On an unusually cool Florida morning in January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 50,000 feet above the ground moments after liftoff, killing seven members of the crew on board (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin, 2009). A presidential commission, called the “Rogers Commission” (hereinafter, the Commission) after former Secretary of State William Rogers, was appointed to investigate the causes of the disaster. Although the mechanical failure of an O-ring in one of the rockets was identified as the physical cause, the investigation revealed something much more discouraging; NASA's organizational shortcomings had allowed potential security risks to be ignored. The disastrous consequences of NASA's organizational failure prompted the organization to restructure its management to provide better oversight and appoint a team dedicated to identifying and monitoring potential shuttle safety risks, as well as redesigning the booster joint defective for NASA approval. Shortly before the second anniversary of the disaster, NASA officials declared that the Commission on Organizational Change's recommendations had been successfully implemented. Unfortunately, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia nearly three decades later and a subsequent investigation revealed that the changes made following the Challenger disaster had not lasted. Factors such as leaders' perception of the change process, the type of change implemented, organizational vision, resistance to change, and other challenges all play a role in how change initiatives unfold (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin , 2009). NASA's story is a testament to the complexities and challenges of not only implementing, but also sustaining organizational change. Palmer a...... middle of paper ......vestigation/CAIB_lowres_full.pdfKotter, J. (1995). Driving change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73, 59–67. Kumar, S. (2012). The challenges in managing organizational change. Advances in Management, 5(4), 13-15. Mariana, P., Daniela, B., & Nadina, R. (2013). Forces that increase or reduce employee resistance to change. Annals of the University of Oradea, Economic Sciences Series, 22(1), 1606-1612. Palmer, I., & Dunford, R. (2008). Organizational change and the importance of embedded assumptions. British Journal of Management, 19S20-S32.Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Akin, G. (2009). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.Scott, K., Heathcote, J., & Gruman, J. (2011). The diverse organization: Finding gold at the end of the rainbow. Human resources management, 50(6), 735-755.