Originally Posted by
FlightlessParrot
There is a capitalist answer to the problems of Boeing, summed up in the slogan "Creative destruction." Over two decades or so, Boeing has abandoned the things that made it truly respected and trusted by everyone who ever set foot in an aeroplane, all in pursuit of financial success. The consequences of this management policy is that it is now vulnerable to the external shock of the pandemic. The company Boeing is, perhaps, no longer the best entity to manage its productive assets, both plant and skilled workers. As the company was moving more and more to an outsourcing model, with shared risk, there would be the less disruption in breaking it up into manageable, more nimble, and more ethical productive units.
Some time ago, (Sept 3rd 1976) John Boyd wrote his paper on Destruction and Creation, which predates computer games of a similar name. The gist of Boyd's concepts are stated in the closing paragraph on page 7 as:
Paradoxically, then, an entropy increase permits both the destruction or unstructuring of a closed system and the creation of a new system to nullify the march toward randomness and death. Taken together, the entropy notion associated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the basic goal of individuals and societies seem to work in dialectic harmony driving and regulating the destructive/creative, or deductive/inductive, action—that we have described herein as a dialectic engine. The result is a changing and expanding universe of mental concepts matched to a changing and expanding universe of observed reality.
Boyd, John R.,
"Destruction and Creation"
Out of entropy arise the seeds of creation.
JB was mainly referring to entrenched ideology, institutionalized thinking and practices, and as a blue suiter, he sure had enough examples for his theories. Growing mushrooms out of the necrotic corporate body of TBC is probably not a great solution but it is always an option. TBC may well be better off showing some humility and soul searching and take substantive action to contemplate their navel, and own the problem and use that to start anew with... gosh, maybe a real, meaningful corporate ethics that starts at the top with some moral conviction. The last effort was a cynical expedient and was as effective as would be expected, and in the end, the shareholders get what they wished for.
It was people with moral fortitude such as Boyd, Spinney, Christie, Spray, Riccioni and Co that resulted in the Viper, the A-10, exposed the BFV misleading survivability trials, and who developed E-M theory, the aerial attack study, Patterns of Conflict, and the OODA Loop. He was hated by the airforce bosses, the people who turned up to his funeral were marines, which says about all that needs to be said about integrity and institutions.
Boeings management will be remembered too, but not in a good way, nor will TBCs responses to the failures in their processes be forgotten easily without renewal.