Before the space shuttle Columbia fell apart over the western United States in February, NASA engineers had been talking and trading e-mails for days about problems that might have been caused by a piece of loose foam that hit the craft during liftoff.

Some of them asked about getting more pictures of the shuttle to scope out the situation. Managers, under pressure to meet budget and schedule goals, were not convinced there was a real problem. Workers -- who weren't honestly sure it was that serious -- weren't willing to go outside the chain of command. No one did anything.

And seven astronauts died.

Shocking as the tragedy was, the behavior of the human beings involved wasn't surprising. Few groups make it easy to go over the boss's head and few people want to create a lot of conflict.

"It's less risky for someone to keep their head down and go with the flow," said Lee Shull, managing director of the Pittsburgh office of employment consultant Resource Connection.

The Columbia report found the physical cause of the disaster was a breach in the thermal protection system that allowed superheated air to get through the insulation. But the report spent just as much time talking about the cultural issues that meant opportunities to do something about the accident were missed.

"Managers' tendency to accept opinions that agree with their own dams the flow of effective communications," the report said.

Ever float an idea that everyone else decided was stupid? See if this sounds familiar: "When asked by investigators why they were not more vocal about their concerns, Debris Assessment Team members opined that by raising contrary points of view about Shuttle mission safety, they would be singled out for possible ridicule by their peers and managers."

Risk-taking is difficult in any organization, said Charles Popovich, professor of marketing and management at Robert Morris University who has his own consulting group in Moon. Just ask whistleblowers at the FBI or Enron.

Government culture tends to be even more conservative than private business, he said, because the jobs are so regimented and secure. "Essentially, the goal is not to screw up."

It's not easy to change an organization. As long as people depend on their jobs for food, clothing and mortgage payments, they are going to learn the necessary techniques to survive in their workplace.

There have been various efforts over the years to empower more workers. Popovich recalled places where employees who'd been on the assembly line for 35 years were told that, all of a sudden, they'd have access to a button that would allow them to shut down the whole assembly line if they saw a problem.

But it was a bit much to expect a guy who'd worked under the hierarchy all that time to suddenly accept that there wouldn't be any consequences if he tried a stunt like that.

Consultants now argue the way to get everyone focused on the same goals is to decide what the company's mission, or story, is and judge everyone's performance accordingly. For example, if the NASA's top priority is safety, then managers won't be making decisions that might jeopardize that.

"The culture would encourage them to be candid," said Dan Paul, of Canonsburg consulting firm General Management Technologies.

Consultants argue that employees actually want to be a part of something worthwhile and important. "Folks want to do their jobs, they want to exercise their skills but organizational practices and mixed messages have them banging their heads against the wall," said Frank Lehner, a partner in North Shore consulting firm PsychoGuys.

Of course, employees will lose credibility if they are always throwing up roadblocks. And someone has to be in a position to make the call in the end.

Fortunately, not all issues that come up in the 10 a.m. meeting are as weighty as shuttle safety. Generally, noted Shull, "If you don't raise your hand about a company issue, people's lives aren't at stake."