Bounded awareness and tacit knowledge: revisiting Challenger disaster

Purpose – This paper's aim is to highlight the relationship between individual tacit knowledge and bounded awareness in managerial decision making.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews pertinent literature on bounded awareness, individual tacit knowledge and decision making as well as that on the NASA Challenger disaster of 1986. The authors then build logical arguments towards three distinct propositions.Findings – The distinct three propositions are: managers' dependence upon their existing tacit knowledge interacts with the bounds on their awareness in a cycle of positive reinforcement; different decision makers in the organization can experience differing bounds on their awareness towards the same piece of information; and the tension between experiences of success and failure influences the development of bounded awareness in individuals.Research limitations/implications – This study reflects on only a single case of decision‐making failure in its analyses. A variegated sample of different ...