Psenka, Carolyn Elyse (Author)
Wayne State University
Batteau, Allen W.
Edition Details: Advisor: Batteau, Allen W.
Physical Details: 371 pp.
Language: English
***** Government supported innovations in space technology have produced large and complex engineering systems, like Apollo and the Space Shuttle. These technological systems were designed, produced, operated and maintained through the heterogeneous collaboration of governmental and contractor resources. Over the lifecycle of such large technical projects, an array of complex and distributed knowledge objects (i.e., engineering texts, such as documents, and other codified and uncodified knowledge resources) are produced by a variety of sources. The proliferation of these heterogeneous knowledge objects are recognized by NASA as a potential source of system risk and challenges to the management of engineering knowledge. This study seeks to advance our understandings of language, culture, and risk in large-scale and complex technical organization by investigating the theoretical and practical implications of the problem of translation in complex work. A history of the knowledge management for one of thousands of routine Shuttle hardware maintenance processes was reconstructed during the lifecycle of the Space Shuttle Program. This history traced the origins of the knowledge indexed by the manual, which emerged as the codified "process knowledge document" produced by maintenance engineers to describe the maintenance procedures and to index other codified knowledge objects in circulation relevant to the maintenance process. The history is then framed through the lens of Actor- Network-Theory (ANT), a theoretical approach that considers the agency of both human and non-human actors (termed actants) in the formation of networks of interaction. Network segments can form knowledge spaces, like the one for the maintenance process studied here. This process knowledge space was assembled at a maintenance lab by a convergence and translation of knowledge objects originating from a variety of sources that circulate within the Space Shuttle collectivity. To understand the meaning of the knowledge contributions indexed by the maintenance manual, the history was also constructed to recount the elemental NASA-contractor relationships forming an actor-network that is a human space flight knowledge space at-large. Additionally, the techniques and practices that constitute NASA's human space flight knowledge traditions were traced from Project Mercury through the Space Shuttle Program. When modeled as a semiotic network, these relationships are seen as they form NASA's Human Spaceflight Network. This actor-network is a complex formation of activities comprised of people and things from a variety of sources that have come to share a common history of unique experiences. The notion that NASA's human space flight activities are a "monumental technical network" was developed in this study to distinguish the Shuttle Program's complex technical network from other forms of complex human organization that have been previously recognized by scholars of large technical systems. The Space Shuttle, an artifact of NASA's Human Spaceflight Network, can be compared with other examples of monumental technologies that are sustained for reasons other than their instrumental value. ANT theorists also suggest that the same translation processes that engage and maintain network interactions at-large can be found in local activity settings that comprise segments of an actor-network. The coevoltuion of the need for this maintenance process, the emergence of its knowledge spaces, and the genres of process knowledge documents authored by engineers to describe the maintenance process, were traced over the lifecycle of the Shuttle hardware. The same translation processes, i.e., convergence & accumulation, replication, and simplification, identified as stabilizing the network at-large also were found at work in the evolution of the maintenance process documentation. A description is provided to explain how the maintenance technicians--the workers who routinely perform the hardware maintenance process--translate the engineers' codified plans into visual (and often uncodified) cues in the maintenance lab. This study identifies a local "process culture" as the shared meanings cultivated during repeated processing interactions that take place at the maintenance lab. Process culture, as defined here, is a structural feature of actor-networks. Process culture is also a source of differentiation and, therefore, a potential source of risk for the management of knowledge. However, ANT theorists have not previously focused on process cultures that form in actor-networks. Keywords: science and technology, NASA history, outsourcing, information sharing monumental technology, maintenance engineering *****
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 69/12 (2009). Pub. no. AAT 3341579.
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