Vaughan, Diane

Vaughan, Diane. (1996). The Challenger Launch Decision Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance (University of Chicago Press Chicago, CA). 

A second group have looked to organizational and cultural characteristics. A classic example of this approach is Diane Vaughan s analysis of the Challenger space shuttle explosion, when safety standards were progressively eased and finally ignored to the point of disaster. Her evocative phrase the normalization of deviance perfectly captures the gradual erosion of standards, the tacit acceptance by the people concerned and the eventual loss of any sense of where the boundary of safety lies. 

Normalization of deviance is the acceptance of, or failure to recognize, faulty and risk-prone processes because they are so familiar, pervasive, and entrenched in the work environment. This results in failure to attend to problematic conditions. Diane Vaughan describes the role of normalization of deviance in her book about the 1986 accident, noting that normalization of deviance is common in... 

Diane Vaughan, Ph.D. Expert on Challenger disaster and NASA culture Professor of Sociology, Boston College Jime 24, 2004... 

These aberrant behaviours and actions are insidious and, if not detected and trapped through a robust safety and quality audit regimen, become unofficially sanctioned procedures. Diane Vaughan (19%), in her definitive woik on the loss of the space shuttle Challenger referred to this as the normalisation of deviance . 

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