Space Solar Power Review Vol 10 Num 2

Tasks can be designed in ways to enhance intrinsic motivation. According to the Job Characteristics Model, work should be experienced as meaningful (important, valuable and worthwhile) and generate a strong sense of personal responsibility [2,60]. This is achieved through: (1) constructing jobs that draw upon many skills and abilities and require a variety of different activities; (2) allowing individual astronauts to follow projects from beginning to end, rather than focussing on only a small segment; and (3) making it clear that the task is important to fellow crewmembers, NASA, or the world at large. Furthermore, astronauts need the freedom to plan, schedule, and carry out tasks in their own way, and they require detailed feedback, since knowledge of results helps people improve their performance. Relevant also is Kahn's concept of work modules [2,61], Work modules are time-task units defined by the shortest length of time that is feasible and meaningful to work at a given task such as cooking, analyzing data, or navigating [2]. From the overall perspective, a mission might consist of thousands of modules involving a dozen crewmembers performing scores or even hundreds of tasks. Under conventional forms of organization, missions would be built around a certain number of shifts or watches, each of which requires repetitive activities on the part of an individual astronaut. To implement work modules, one would allow each crewmember to qualify for several different kinds of tasks (such as navigating, analyzing data, and working in the galley) and then allowing them to develop their own schedules using the requisite number of modules. For example, one crewmember might choose two modules of navigating, one of analyzing data, and one of working in the galley. Still another might change job content by day of the week. Thus, within limits established by individual qualificationsand mission requirements, crewmembers arrange their own schedules and activities. Leadership The third force position that people are self-motivated, knowledgeable, and creative has given rise to the "human resource" model of management which posits as the manager's basic task making use of "untapped human resources." This model prescribes creating an environment in which all team members contribute to the limits of their abilities, and encouraging full participation on important matters, continually broadening subordinate self-direction, self-control, and influence [62], Salient here are recent efforts to develop and apply the human resources model to crews of multi-pilot aircraft and multi-pilot aircraft simulators [63-66], Aircraft and aircraft simulator cockpits are useful if imperfect analogues to spacecraft. These settings provide opportunities to study the dynamics of briefly isolated and confined groups whose members must communicate clearly, achieve very high levels of coordination, and sometimes make life-or-death decisions under stress. Under a more traditional model, crew leaders tend to be relatively gruff, unapproachable individuals, somewhat insensitive to the problems and reactions of others, and given to an authoritarian leadership style. This traditional style too

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