Ethics are quite essential in the running of organizations and companies. Boeing Company is one corporation which is currently experiencing challenges attributed to ethical issues. The company’s 737 MAX planes were grounded in March 2019 following two major accidents that resulted in the death of 346 passengers and crew (House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 2020). The accidents were occasioned by some mechanical failure attributable to faulty design. The occurrence of the design problems is associated with the negligence of ethical standards and guidelines by the company’s senior management. The production competition between Boeing and Airbus made the former’s management exert undue pressure on the technical teams to meet the production timelines. An emphasis was also placed on cost over the quality of the planes and the safety of the public (Kitroeff et al., 2019). One of the company’s engineer registered a complaint stating that the company had dismissed a safety system to reduce the production cost, thus maximize the profits.
Consequently, the company’s planes remain grounded awaiting new flying approvals from the FAA. The company is also under investigation by the different institutions and faces several lawsuits. The preliminary investigation findings released by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in March 2020 revealed that the accidents were attributable to the following factors conflicted representation, influence over FAA’s oversight, a secretive culture, faulty assumptions and production pressures. These factors revolve around serious ethical issues. Following the grounding of its planes, the company’s performance has been severely impacted. The company has lost lots of revenue (Zarroli, 2020). The morale of the employees is also affected due to the poor corporate culture where their recommendations might be ignored by the senior management (Kitroeff et al., 2019). The company has also acquired a negative public perception (Kitroeff, 2019). Its brand image is severely dented since the public perceives it to be profit-oriented over the safety of the public. Some persons may also fear flying the rest of Boeing’s planes due to a concern about their safety.
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The improvement of the company’s ethical guidelines and behaviors requires a change in the company’s corporate culture. The company has crafted ethic and compliance guidelines. However, the implementation of ethical standards requires support and guidance from senior management. In this case, the top management is responsible for flouting the guidelines. Hence, to improve the adherence to the ethical guidelines, it would be essential to emphasize to the board of directors that a change its senior leadership is not adequate. The company has already changed its CEO (Wattles, 2019). However, the transformation of the company’s requires a concerted effort. Consequently, the senior leadership requires to undergo training on ethics. The training of the senior leadership would help create a corporate culture change team that would spearhead the change process at the company. Furthermore, the change has to begin with the senior employees so that it becomes enforceable to the rest of the employees.
References
Kitroeff, N., Gelles, D., & Nicas, J. (2019). Boeing 737 Max Safety System Was Vetoed, Engineer Says . Nytimes.com. Retrieved 14 June 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/business/boeing-737-max-crashes.html .
The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastruture. (2020). The Boeing 737 MAX Aircraft: Costs, Consequences, and Lessons from its Design, Development, and Certification -Preliminary Investigative Findings- [Ebook]. Retrieved 14 June 2020, from https://transportation.house.gov/download/ti-preliminary-investigative-findings-boeing-737-max-march-2020 .
Wattles, J. (2019). Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg ousted after a disastrous year . CNN. Retrieved 14 June 2020, from https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/23/business/boeing-dennis-muilenburg/index.html .
Zarroli, J. (2020). NPR Choice page . Npr.org. Retrieved 14 June 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2020/01/28/800367131/boeing-faces-financial-pressures-after-grounding-of-737-max .
