control (Waldman 2020).
With respect to the Challenger disaster, in addition to noting technical design failures, the Commission also found multiple organizational failures in critical decision-making contexts. Engineers of the contractor for the O-rings, Morton Thiokol, did not recommend launching in temperatures below 53 degrees Fahrenheit because of concerns with the O-rings not being designed to seal properly in cooler temperatures. They voiced their concerns the night before launch but were overruled by their management team. Literature suggests NASA management pressured Thiokol to agree to launch (McDonald, 2009). According to the Commission's report, there were ‘failures in communication that resulted in a decision to launch 51-L [the mission] based on incomplete and sometimes misleading information, a conflict between engineering data and management judgments, and a NASA management structure that permitted internal flight safety problems to bypass key Shuttle managers’ (Rogers Commission, 1986, p. 83). The confirmation of similar mechanisms (overrides for negative outcomes) utilized across both Apollo 1 and Challenger is effective to report when we use a research methodology that is prone to the liabilities of an inherently low sample size. Reporting consistent findings helps to reduce the chances of bias towards outliers that do not reflect the population that would be relevant to the research inquiry.
The above account proxied for a more systemic control issue. Concerns about the seals at lower-level flight readiness reviews were not effectively communicated to upper management in the subsequent higher-level flight readiness reviews, including concerns about O-ring performance in previous flights. Despite testimony from the Solid Rocket Booster Project Manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center that concerns about the O-ring were communicated throughout NASA, ‘the seriousness of concern was not conveyed in Flight Readiness Review to Level I [top management] and the 51-L readiness review was silent’ (Rogers Commission, 1986, p. 86). The Commission further found that management personnel at Marshall Space Flight Center tried to internally resolve major issues instead of including other sections of the space program when sharing such concerns would lead to better resolutions that would aid achieving program strategic objectives (Rogers Commission, 1986).
Organizational culture appeared in the Challenger literature analysis, but in a more negative light compared to the Apollo literature. Specifically, the literature suggested a negative impact on management control effectiveness by illustrating NASA General Manager Phil Culbertson's concerns on information not being conveyed to upper management for effective controls (Trento, 1987).
One significant difference between Apollo 1 and Challenger was the heavier spotlight and governance control mechanisms initiated by government stakeholders outside of NASA after the Challenger disaster, such as the immediate government oversight via the Presidential Commission (see Vaughan, 1996). NASA's responses to oversight controls that compelled NASA to improve its own management controls included cultural considerations such as creating a more democratic culture (Vaughan, 1996). It also included organizational analysis and restructuring, specifically NASA fulfilling recommendations to review the Shuttle program's management structure (resulting in suggesting more centralized accountability) with one outcome being to improve communications (NASA, 1987). Reorganizational efforts resulted in substantial personnel changes within NASA management positions (Lewis, 1988).
While controls pertaining to the Columbia tragedy may be found in illustrations embedded within the other themes, we note as an example here that one of the applications of the CAIB recommendations was NASA instituting a warrant system as part of establishing an Independent Technical Authority (NASA, 2005b).
Safety
In response to the Challenger tragedy, NASA made numerous changes to enhance flight safety, with operational improvements made to enhance spacecraft safety via hundreds of adaptations to the space shuttle system that increased development costs by $2.4 billion USD (Jensen, 1996). Also, astronauts were removed from satellite repair duties to reduce safety risks during missions (Howell, 2022). In addition, more prominence on safety led to staff being more willing to convey concerns relating to launch preparedness, resulting in subsequent flight schedules incurring delays (Jensen, 1996). This latter control is arguably more a component of organizational learning instead of diagnostic control because the technicians were cognizant of the risks inherent in proceeding quickly based on prior experiences.
In particular, we observe the safety theme when analyzing the Columbia disaster. CAIB recommendations included 29 items aimed at improving spaceflight safety. Broadly, the recommendations covered eliminating the foam-shedding phenomenon, as well as improving inspections both pre- and post-launch to ensure prevention of damage to heat-shielding material caused by debris. The recommendations were also designed to enhance the ability to detect and analyze damage to the orbital in the event of debris damage occurring during future launches. Also, the board observed time and budget pressures placed on management decisions due to goals of increasing the Shuttle program's flight rates and meeting missions aimed at completing construction of the International Space Station. Accordingly, one recommendation was to bring in line the flight schedule with the space program's resources, and to be cognizant that such pressures do not inappropriately increase safety risks on future missions (CAIB, 2003).
A major control mechanism initiated to address a combination of technical and organizational issues contributing to the disaster was the recommendation to ‘establish an independent Technical Engineering Authority that is responsible for technical requirements and all waivers to them, and will build a disciplined, systematic approach to identifying, analyzing, and controlling hazards throughout the life cycle of the Shuttle System’ (CAIB, 2003, p. 227). Another example was the commissioning of work to determine lessons from the Columbia disaster to increase future crew survivability chances. This led to the recommendation of enhancing astronaut training to increase awareness of when survival mode takes priority over other problems (NASA, 2008). CAIB-inspired safety changes incorporated a diverse technical range of engineering specifications with effective management control guidance. Examples included installing a robotic arm to help with an orbiter's camera angles (Heiney, 2005), developing rescue mission contingencies (NASA, 2005c), and tank redesigns (NASA, 2005d).
Connecting the parts of NASA's organizational system and drawing the parallels with Challenger demonstrate three things. First, despite all the post-Challenger changes at NASA and the agency's notable achievements since, the causes of the institutional failure responsible for Challenger have not been fixed. Second, the Board strongly believes that if these persistent, systemic flaws are not resolved, the scene is set for another accident. Therefore, the recommendations for change are not only for fixing the Shuttle's technical system, but also for fixing each part of the organizational system that produced Columbia's failure. Third, the Board's focus on the context in which decision making occurred does not mean that individuals are not responsible and accountable. To the contrary, individuals always must assume responsibility for their actions. What it does mean is that NASA's problems cannot be solved simply by retirements, resignations, or transferring personnel. (CAIB, 2003, p. 195).
DISCUSSION
As outlined earlier, organizational resilience describes the ability of organizations to ‘bounce back’ to a previous state, and/or to bounce forward by ‘moving beyond previous states and emerging strengthened from the experience’ (Hepfer and Lawrence, 2022, p. 6). Evidence suggests organizational resilience occurring through all of NASA's three crises.
As previously noted, from the efforts of the review board to identify causation for the fire on Apollo 1 and its subsequent recommendations, it appears clear that NASA's response to the experience of Apollo 1 was not simply to ‘bounce back’ or revert to the status quo prevailing prior to the crises. Rather, it appears as though the intent of NASA was to enhance future actions by obtaining a better understanding via capturing and using knowledge effectively, which suggests organizational learning (Fiol and Lyles, 1985). The observation that NASA's primary aim was to bounce forward rather than to bounce back suggests that bouncing back did not appear to be a viable consideration given the evaluation of the tragedy. For example, a bouncing-back approach may have been a viable outcome had (i) assessments determined that pre-accident controls were indeed adequate, and (ii) that the inevitable nonzero spaceflight risks were appropriately accounted for in the cost–benefit analysis on whether to proceed with an action (e.g., an engine test). Thus, given NASA's post-tragedy assessments, it seems logical to surmise that NASA's intent was to improve beyond prior pre-accident functionality (to bounce forward), rather than return to “normalcy” (to bounce back).
Significantly, the establishment of the Apollo 1 Review Board and its subsequent deliberations were essentially a control mechanism in the sense that the Review Board fell within the ambit of what is understood to be a management control, ‘those systems, rules, practices, values and other activities management put in place in order to direct employee behaviour’ (Malmi and Brown, 2008, p. 290). The ‘employee behaviour’ in the instance of the Apollo 1 investigation was essentially to identify the corrective action and recommendations to be taken in order to bounce forward.
Implicit to a greater or lesser extent in each of the examples illustrated in Table 1 is what Simons (2000) refers to as the interactive use of control. Control used interactively ‘refers to the degree to which senior managers devote a significant part of their limited time and attention span to issues related to inputs, processes or outputs of activities of management accounting and control systems’ (Bisbe et al., 2007, p. 797).
The significance of the interactive use of control in the aftermath of the Apollo 1 mission is that the use of control in this way has repeatedly been shown to promote organizational learning (e.g., Abernethy and Brownell, 1999; Bisbe and Otley, 2004; Marginson, 2002; Tuomela, 2005; Henri, 2006; Widener, 2007; Chenhall et al., 2010; Khalifeh and Sivabalan, 2014). Learning occurs as the use of control interactively necessitates dialogue throughout the organization (Widener, 2007), stimulates the development of new ideas and initiatives (Henri, 2006), and fosters the development of new solutions (Batac and Carassus, 2009). All of these activities were evident in the aftermath of the Apollo 1 disaster, leading to the conclusion that organizational resilience, and particularly the intent to bounce forward, was supported by organizational learning, which in turn was facilitated by the interactive use of management control.
Similar to the Apollo 1 tragedy, government stakeholders focused on reviewing actions that led to the Challenger disaster in efforts to bounce forward. The Rogers Commission's efforts, the executive branch of the federal government requiring NASA to respond to how and when they will address the Commission report's recommendations, and NASA's subsequent efforts to adhere to accountability all illustrate a control mechanism occurring (Malmi and Brown, 2008).
Similar to illustrations in the Apollo 1 literature, the Challenger examples indicate senior management dedicating substantial resources to the organization's processes and outputs in their control systems, suggesting an interactive use of control (Simons, 2000; Bisbe et al., 2007). The results here, like the Apollo 1 setting, suggests organizational learning (Widener, 2007) was facilitated by the interactive use of management control, leading to a bouncing forward in NASA's organizational resilience. Findings observed between the Apollo 1 and Challenger disasters also indicate that the mechanisms employed around the two events were largely robust across two settings, where NASA was scrutinized primarily internally (Apollo 1) and externally (Challenger).
Similar to the Apollo 1 and Challenger tragedies analyzed in this study, government stakeholders focused on reviewing actions that led to the Columbia disaster in efforts to bounce forward. The CAIB's efforts and NASA's subsequent responses to adhere to accountability illustrate a control mechanism (Malmi and Brown, 2008). As with illustrations in the Apollo 1 and Challenger literature, the Columbia examples again indicate senior management development and use of processes and outputs consistent with an interactive use of control (Simons, 2000; Bisbe et al., 2007).
Although the decaying of organizational learning is no doubt a result that entities would wish to mitigate or avoid, the overall condition of NASA as a governmental space agency still exemplifies organizational resilience. NASA has persisted throughout the decades and through multiple initiatives containing a variety of space mission objectives. As a publicly funded agency, factors to consider for obtaining resources needed to achieve strategic objectives will differ from private entities. As a notable example, NASA must successfully navigate certain political dynamics in order to secure funding and take actions to achieve strategic objectives. They must convince elected government officials not only to receive an overall financial appropriation, but also to receive permission (at least from an oversight perspective) for the corresponding actions themselves that will materialize from line-item details within the appropriation.
As an illustration, a physicist member of the Rogers Commission, Richard Feynman, expressed concerns about the discrepancy between perceived levels of risk of shuttle losses and astronaut fatalities during space missions, with NASA management perceiving a much lower level of risk compared to its engineer colleagues. He suggests such a discrepancy may be attributed to a substantial absence of communications between the various NASA employees, or (of course more likely) management beliefs helping to impress upon stakeholders responsible for appropriating funds that NASA programs were politically viable to receive funding (Gregory et al., 2006; Rogers Commission, 1986). Such politically sensitive behaviour suggests an awareness that mission close calls with shuttle damage or especially harm to astronauts could solidify political pressure into reducing or even not proceeding with funding for future space missions, particularly those involving astronaut activities. This demonstrates political oversight pressures that NASA management considers in their decision-making capacity.
The above illustration indicates the necessity of publicly funded agencies such as NASA to consider, understand, and manage the political will needed to continue the funding needed to execute its various mission objectives. The result is an organizational resilience exemplified by its continued existence despite intense budgetary and political pressures constantly bearing down on the agency to provide value-added results for its stakeholders. NASA is a government agency that exists only as long as it is given resources and a mandate via the US's federal republic system of governance, namely through its elected representatives as a proxy for voters and their preferences of what actions government agencies should or should not take. NASA can indeed cease to exist, and its perseverance exemplifies organizational resilience as it seeks and neutralizes threats, effectively handles situations involving undesirable consequences, and is flexible to evolving settings (Duchek, 2020).
In addition to the political dynamics discussed above, we note that this study draws on observations from MCS not only specifically at NASA, but also MCS in the wider US government when analyzing how the agency makes decisions. Within NASA, we note the MCS pertaining to the technical and administrative decision-making aspects that directly result in taking the actions needed to achieve agency objectives. In contrast, in the context of this study's three crises, the wider US government's MCS amount to an oversight role with more stringent monitoring of NASA during the aftermath of the crises. This was perhaps most notable in the more intervening role played by the government's executive and legislative branches in the Challenger disaster, requiring intense direct and timely responses on how accountability would be assessed and delivered (Rogers Commission, 1986).
- defining outcomes including those that are nonfinancial (e.g., Space Shuttle program objective of providing a transportation mechanism to space; Logsdon, 2019);
- determining interventions needed to help deliver those outcomes (e.g., Rogers Commission providing oversight post-Challenger tragedy; Rogers Commission, 1986);
- developing the Agency's capacity via leadership and individual capabilities (e.g., enhanced astronaut survival training; NASA, 2008);
- managing risks and performance via internal and fiscal controls (e.g., instituting a warrant system as part of establishing an Independent Technical Authority; NASA, 2005b); and
- implementing practices to enhance transparency and instill effective accountability (e.g., NASA's required responses to Rogers Commission recommendations and communication of updates on their implementations to external government stakeholders; Rogers Commission, 1986).
While the literature on MCS specifically in the public sector is lacking (Van Helden and Reichard, 2019), recent research suggests that public entities can indeed benefit from MCS adoption with multiple potential configurations, but must be mindful of the entity's characteristics as well as its short- and long-term objectives (Felício et al., 2021). Indeed, research has begun to better understand how management controls have been used in the public sector to instill corporate governance changes, such as by documenting enabling qualities of controls that help to achieve priorities that align with the public interest (Ferry and Ahrens, 2017). The findings in the current study align with the control mechanisms used to establish good public corporate governance in accordance with the IFAC and CIPFA framework. Findings also further echo thematic results from the recent MCS literature involving the public sector, such as the need for MCS to be configured to objectives (e.g., enhanced safety protocols for NASA space mission objectives in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster), and to maintain accountability with the public interest as a priority (e.g., transparency with public stakeholders while investigations produce details of the space program's crises, including when engaging with recommendations and implementations of relevant corrective actions).
Nevertheless, the above findings and analysis call into question exactly how an entity may account for organizational learning that may be prone to a temporal ‘depreciation’ or ‘atrophy’ of sorts that may in turn potentially lead to future crises. Such ‘depreciation’ or ‘atrophy’ where the learning that had previously been achieved (or assumed to have been achieved) has appeared to have been lost is not unprecedented in empirical research. In the organizational learning literature, the loss of learning is termed decay (Desai and Madsen, 2022), and refers to a deterioration in the collective ability of organizations to retain knowledge (Argote, 2012). Although a potential explanation for the apparent loss of learning appears to have occurred between the time of the Challenger mission and the time of the Columbia mission, identifying the situational conditions for decay are far beyond the remit of the current paper, but the possible occurrence of this apparent loss of learning does raise some important questions. For example, what determines whether organizational learning has occurred? How persistent is this learning? To what extent is organizational learning more or less likely to occur in response to crises or disasters? What actions may be taken to identify and then prevent organizational learning decay? What information may be collected to assess these questions? Once answers to these questions are further developed, then a key question to direct attention to would be: how can knowledge gained be used to develop more effective controls to counter factors that would decay organizational learning, as well as preserve knowledge that has been previously generated, embedded, and encoded into routines, processes, and organizational memory?
CONCLUSION
This study aims to extend our understanding of the ways in which management control supports organizational resiliency in response to crises. Specifically, evidence in this study broadly affirms the central role played by management control in contributing to and supporting organizational resilience at NASA in relation to the Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia crises. Principally, this role was reflected in NASA's ability to bounce forward from the crises through extensive investigation of the causes of the crises, and the development and implementation of management control responses to ensure such failures did not recur. Organizational learning, achieved in part through the interactive use of management control, was instrumental in NASA fostering the change necessary to adapt and improve while simultaneously exerting control to ensure mission and program objectives were achieved.
This study answers calls from the literature to explore how different ways of looking at control can be seen to influence organizational resilience. Entities can benefit from these findings by obtaining a better understanding that the nexus between organizational resilience and management control is not reliant on one single paradigm. In this study's particular context, organizational learning supported by the interactive use of control appears to be instrumental in achieving organizational resilience. However, it is not inconceivable that, in other contexts, entities can use a number of typologies and forms of management control to achieve organizational resilience, in particular via bouncing back but also via bouncing forward. Interestingly, despite the codification and embedded characteristics of formal controls, organizational learning appears to be subject to decay over time, suggesting the possibility of a ‘half-life’ or limit to the duration of the efficacy of formal controls.
While our findings confirm a ‘bounce-forward’ propensity of management control to support organizational resilience at NASA during crises, we did not discern evidence indicating efforts to ‘bounce back’. Thus, it appears that assessments of the crises did not indicate a setting that warranted dedicated efforts to bounce back, such as if evaluations had determined that pre-tragedy controls were sufficient, and also that the inherent risk of spaceflight, always recognized as a nonzero risk, had been duly considered and deemed adequately and effectively managed. Therefore, NASA's response had to be to bounce forward by developing new capabilities requiring alterations to fundamental rules, assumptions, and principles, which led to changed operational axioms, and in so doing, become stronger for future challenges. Also, despite the integral role of organizational learning in assisting NASA to bounce forward from the crises in Apollo 1 and Challenger, we found evidence of what appeared to be decay in organizational knowledge in the case of the Columbia mission. Again, although not unprecedented in organizational learning research, this finding of decay suggests that although management control systems may be thought of as ‘… reservoirs of organizational financial and non-financial information, [that] can be used as platforms to facilitate [organizational learning]’ (Wee et al., 2014, p. 169), by no means can it be presumed that this ‘reservoir’ will not, under certain circumstances and in certain situations, be subject to leakage.
Our study has a number of limitations. First, as in all archival research, we cannot be certain to have correctly interpreted the documents that form our evidence base. However, given the nature of the crises and the extensive commentary they have invoked, we are confident that the inferences we have drawn and insights offered are accurate. Additional interview-based research designed to examine the research question we have chosen to investigate would be a worthwhile avenue for further research.
Second, our investigation focuses primarily on the role of management control as it influences organizational resilience. However, we are very mindful of the reality that MCS are but one aspect that drives behaviour and decision-making, and organizational resilience is clearly influenced by factors in addition to formal control systems, rules, procedures, and practices.2 One factor to consider that would have indeed been present in this study's context is that NASA's funding decisions are political since their appropriation of resources is derived from a legislative budgeting process with approval of the US president. However, despite this inevitable political factor, NASA's job is to execute the actions that would result in achieving the strategic objectives that the Agency has been assigned and given an appropriation to accomplish from Congress and the White House, as eloquently explained by former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin (Griffin, 2023). The execution of such actions such as at NASA involves MCS, and this study can still explore how MCS were used during crises to contribute to and support organizational resilience in a manner that is externally valid to settings that do not necessarily include a political decision.
Finally, this study sought to investigate the role of management control in contributing to and supporting organizational resilience within a very specific context—that of the crises experienced by NASA (a public sector entity) —by analyzing primarily rich archival data via reviews commissioned by the US Government. Entities, whether they are public or private, will aim to design and deploy MCS that help them to achieve their specific, tailored strategic objectives. This will result in different foci on the relevant risks that are pertinent to understand in order for a given entity to achieve the strategic objective at hand. The information provided by MCS will thus vary depending on the entity's strategic objectives, but this study's findings should still be externally valid. Nevertheless, investigations of the role of management control in contributing to and supporting organizational resilience in other settings would provide additional, much-needed empirical evidence on this topic. While much potential exists within the space sector to advance accounting knowledge (Alewine, 2020), any factors to consider that may challenge this study's inferences, particularly relating to entities in the private sector, would be welcome future research.
Despite these limitations, the current study contributes to the management control literature by considering the role of control in a context in which research has to date been limited. In so doing, we contribute to the inventory of management control research by illustrating the role played by accounting as a tool for organizational resilience, and in the way that societies cope with crisis.
Acknowledgement
Open access publishing facilitated by University of South Australia, as part of the Wiley - University of South Australia agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.
Biography
Basil P. Tucker ([email protected]) is at University of South Australia. Hank C. Alewine is at University of Alabama in Huntsville.
REFERENCES
- 1 Our intent is to highlight instances in which management control might support or influence organizational resilience. The control typologies we have cited are thus illustrative, and therefore we do not purport or need to attempt to include all controls presented by any single typology or framework.
- 2 We are indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers in bringing this point to our attention.
