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/Users/user-s175/Desktop/MHBR089-EOBCases
additional cases
Case 1:
Case 1
A Mir Kiss?
Case 2
Arctic Mining Consultants
Case 3
Big Screen’s Big Failure
Case 4
Bridging the Two Worlds—The Organizational Dilemma
Case 5
Fran Hayden Joins Dairy Engineering
Case 6
From Lippert-Johanson Incorporated to Fenway Waste Management
Case 7
Glengarry Medical Regional Center
Case 8
High Noon at Alpha Mills
Case 9
Keeping Suzanne Chalmers
Case 10
Northwest Canadian Forest Products Limited
Case 11
Perfect Pizzeria
Case 12
Simmons Laboratories
Case 13
Treetop Forest Products
A MIR KISS?
Steven L. McShane, University of Western Australia
A team of psychologists at Moscow’s Institute for
Biomedical Problems (IBMP) wanted to learn more
about the dynamics of long-term isolation in space.
This knowledge would be applied to the International
Space Station, a joint project of several countries
that would send people into space for more than six
months. It would eventually include a trip to Mars
that would take up to three years.
IBMP set up a replica in Moscow of the Mir space
station. They then arranged for three international
researchers from Japan, Canada, and Austria to spend
110 days isolated in a chamber the size of a train car.
This chamber joined a smaller chamber where four
Russian cosmonauts had already completed half of
their 240 days of isolation. This was the first time an
international crew was involved in the studies. None
of the participants spoke English as their first language, yet they communicated throughout their stay
in English at varying levels of proficiency.
Judith Lapierre, a French-Canadian, was the only
female in the experiment. Along with having a PhD
in public health and social medicine, Lapierre had
studied space sociology at the International Space
University in France and conducted isolation research in the Antarctic. This was her fourth trip to
Russia, where she had learned the language. The
mission was supposed to have a second female participant from the Japanese space program, but she
was not selected by IBMP.
The Japanese and Austrian participants viewed the
participation of a woman as a favorable factor, says
Lapierre. For example, to make the surroundings
more comfortable, they rearranged the furniture, hung
posters on the wall, and put a tablecloth on the kitchen
table. “We adapted our environment, whereas the
Russians just viewed it as something to be endured,”
she explains. “We decorated for Christmas, because
I’m the kind of person who likes to host people.”
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New Year’s Eve Turmoil
Ironically, it was at one of those social events, the
New Year’s Eve party, that events took a turn for
the worse. After drinking vodka (allowed by the
Russian space agency), two of the Russian cosmonauts got into a fistfight that left blood splattered on
the chamber walls. At one point, a colleague hid the
knives in the station’s kitchen because of fears that
the two Russians were about to stab each other.
The two cosmonauts, who generally did not get
along, had to be restrained by other men. Soon after that brawl, the Russian commander grabbed
Lapierre, dragged her out of view of the television
monitoring cameras, and kissed her aggressively—
twice. Lapierre fought him off, but the message
didn’t register. He tried to kiss her again the next
morning.
The next day, the international crew complained
to IBMP about the behavior of the Russian cosmonauts. The Russian institute apparently took no action
against any of the aggressors. Instead, the institute’s
psychologists replied that the incidents were part
of the experiment. They wanted crew members to
solve their personal problems with mature discussion, without asking for outside help. “You have to
understand that Mir is an autonomous object, far
away from anything,” Vadim Gushin, the IBMP
psychologist in charge of the project, explained after
the experiment ended in March. “If the crew can’t
solve problems among themselves, they can’t work
together.”
Following IBMP’s response, the international
crew wrote a scathing letter to the Russian institute and the space agencies involved in the experiment. “We had never expected such events to take
place in a highly controlled scientific experiment
where individuals go through a multistep selection
process,” they wrote. “If we had known . . . we
would not have joined it as subjects.” The letter
also complained about IBMP’s response to their
concerns.
Informed of the New Year’s Eve incident, the
Japanese space program convened an emergency
meeting on January 2 to address the incidents.
Soon after, the Japanese team member quit, apparently shocked by IBMP’s inaction. He was replaced
with a Russian researcher on the international
team. Ten days after the fight—a little over a month
after the international team began the mission—the
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doors between the Russian and international
crew’s chambers were barred at the request of
the international research team. Lapierre later emphasized that this action was taken because of
concerns about violence, not the incident involving her.
A Stolen Kiss or Sexual Harassment?
By the end of the experiment in March, news of the
fistfight between the cosmonauts and the commander’s attempts to kiss Lapierre had reached the public.
Russian scientists attempted to play down the kissing
incident by saying that it was one fleeting kiss, a
clash of cultures, and a female participant who was
too emotional.
“In the West, some kinds of kissing are regarded
as sexual harassment. In our culture it’s nothing,”
said Russian psychologist Vadim Gushin in one interview. In another interview, he explained: “The
problem of sexual harassment is given a lot of attention in North America but less in Europe. In Russia
it is even less of an issue, not because we are more or
less moral than the rest of the world; we just have
different priorities.”
Judith Lapierre says the kissing incident was tolerable compared to this reaction from the Russian
scientists who conducted the experiment. “They
don’t get it at all,” she complains. “They don’t
think anything is wrong. I’m more frustrated than
ever. The worst thing is that they don’t realize it
was wrong.”
Norbert Kraft, the Austrian scientist on the international team, also disagreed with the Russian
interpretation of events. “They’re trying to protect
themselves,” he says. “They’re trying to put the fault
on others. But this is not a cultural issue. If a woman
doesn’t want to be kissed, it is not acceptable.”
Sources: G. Sinclair, Jr., “If You Scream in Space, Does Anyone
Hear?” Winnipeg Free Press, May 5, 2000, p. A4; S. Martin, “Reining
in the Space Cowboys,” Globe & Mail, 19 April 2000, p. R1;
M. Gray, “A Space Dream Sours,” Maclean’s, 17 April 2000, p. 26;
E. Niiler, “In Search of the Perfect Astronaut,” Boston Globe,
4 April 2000, p. E4; J. Tracy, “110-Day Isolation Ends in Sullen . . .
Isolation,” Moscow Times, 30 March 2000, p. 1; M. Warren, “A Mir
Kiss?” Daily Telegraph (London), 30 March 2000, p. 22; G. York,
“Canadian’s Harassment Complaint Scorned,” Globe & Mail, 25
March 2000, p. A2; and S. Nolen, “Lust in Space,” Globe & Mail,
24 March 2000, p. A3.