Social Groups, Values, and Authority

Alliances between scientists and military officers had grown during World War II on the Manhattan Project, in the Radiation Laboratory, and in opera­tions research groups. The Cold War furthered this military-scientific partner­ship. Appealing to the imminent Soviet threat, military officers like Bernard Schriever promoted the systems approach in weapons development to quickly design and manufacture novel weapons such as ballistic missiles. Working with his scientific allies, Schriever built an organization initially run by mili­tary officers and scientists. Similarly, Army Ordnance officers allied them­selves with JPL’s research engineers to develop the Corporal missile. Both Army Ordnance and Schriever’s ‘‘Inglewood complex’’ spent immense sums of money in concurrent development, designing, testing, and manufacturing missiles as rapidly as possible. The result for Atlas and for Corporal was the same: a radically new, expensive, and unreliable weapon.

Prematurely exploding missiles created a spectacle not easily ignored. JPL’s engineering managers resolved to improve on their ad hoc methods and em­ployed the systems approach their next missile, the Sergeant. The air force’s next-generation missile was the Minuteman, on which Col. Samuel Phillips developed the system of configuration control to better manage costs and schedules. Both second-generation weapons were far more reliable than their predecessors, partly because of the switch to solid-propelled engines, and partly because of changes in organizational practices.

Over time, social measures of success changed. Initially, simply getting a rocket off the ground was a major accomplishment. Eventually, however, Congress expected that its large appropriations would buy technologies that worked reliably. Soon thereafter, congressional leaders wanted accurate cost predictions so they could weigh alternative uses for that money. Cost over­runs came to be seen as failures. This was particularly true in Europe, where leaders promoted space programs mainly to spur economic development.

The Ranger program and its aftermath illustrated the power of Congress to change organizations. Under William Pickering’s guidance, JPL used a loose matrix structure where most authority resided with the technical divisions. When Ranger’s failures exposed JPL’s organizational flaws, Congress required JPL to strengthen project management and implement more stringent pro­cedures. Pickering and JPL’s engineers resisted these changes, but Ranger’s failures weakened their credibility. When National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator James Webb threatened to remove all future programs from JPL, Pickering had little choice. He gave in. Similar pressures influenced the air force in the early 1960s and the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) in the late 1960s. Systems management was the end result in each case. The European Space Vehicle Launcher Development Organisation’s (ELDO’s) attempts to strengthen project management did not succeed, because of weaknesses inherent in its authorizing Convention and the uncooperative attitude of its member states.

The first figure illustrates the relationships between the four social groups. In the early Cold War, military officer-entrepreneurs and scientists provided the authority and methods. I distinguish here between those military officers such as Bernard Schriever who promoted new systems, and others, such as Samuel Phillips, who brought them to fruition. Schriever acted in an entre­preneurial fashion and Phillips as a classical manager. In the air force, this period lasted from roughly 1953 until 1959, the heyday of the Atlas missile, before its many test failures led to change. Schriever acted as a visionary entre­preneur, albeit in an unconventional blue uniform. JPL’s period of military entrepreneur-scientific control came from 1944 to 1952, when JPL’s research engineers developed Private and converted Corporal from research to produc­tion. In both cases, expensive, unreliable weapons led to a concentration on cost and dependability for the next missiles, leading to approaches based on engineering and managerial values. Jack James at JPL and Phillips of Minute- man typified the no-nonsense managers that demanded dependability. Un­like engineers focused on research, such as Caltech’s von Karman and Malina, most engineers focused on the design and development of technological sys-

Cold War social groups and alliances. At JPL from 1944 to 1952, and in the air force be­tween 1953 and 1959, entrepreneurial military officers and scientists (along with research engineers) formed a social alliance to promote novel weapons. After these periods, man­agers in the military and industry formed an alliance with design engineers to control costs and build dependable systems.

tems. For them, creating a product that worked was more important than creating one that was new.

NASA’s history differed somewhat from that of the air force, because in the early years of NASA, the scientists and engineers controlled their own projects and methods. At JPL, the research-based methods prevailed in the labora­tory’s early years, and again later when Pickering shifted the laboratory into the space program, and satellite launches (and failures) were frequent as JPL raced with the clock and the Soviets.1 JPL’s new projects reverted to ad hoc committees to get fast results. Similarly, former National Advisory Commit­tee for Aeronautics researcher Robert Gilruth of the Space Task Group ran the early manned programs with little interference from NASA Administra­tor Keith Glennan. Engineers and scientists made decisions locally in a highly decentralized organization. After the Ranger fiasco at JPL, and after the ar­rival of George Mueller and Samuel Phillips in the manned programs, NASA’s high-level managers and engineers quickly centralized authority. A similar story was unfolding at ESRO, originally conceived of as an engineering ser­vice organization for scientists. By 1967, commercial interests predominated and European governments changed ESRO into an engineering organization run by managers to ensure cost control.

It is more difficult to determine who, if anyone, ran ELDO. With an am­bassador as secretary-general and economic nationalism the primary driving force, ELDO did not have a single dominant group, one could argue. Neither engineers nor scientists controlled the organization. Nor could managers fos­ter the communication necessary to break national and industrial barriers. If ever there existed a purely political organization for technology development, ELDO was it.

Each social group promoted its characteristic methods. Military officers and industrial managers promoted project management to centralize author­ity and used contractor penetration to closely monitor industry. Both groups also used competition to keep contractors honest and developed cost predic­tion and control methods such as configuration management and work pack­age management. Scientists promoted analytic techniques such as statistical analysis of reliability, network mathematics, and game theory. Engineers used

Authority changes at NASA and ESRO. In early NASA and ESRO, scientists and research engineers were allied with de­sign engineers to build new technologies. After several years, both organizations shifted to more predictable development, with managers and engineers controlling events.

Systems management methods classified by the social groups that promoted them.

a variety of testing methods, inspection and statistical methods for quality assurance, and design freeze to stabilize designs.

Ultimately, systems management is a stable system because its methods and processes maintain roles for each of its constituent social groups. For sys­tems management to remain stable over many years and projects, it had to have mechanisms for its constituent social groups to effectively interact. In the end, the primary mechanism became configuration management.