But could Boeing have survived the pressure to become, euphemistically "shareholder value" driven, and the rivers of gold that would flow to the executive suite? I see it inevitable that this was bound to happen, it was just a question of when it would end in tears.
It is waaay beyond my knowledge and skill set to judge Boeing CEO's, but I suspect, that if it wasn't Condit, someone else would have come along and taken Boeing down the same path. It's not a Boeing thing, it's a much wider systemic problem, there is just too much money at stake to be looted by senior executives of public companies. We have entered the wild west of financialization.
The die was cast in the 1980's, a couple of great primers on the inevitability of this outcome:
and
.