Originally Posted by
tdracer
Prior to the merger, Boeing top brass saw it as an engineering company first and foremost, that happened to build aircraft. After the merger with MacDac (when McDonnell bought Boeing with Boeing's money), the company was viewed as a manufacturing company. The result was nearly catastrophic
I don't think the top management even see it as a manufacturing company, as they don't see, know, or even want to know about the products it produces. Their sole interest is in dollars on spreadsheets. They, and their Wall Street acolytes, think a successful company is one that is believed as going to deliver money to stockholders in the future. As long as the belief holds, it's fine. The company ends up as nothing more than an elegant Ponzi Scheme. I think the last head of Boeing who knew a thing about aircraft was Phil Condit, worked on a range of Boeing developments, had his own aerobatic aircraft, etc. But that was 20 years ago, Since then the board don't know one end of an aircraft (or a flawed development schedule) from the other. "Oh, no, we hire people to do things like that ...".