Theories and less formal explanations have been used to account for the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986. The accounts typically conclude that the accident was the predictable outcome off technological deficiencies, organizational problems, and human error; Yet such appeals to in evitability of the shuttle accident do not explain why it was the Challenger slight, and not earlier ones, that sailed. An organizations "zone of acceptance, first discussed in the work of Barnard, Simon, and Thompson, is developed further as the analytic framework in in which to answer his more specific questions.
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