Boeing: Values and Ethical Decision Making

The Boeing Company

Researching ethical leadership is beneficial to companies, customers, society, and the students preparing to be future business leaders. The short- term benefits for Team B include honing our research skills and improving our writing skills. The long -term benefits are much harder to quantify. Learning from the errors made at an Enron, WorldCom, or the recent mortgage scandal help us identify glaring ethical lapses and possible remedies. Taking a closer look at Boeing gave Team B an opportunity to understand how companies deal with individual ethical lapses and develop organizational values that benefit Boeing's customers in 150 countries, 170,000 employees across the United States and 70 other countries.

Leaders are expected to influence follower commitment, the problem is determining when such influence is proper (Yukl, 2010). Understanding and incorporating sound ethical reasoning in our decision making process is important; evaluating the values and behaviors of those around us is paramount. Yukl (2010) stated, "The adverse consequences of unethical behavior may not be reflected accurately in measures of leader performance or short-term organizational performance. William Boeing incorporated his airplane company in 1916. 96 years later we know that there have been cases of poor ethical decisions at Boeing, but unlike Enron and WorldCom, Boeing is still in business. Team B evaluated Boeing's policies and procedures concerning personal values, organizational values, and the decision making process.

Boeing Personal Values

According to Boeing (1995 - 2012), "At Boeing, we are committed to a set of core values that not only define who we are, but also serve as guideposts to help us become the company we would like to be. We truly live these values every day. These values are: Leadership, Integrity, Quality, Customer Satisfaction, People Working Together, A Diverse and Involved Team, Good Corporate Citizenship and Enhancing Shareholder Value." (para. 2 - 10).

Leadership

Leadership is defined as the ability to influence others to achieve a common goal. Due to ever-expanding Foreign Military Sales, Boeing endeavors to be a world-class leader in every portion of the company. This evidences itself in everything from building management team leadership skills, all the way down to their product design, manufacture and support processes.

Integrity

Integrity involves always doing the right thing, even when no one else is around to witness these acts. Boeing takes pride in treating everyone fairly, with trust and respect. Boeing also expects its employees to take personal responsibility for their actions, no matter what the outcome.

Quality

Quality is one trait that will set a company above all competitors. Boeing takes great pride in their nonstop effort to collect feedback and in turn develop continual process-improvement initiatives.

Customer Satisfaction

A company cannot succeed with customers willing to invest in their products. Boeing goes to great lengths to ensure they fully understand customer desires, and flawlessly delivers while meeting or exceeding expectations.

People Working Together

People will always be the core of any company. Boeing instills a desire to work cohesively while sharing ideas and knowledge across all levels of the company. Because Boeing is a large and geographically separated corporation, it encourages employee teamwork through web-based quality initiatives.

A Diverse and Involved Team

Since Boeing is an international company, they employ a diverse and multicultural team of employees. Boeing takes great care in fostering a participatory atmosphere that empowers employees through a flexible decision making environment to advance their business goals.

Good Corporate Citizenship

Boeing understands that it has a debt to the future, and this is presented through ecologically safe working spaces for all employees. Boeing also understands that healthy people provide more value to the company, so they have multiple health and wellness programs. Boeing takes great pride in their community outreach programs, and encourages employees to volunteer both time and money to worthy causes.

Enhancing Shareholder Value

Producing a profit is the bottom line of any company. Boeing is a publicly traded company; therefore they must ensure adequate return on assets provided by shareholders. Boeing endeavors to increase shareholder value through continued product improvement and customer satisfaction.

Organizational Values

The Strikes

In the past, the Boeing Company has had their fair share of disgruntled employees. After the big merger with another company, they hired new management. Traditionally, Boeing hires from within. The newly hired CFO, Deborah Hopkins, suddenly changed the organization's culture and focused more on cost-cutting and geared toward economic profit goals (Imberman, 2001). In the contrary, those same cost-cutting methods caused the employees' salaries to be underpaid in comparison to the market. On top of that, their health insurance benefits were inadequate. The employees wanted fully paid medical benefits (Imberman, 2001). This situation has led to a significant decrease in morale and trust within the organization, which ultimately led to the work stoppage. According to Imberman's article, "Newly imported management had suddenly begun focusing on financial results rather than engineering excellence, and the engineers had began to feel that their basic contributions were receiving short shrift" (Imberman, 2001).

Another factor that led to the strike was the external environment. After the events of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. airlines grounded flights. The airlines were experiencing cash shortages, which caused them to postpone the deliveries of new planes, or cancel or defer orders indefinitely (Imberman, 2001). Suddenly, the demand for new planes dropped significantly and job security was an issue. In addition, the retirement benefits were declining to "cut down on costs." In the article, Asker explains, "The economic pain inflicted on the U.S. aerospace industry by terrorists who attacked Washington and New York may not become as acute as it will for the airlines, but it will be greater than anything the sector has experienced in many years. The Aerospace Industries Assn. (AIA) expects