Description I need a PowerPoint presentation on the attached work that includes visual aids. UNFOR ...
Description I need a PowerPoint presentation on the attached work that includes visual aids. UNFORMATTED ATTACHMENT PREVIEW 1 Ethics and Leadership in Crisis: A Case Study of Boeing Student’s Name Institution Affiliation Course Date 2 Introduction Ethical leadership is the base point of a successful organization from a long-term perspective. Leaders who ensure they uphold the ethical standards will inspire trust among their teams and communities and cement this perception in the organizational perception. On the other hand, lapses in ethical judgment, particularly by top leadership, can lead to disastrous outcomes for employees, customers, and shareholders. Boeing, a major aerospace and defense producer worldwide, gives a wake-up lesson on how far an appalling profit-driven attitude can go at the cost of moral obligation. The loss of 346 people in 2018 and 2019 737 MAX disasters has caused a worldwide air safety and corporate structure crisis. The current paper looks at the ethical shortcomings of Boeing in the 737 MAX disaster and the leadership choices that made the situation more complicated. It compares them with my leadership principles and style. This analysis explains how essential ethical leadership is and how an alternative approach would have helped alleviate or avoid the crisis. Background of Boeing The Boeing Company started its operation in 1916. It was formed by William Boeing in Seattle, Washington, where it matured into one of the world's largest aerospace and defense companies. Boeing currently has its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and it operates all around the globe with the development and construction of commercial aeroplanes, defence systems, satellites, and space technology. Over the past few decades, the company has been regarded as a paragon of industrial success in America, expanding the limits of aeronautics and making a substantial contribution to national security and commercial spaceflight. Some of Boeing's innovations involve famous passenger planes like the 707, 747, and 777, which transformed the longrange travel business and made Boeing one of the major aviation companies. They 3 delved into commercial and military aircraft, enabling the corporation to diversify, thus having many opportunities to win contracts worth billions of dollars with the government, and, on the other hand, having a secure place on civilian aircraft. Around the late 2000s (especially the 2010s), Boeing started to increasingly come under pressure from European aircraft manufacturer (and its Boeing competitor) Airbus, especially in the area of more fuel-efficient aircraft development. The release of the A320neo by Airbus was a significant threat to Boeing, forcing it to increase its pace of competition. This prompted the company to develop a new model known as 737 MAX, a modification of its most well-selling 737, which is more fuel-efficient and competes with the Airbus model. In-house, nevertheless, a cultural change happened in the business, as financial ambitions started to conquer the engineering excellence. Boeing started to focus on its decision-making processes, such as shorter deadlines, cost-cutting, and paying more attention to shareholders. Since the company valued speed and profit above safety and transparency, those trends cost it dearly, leading to the ethical and leadership scandal that the 737 MAX induced. This became the new watershed in the history of the Boeing corporation and triggered the examination of the practice of this company abroad, its leaders, and ethical standards. The Ethical Dilemma: The 737 MAX Crisis The fundamental issue of ethical crisis that Boeing had to deal with was the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). This flight control software was mandated to be installed on the 737 MAX in response to design alterations that led to the plane's susceptibility to nose-up stall. Despite MCAS being an essential safety feature, Boeing did not disclose its presence appropriately to airlines and pilots. What is more threatening is that the company did not decide to mandate simulator training of pilots transitioning to MAX, which significantly 4 decreased airline customers' costs and training time, but failed to familiarize pilots with the untypical behavior of MCAS. Such exclusions were not by chance. Boeing executives were aware of the system. Still, they concealed or understated them in correspondence with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the customers, as disclosed later in internal company documents and whistleblower reports (Gelles et al., 2021). The outcome was two crashes with fatalities, Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019. The two accidents were related to wrong readings of sensors used by the MCAS to cause nose dive catastrophic actions without the ability to regain control. Response to Leadership and Popular Opinion The Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accidents that caused the loss of lives in October 2018 and March 2019, respectively, have led to an outpouring of reactions that are fast and sweeping across the world. The outrage was fuelled by discoveries that the same malfunction- the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was the cause of both tragedies that took away the lives of 346 people. Regulatory bodies worldwide responded immediately; a few days after the second crash, the Boeing 737 MAX airplane fleet was barred globally. Not only did this grounding affect the global business process, but it also impacted Pandora in terms of investigating internal business processes, which is alarming regarding the business culture inclined towards speed and profit over clarity and transparency. First, the leadership in Boeing, namely, the then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg, tried to shift blame onto others. The company has indicated that one of the significant factors was pilot error and poor airline maintenance. Boeing's official Muilenburg publicly assured stakeholders that the aircraft was safe and that the company was 5 collaborating with the world regulatory bodies to create proper pilot training. However, it was a different story, as the later-released internal documents and emails show. These exposed that engineers and test pilots had repeatedly reported on the MCAS system and how it could override the pilots' input in some flight conditions. Nonetheless, the company's executives carried on due to intense pressure to produce, meet market needs, and remain in line with Airbus A320neo. In place of a straightforward treatment of the technical weaknesses, Boeing leadership paid attention to the reduction of costs of delays and stock prices, despite the escalating safety alerts. To add to the public's shock was the realization that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had contracted several aspects of the safety certification procedures to Boeing itself. This process received wide condemnation since it had created an aviation conflict of interest. Regulators, politicians, the families of the victims, and the population all wanted drastic reform. Congressional hearings seriously hurt the image of Boeing as a leader in safety and innovation. The crisis also highlighted that ethical leadership, transparency, and independence of regulation are significant in any industry where lives are in danger (Levin, 2020). Culpability and Deeds It is the responsibility of the executive leadership and corporate culture of Boeing that generated the 737 MAX crisis. The company had become ever more focused on profitability, with engineering opinions becoming effectively irrelevant in the system in preference to business-determined standards. The decision to put Airbus and its A320neo to market and qualify investors that short-term financial returns were imminent are some of the decisions that put the plane's safety at risk. In December 2019, CEO Muilenburg was ultimately dismissed, and Boeing entered into a deferred 6 prosecution arrangement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to pay more than 2.5 billion dollars as a result of charges of conspiracy and fraud (DOJ, 2021). The company has also experienced a tremendous loss in reputation, billions of dollars related to aircraft orders, and a decline in stock value in the market. More to the point, the tragedy enormously influenced the morale of the Boeing workforce and the reliability of the company and aviation regulators worldwide. The fact that leadership did not operate transparently and ethically caused losses of financial resources, but also caused a human disaster that echoes through the industry. What Kind of Leader Am I? As a leader, I identify myself as a transformational and ethical leader as opposed to the leadership demonstrated in the 737 MAX crisis. Leaders should not consider how to benefit personally or do whatever makes shareholders happy, but rather serve others where their lives and security are concerned. I believe in transparency, accountability, and the well-being of stakeholders, and my leadership model is built on these principles. I aspire to be a listener (as I first despair: a listener to the marginalised and ignored voices). I apply a consultative style when facing complex situations where I believe in technical experts' input and front-line employees' input. Continuous learning and emotional intelligence are also key areas that I stress, as they are essential to adjusting to high-pressure situations. As a leadership member at Boeing, I would have mandated the intensive complete training of the pilots on the 737 MAX regardless of whether that would have resulted in boosting short-term expenses or delaying the product launch. My first option would have been to disclose everything to regulatory agencies and the flying population without concealing any information. Short-term performance gains, such as quarterly reports, are not worth as much as long-term assurance. 7 What Does Being a Good Leader Look Like? Leadership is not a single-dimensional job or business that involves the issuance of directives or attaining financial goals. It entails moral vision, conflict of priorities, and the interests of all stakeholders. A great leader has to realize the value of excellence attainment in combination with a sense of humility and ethical responsibility. Within a Boeing context, an exemplary leader would have led in the name of the principle of safety and integrity even when it clashed with meeting deadlines or satisfying the stock market. They would have created a psychological safety culture in which engineers and pilots would raise concerns without fearing punishment. Another aspect of effective leadership is accountability. It is not merely accountability at the time something goes wrong, but rather accountability proactively in ensuring that systems were built to be resilient and that careful communication was taking place. As depicted in the Boeing crisis, a lack of these qualities in the leadership context contributes to what occurs. A good leader keeps the decisionmaking process ethical by creating a tone of responsibility at the top so that the responsibility is interlaminated throughout the decision-making process. Core Values and Leadership Skill Set My values are integrity, transparency, empathy, and courage as core leadership competencies. They are ideal qualities and should be periodically implemented, more so during a crisis. Integrity-doing the right thing when we do not want to do the right thing is unpopular. Transparency entails being open with the stakeholders and developing openness in communication channels. Empathy will help me comprehend the impact decisions will have on other employees, customers, and communities. The most essential value is courage, which enables leaders to make tough decisions when needed, even at the risk to their personal or professional lives. Strategy decision- 8 making, conflict resolution, and teamwork problem-solving are the skills that are a part of my leadership experience. I am also a good systems thinker, making me appreciate how individual decisions can move through a company and the external world. These values and skills would guide Boeing and lead to decisions that adhere to both legal and ethical expectations. Comparison and Contrast of Leadership Styles The management style during the 737 MAX crisis at Boeing is a classic transactional, top-down style of management where efficiency and stockholder value were of much higher importance than employee suggestions and customer safety. Muilenburg and other leaders thought in results-oriented ways that tended to forget about the human consequences of decisions. By contrast, my leadership style is based on transformational principles, and they are aimed at elevating, motivating, and aligning the personalities to a shared ethical vision of a team. Although the negative attitude of the Boeing leadership about in-house issues was to ensure that the company remains competitive, discord is a part and parcel of ethical leadership. In addition, the leadership in Boeing has developed a culture of fear and silence, which I would change by making the working environment psychologically safe and allowing people to act on their concerns about ethical decisions. I also ascribe to servant leadership, or putting other people before myself. Had the skirmish in the sense of putting the needs of others above their own been utilized in Boeing, the tragedy could have been prevented. It is a difference, not just a style, of leadership, focusing as it does on long-term value creation compared to the tunnel vision of short-term financial indicators that triggered the crisis at Boeing. Conclusion 9 The Boeing 737 MAX crisis has become an excellent illustration of a case study on how ethical failure among the leadership team can develop disastrous effects at the bottom line. The disaster was not about a code bug; it was about a corrupted organizational culture obsessed with profit, which was made possible by some pennypinching regulation. The top management at Boeing decided to hide sensitive safety data, disregard employee safety complaints, and withhold information to conceal indiscretions from the FAA and the population. The effects were disastrous as they caused loss of life, mistrust by the people, and a lifelong impact on the company's reputation. Thinking over this case reminds a person of the cruciality of ethical leadership. My leadership style is based on values of integrity, empathy, and courage, and had I been in a place of power at Boeing, when these values would have influenced my decisions, different decisions would have been made instead, ones that would have put a primary focus on safety, transparency, and long-term trust. The bottom line here is that this crisis has underscored the urgency concerning the need to produce leaders who are good managers and stewards of both human and organizational well-being. 10 References Department of Justice. (2021). Boeing, charged with 737 MAX fraud conspiracy, agrees to pay over $2.5 billion. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged737-max-fraud-conspiracy-and-agrees-pay-over-25-billion Gelles, D., Kitroeff, N., Nicas, J., & Glanz, J. (2021). Boeing put profit over plane safety, according to a U.S. report. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/business/boeing-737-max-housereport.html Levin, A. (2020). Boeing’s 737 MAX crisis shows what happens when regulators trust industry too much. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/boeing-737-max-crisisshows-danger-of-self-certification
