When Safety Meets Corporate Culture: The Cause of Problems at Boeing

When Safety Meets Corporate Culture: The Cause of Problems at Boeing

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Abstract

A single problem rarely causes aircraft accidents. Instead, they are caused by a cumulative series of events with roots outside the cockpit. At the core of this series of events is corporate culture, an accumulation of the behaviors and beliefs that underline employee and management & leadership relationships. The current paper discusses how corporate culture or neglect of it contributed to Boeing 737 MAX crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia. This is an important issue, primarily when technical and system aspects of aircraft and human errors are often blamed for causing crashes. The paper adds corporate culture to the list of issues that must be addressed in preventing aviation accidents. In this discussion, the paper draws from a history of crashes experienced by Korea Air and highlights similarities on how corporate culture is at the center of bad decisions that lead to crashes. The crashes contributed to MCAS malfunction, pilot training, lack of candor, and undue pressure. In this regard, the paper recommends that Boeing consider an open communication approach and increase the accountability of decision-makers.

Keywords: Boeing, organizational culture, corporate culture, crash, airline, culture.
 
When Safety Meets Corporate Culture: The Cause of Problems at Boeing

1.0.Introduction

            Corporate culture refers to the behaviors and beliefs that determine how employees and management in an organization handle outside business transactions. Corporate culture is implied and not expressly defined (Gilliam Jr, 2019). It develops organically over time based on the cumulative traits of the people hired by the company. Corporate culture manifests through all aspects of an organization's operations like internal and external communication, hiring and promotion of employees, or through the organization's mission statement. On its website, Boeing defines its corporate culture as a Learning Culture (Boeing, 2021), which can also be defined as a safety-first-culture (Pasztor, 2020) in which the safety of customers and employees is paramount to significant decisions. However, recent events at Boeing have attracted scholarly scrutiny in which the organization's corporate culture continues to be blamed as the causative factor of the recent Boeing 737 Max crashes.

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