Originally Posted by
CurtainTwitcher
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.
Boeing had always elevated it's executives from within (Condit had been a Propulsion Engineer at one time) so they had an understanding an appreciation for the culture. Condit broke that when he arranged the merger with MacDac and started the downhill slide. It was quite telling that Condit was the first Boeing CEO to overtly focus on the perks of the job.
Perhaps Boeing would have eventually drifted down the 'shareholder value' path, but if they had made Alan Mulally CEO instead of Condit in 1996, it would have taken far, far longer.