Approaches to Effectiveness in Strike in Space

Approaches to effectiveness in Strike in Space

Well-known expert of organization behavior and organization design, Richard Daft, identified four “contingency approaches to measuring effectiveness focus on different parts of an organization.” Those approaches are the goal approach, resource-based approach, internal process approach and the stakeholder approach. For this assignment, I will select two approaches, the goal approach and internal process approach, and describe how NASA’s leadership used them or might have better used them in to judge the effectiveness of the Skylab missions.

The Goal Approach

In Organization Theory and Design, Daft defines the goal approach as “an approach to organizational effectiveness that is concerned with the outputs and whether the organization achieves its output goals.” From conception, the Skylab program, as with the Apollo program, was developed with goals in mind.

Skylab 1- One of the first output goals that NASA’s leadership identified was the challenge to succeed in erecting the thermal parasol and unjamming the solar panels. Having a crew that can carry out ad hoc tasking to ensure mission success is an indicator that NASA leadership can use to measure. Second, the most obvious goals that the crew of Skylab 1 achieved was the ability to fulfill the time-duration of the mission, adapt to meet work load requirements, and maintain a sense of comradely.

Skylab 2- The second crew to work in Skylab was, according to NASA’s ground control, the favorite of the 3 crews in the Skylab program. If an organization’s goals are to “try to attained certain levels of output, profit, or client satisfaction”, then NASA’ leadership lucked out with the crew of Skylab 2. NASA’s leadership could measure the crew’s “cheerful, eager to work” mentality that translated into employee welfare. In addition, the crew was very responsive to commands from ground control. In the eyes of NASA’s leadership, for the crew to do everything they...