Re:VW says rulebreaking culture at root of emissions scandal
by Shivetya on Thursday December 10, 2015 @04:21PM
(#10713573)
process driven cultures tend to generate a lot of apathy from the standpoint that speaking up is systematically discouraged as there is no reward. doesn't matter how right your position is, far more will follow a process to any end as the process itself provides cover from fallout and failure
Re:VW says rulebreaking culture at root of emissions scandal
by masklinn on Thursday December 10, 2015 @04:29PM
(#10713623)
Feynman recounts very much the opposite (of apathy), that engineers and even factory workers had remained surprisingly (to him) involved, interested and high in morale, e.g. recounting his meeting with the workers reshaping and reassembling the solid rocket booster sections:
> the point is, the workers were thinking! I got the impression that they were not undisciplined; they were very interested in what they were doing, but they weren't given much encouragement. Nobody was paying much attention to them. It was remarkable that their morale was as high as it was under the circumstances.
Re:VW says rulebreaking culture at root of emissions scandal
by Shivetya on Thursday December 10, 2015 @04:44PM
(#10713719)
apathy does not necessarily manifest in bad morale, if anything it can be a coping mechanism. let alone in such groups the idea of not rocking the boat is similar to the Wilder effect; you be what they expect when asked because to disagree causes discomfort or the need to be seen as a team player is real
Re:VW says rulebreaking culture at root of emissions scandal
by masklinn on Thursday December 10, 2015 @06:11PM
(#10714314)
> apathy does not necessarily manifest in bad morale
Apathy is defined as a lack of interest, enthusiasm or concern, the text I quote is about Feynman finding none of these lacking.
Don't forget somebody blowing the whistle to the hierarchy and a middle-mangler (of justice) "losing" the call. Feynman recounts multiple instances of manglement ignoring or railroading warnings and whistleblowing from engineers and workers, both in and out of NASA, when they didn't fail to consult with their report entirely.
Here's a verbatim quote from "Why do you care what other people think" (norton paperback, page 185)
> When I left the meeting, I had the definite impression that I had found the same game as with the seals: management reducing criteria and accepting more and more errors that weren't designed into the device, while the engineers are screaming from below, "HELP!" and "This is a RED ALERT!"
And top manglement may not only know (and not care) about the issues but cause them, see this other quote a few pages further (194) in the Software Group section (Feynman had been very impressed — positively — by the engineering discipline of the shuttle software group)
> One guy muttered something about higher-ups in NASA wanting to cut back on testing to save money: "They keep saying we always pass the tests, so what's the use of having so many?"