In October 2018 and March 2019, Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 had a
tragic crash which, upon investigation, was found out that both of these airlines were flying the
Boeing 737-Max, a competitor to the Airbus A320 Neo. A new automated flight control called the
Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which was supposed to help in-
flight stabilization, was considered to be the reason as it malfunctioned in both of the flights
causing them to dive repeatedly (Josephs, 2019). This was implemented to counteract the
design flaws that made the aircraft point upwards at a higher than the predicted. On the March
of 2019, the 737 Max model was grounded worldwide by aviation authorities to stop more
incidents (Kaplan, Austen, & Gebrekidan, 2019).
After the global lockdown of the 737 Max models, multiple reactions were seen from various
organizations. The company’s production rate for the model had declined gradually from 52
units per month to 42 units by mid-April of 2019 and later temporarily suspended the production
on December 15, 2019, until the FAA provides authorization for the model to return for
commercial service (Isidore, 2020).
It was also further stated that the airline company had restricted themselves to answering critical
questions, did not accept the responsibilities and tried defending the aircraft design by blaming it
on the pilots of both the crashes who had tried to disable the MCAS to counter the sensor
malfunctions (BBC News, 2019).
This incident affected managers of Boeing since a threat to safety of the flying public lead to
events where airline customers would not want to buy the aircraft from the producer in the future
(Squalli & Saad, 2006). However, the aviation industry are not the only ones denying the safety
of the public as companies in the automotive industry, as well as pharmaceuticals, also tend to
ignore certain procedures for profit. This could risk the organization to depict a wrong picture in
the market as well as show their inability to stick to its mission and vision.
According to Li, Yai, Phun & Mio, (2015), media sources tend to exaggerate the impacts and
losses of aviation incidents which may lead to greater loss in passengers, demand from airline
customers as well as social panic towards the product and also create panic inside the
organization’s employees towards job security.
A great example would be the 2014 TransAsia flight GE222 crash which was caused due to
pilot error and was later linked to the mistakes made in certain procedures that were widespread
among the airline’s pilots including their ignorance towards abiding by the standards resulting in
the endangerment of flight safety (BBC News, 2016).
Boeing’s organizational culture has been inefficient, weak, and includes various corrupt
methods. According to Buchanan & Huczynski, (2019), the attitude of employees is shaped by
the structure of the organization they work in. Boeing’s organizational structure expected
engineers to report certain groups inside the organization before it could reach the upper
management levels to react to the feedback causing delays in taking action towards incidents
as well as key elements of their aircraft.
The company also imposed politics and power in its manufacturing process by implementing
absolute power just to fight its competitor “Airbus” by making crucial changes and suppressing
information about the MCAS system (Valverde, 1996). Boeing’s leadership gave a perception
that the company was not transparent and rather secretive about their actions towards the air
crashes which lead to communication issues (Josephs, 2020). It also questioned Dennis
Muilenburg, the chairman of Boeing as well as the upper management’s decision to implement
zero pilot training even though the MCAS system was implemented proving their leadership
structure to be unethical.
After the certain incidents, the Board of Boeing dismissed Dennis Muilenburg from the chairman
to CEO and appointed David L. Calhoun as the new chairman, who has been on the Board of
Directors of companies such as Caterpillar, Gates Corporation and Medtronic, and planned to
introduce a new board member with experience and expertise in safety (Douglas & Gregg,
2019). This has been done to regain the trust and confidence of airline customers, pilots as well
as the flying public. Later on, David Calhoun was voted by the board to become the president of
Boeing by January 2020 (Gilbertson & Bacon, 2019).
Staff members such as Eric Lindblad and Scott Campbell we later dismissed from the company
as well due to their inefficiencies such as the late deliveries of engines and essential
components, and they were later replaced with Mark Jenks who acts as the vice-president of
Boeing’s Mid-size Airplane Program (Reed, 2019). Other than the changes in the organization
staff, Boeing has also stated their progress in upgrading their flight control software for the 737
Max concerning the aftermath of the 2 incidents with the objective to make the aircraft safer
than before (CNBC, 2019).
Following the recommendations of the panel, from August 2019 onwards, Boeing had improved
their reporting lines to make sure high ranking individuals such as the CEO will get faster
feedback related to safety issues and implemented a new committee for evaluating the
company’s aircraft design and development (Tangel, 2019). This has been taken into
consideration of findings of low inter-group communication between engineers as well as the
Seattle offices and the Corporate headquarters at the time of certification work (Kimball, 2019).
The company was also revealed to have pressurized the safety testing procedure to speed up
the certification procedure for its aircraft, including the 747 Max. Engineers who were working
for the company reported that Boeing had reported the executives of cost-cutting for more than
10 years (Gates & Baker, 2019). Currently, the certification of an aircraft has changed
dramatically where the company has to appoint Authorized Representatives of FAA which would
report to the managers of Boeing that sends the final report to the technical staff of FAA for
certification (Gates & Baker, 2019)
Automation of aircraft has been implemented to meet the growing demand for flight travel with
the small number of pilots available to airline companies for hiring (Demrovsky, 2019).
According to Meredith (2019), the global demand for airline pilots has grown rapidly to a point
where we would need around 800,000 new pilots to join the workforce in the next 20 years in
order to cope up with the demand.
The current age of retirement is also to be blamed due to the age limit being 65 years which
also has imposed pressure on airlines to attract recent pilot graduates to a point where the
starter pay tends to be higher with the addition of bonuses (CNBC, 2018). Boeing should take in
consideration of losing human oversight when investing in automation of their aircraft keeping in
mind, they have safety checkpoint which could help resolve issues for the pilot.
Boeing should implement a crisis management plan as organizations facing such incidents in
inevitable. However, being able to outline how the organization would respond to critical
situations which will negatively impact profitability, reputation as well as the operation of the
company in the market can revive the aviation company (Rudd, 2017).
To create an effective plan, Boeing must plan various scenarios such as the Ethiopian air crash
and the Lion air crash to provide guidance on what could happen and create flexible sets of
responses that the organization might take during the incident (Watkins, 2002). A good example
can be the recent Starbucks racial biases scandal which was responded with a racial bias
training by closing down 8000 cafes in the United States (Gabbatt, 2019)
For the company to improve, it must adopt a structure that can act as a powerful tool for
behavior guidance where the culture can enhance the effectiveness of the company (Deal &
Kennedy, 1982). According to Putter (2019), the company’s culture of valuing safety had started
to disappear after the company had bought McDonnell Douglas, one of their old competitors, in
1997. He states that their priority in maximizing profits had caused various problems.
One of them was the late production and rolling out of the 787 Dreamliner which was already
behind schedule resulting in expenditure over billions from the target budget (Sanders, 2010).
The company has also been alleged to overrule employees' concerns towards the safety issues
of the aircraft as these were suppressed inside the organization with the promise of them being
resolved by Boeing itself (Putter, 2019). My recommendation would be to introduce culture
management a hard skill as this would ensure that concerns with employees as well as force
them to not neglect the organization’s stated mission and vision.
Boeing should follow transformational leadership which defines leadership to be a process of
morality where leaders communicate with their followers with equal objectives and values
instead of manipulation of their followers to overthrow their competition (Bass & Riggio, 2006).
This type of leadership tends to enhance motivation, the morale of the employees as well as
improve job performance with a variety of mechanisms. This could improve the overall liability
that the leader, as well as the followers, would feel towards their work.
Boeing also needs to implement transparency in their organization due to their secretive state
during the crisis in order to limit liability while keeping their reputation unharmed. Transparency
can establish trust among customers as well as employees which would make employees of
Boeing feel more reliable towards their management (Vaccaro & Madsen, 2009).
Direct and clear communication which follows a two-way channel in the workplace is considered
to be highly effective as employees tend to be engaged and committed to the process only if the
dominating leadership continually communicates the company’s strategy (Markovic &
Salamzadeh, 2018).
The Joint Authorities Technical Review also recommend having a more all-inclusive approach to
the approval of aircraft made by manufacturers by assessing the effect different changes made
to the aircraft would have to the old generation models, the essential systems of the aircraft as
well as the pilots who would be flying it (Skybrary, 2019)
It would also be wise for the International Civil Aviation Authority to increase their age
restrictions towards the current shortage in pilots as argues that it might act as a catalyst for the
current shortage in pilots making highly experienced pilots force quit their airline services (The
Wall Street Journal, 2019).
Overall, Boeing has had issues maintaining their company’s vision as soon as they had bought
one of their old competitors as it changed from valuing safety to maximizing profits. This had led
to certain issues in the organizational culture, method of communication & leadership ethics
resulting in two crashes from their recent aircraft model. This has led to the grounding of these
models creating huge losses due to their reluctance towards safety as well as a negative
impression towards their customers.
Boeing needs to shape up its way of communication during an emergency to make the
message reach the upper-level management faster. The company also has to eliminate corrupt
practices and become more transparent and liable for such incidents. The company also needs
to think about improving their aircraft with automation as it tends to decrease human interaction
and depends more on the effective and efficient working of the computer itself. It should also
closely consider the safety and training of pilots as changes into the aircraft can be quite
sensitive as it was seen with the MCAS.
Component 2: Personal Reflection
Objective
To successfully express my experience in this reflective assessment, I have used “Gibbs
Reflective Cycle” to describe my personal experience for the duration of the group assessment
as well as the summative individual assessment (Graham, 1988). This cycle contains a
framework with 6 elements which will help in defining my experience this semester (Appendix
1).
Description
In week 1, we had an introduction for the module which dealt with the behavior of employees
and groups in the organization as well as tries to make organizational goals effective (Robert
H.Smith School of Business, 2020). We were also briefed about the group presentation and the
individual report to be made. Students had to select a group to participate in presenting a
contemporary management issue of an organization. Since we were given the freedom of
choosing our members, I chose most of my close friends to work with as it benefited me with
better communication and quick problem resolution (Payne, 1982).
We chose Qatar Airways as our target organization due to its popularity and also being the
national carrier of Qatar (The Associated Press, 2014). We focused on the labor issues
exploring the unethical practices the organization had towards their female cabin crews
(Topham, 2015). Our presentation showed the issues the airline had as well as the stagnant
organization culture which imposed power on employees with surveillance and restricted
various labor rights (Valverde, 1996) (International Labour Organization, 2015). We also
included a video of the group CEO Akbar Al Baker’s highly sensitive responses towards the
press(Global News, 2018).
After the presentation, we were supposed to work on the individual assignment which was
focusing on a contemporary management issue. I had selected the Boeing 737 Max crashes
which happened in 2018 and 2019 as these incidents are highly sensitive leading to over-
exaggeration by the media and the reactions of the public on the safety of the aircraft (Li, Yai,
Phun, & Mio, 2015). I showed their inability to effectively respond to incidents, their lack of
transparency, the inability to stick with the company’s mission and vision as well as their
unethical organization culture and leadership.
Feelings
Working with the same team provided comfort for everyone with communication being much
more fluent, team members continuously engaging with each other as well as learning from
each other’s findings (Boyer, 2017). Acting as a team leader helped me in directing the team
members in creating an excellent presentation. I tried to create changes based on the feedback
of the members ensuring everyone was happy with the work (Woods, 2005)
Working on my assignment was also a challenge as I had changed topics twice increasing the
workload. However, I had finished the first component before my deadline compensating the
time lost.
Evaluation
For the group project, we had good feedback as we proved our research with strong evidence
giving us good remarks. I tried to reflect key points in my report as well as making sure strong
evidence was provided with each allegation.
Analysis
Reflecting on both the presentation and the assignment, I have done a good job of giving my full
potential. The assignment was a bit hard as I had started to run out of professional and
academic sources to reference upon, but I managed in the end.
Conclusion
The project has given me an insight into report making of contemporary issues that have
minimal reliable sources to reflect upon. It also has shown me the gravity of the situation and
how managers get influenced by such issues.
Action Plan
Reflecting on the group project, I would have wished to spend more time with my team in
rehearsing the presentation as some of us did lack in communicating effectively.
Reflecting on the individual report, I would change my attitude towards such assignments as it
was difficult to find present management issues. This had led me to change my topic twice. In
the future, I would try to explore deeper into a topic before giving up.
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Appendix
Appendix 1: Gibbs Reflective model created by Graham Gibbs representing the 6 elements of
reflection (Mulder, 2018)
