Building an American bridge over the “management gap”: The adoption of systems management in Esro and Esa

Abstract

European leaders created the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) to compete with American scientific capabilities in space. ESRO's success, which contrasted sharply with the concurrent failure of the European Space Vehicle Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO), was based largely on successful use of American management methods. While ESRO's engineers and managers worked with NASA personnel, European companies hired American corporations to aid their efforts. When ESRO ran into financial difficulties in the late 1960s, they responded by adopting American project planning and financial estimation methods. ESRO formed the organisational base of the European Space Agency, and in the Spacelab project, NASA required that ESA employ even more American management processes. American contractors again aided the effort. Through the successive adoption and adaptation of American organisational models, ESRO and ESA successfully transferred American organisational expertise, and bridged the “management gap” originally perceived in the 1960s.