What are the unethical behaviors in the corporate world? Illustrate with an example.


Answer: Boeing 737 Max 

 
Boeing is an American multinational company that manufactures aircraft, military equipment, rockets, missiles, and telecommunication equipment. The Boeing 737 series aircraft is the most popular commercial jet in the world. In March 2019 and December 2020, the Boeing 737 Max commercial jets belonging to Ethiopian and LION Air crashed, grounding the 737 Max jets. These incidents triggered the crisis at Boeing. 

The Boeing 737 Max crisis is a classic example of chained unethical behaviors exhibited by an organization and how one unethical behavior quickly led to another in an attempt to cover up the previous one. 

Motivated blindness 

Motivated blindness was the initial cause for the people involved in the 737 Max jet design. It started with Boeing’s chief technical test pilot, David Forkner, who repeatedly spotted erratic behavior on the jets MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System). Despite egregious MCAS, David later urged FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) to remove the MCAS mentioned from the 737 Max instruction manual. Boeing management failed to overlook David ForKner’s and other faults and chose to remain ignorant. 

Indirect blindness 

Similarly, a lot is afoul with FAA. Months before the crash of 2 jets, Boeing had known about the issues and delayed the flight data submission to FAA. Despite the warnings from FAA, Boeing got away with it quickly. The indirect blindness of the FAA added insult to injury to the crisis. 

Slippery slope 

Boeing was on a slippery slope, and the downward spiral continued with David Forkner requesting FAA to remove the mentions of MCAS from the jet’s instruction manual. Another test pilot, Gustavsson, claimed that David Forkner kept him out of the loop. 
 
Overvaluing outcomes 

On the whole, Boeing was unaware of the looming crisis and, at every stage, was overvaluing the outcomes of getting the jet out of the production lines and getting it FAA-approved. 

Recommendations 

 The managers at Boeing must implement processes that root out conflicts of interest. For example, when David Forkner captured the erratic behavior of MCAS, the stringent process to capture test data and the data must be published to a governance board to resolve any conflict of interest. 

Similarly, for FAA-related transactions and interactions, the governance board must oversee whether the transactions might invite unethical behavior and take ownership of the implications. 

Boeing’s governance board must continuously monitor for trivial ethical infractions and address them immediately. It has to examine both “good” and “bad” decisions for their ethical implications.