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The Boeing Nosedive


A once-venerable company turned its soul over to shareholders and courted disaster.

Conspiracy theories exploded, intensifying further after a relative claimed to a local TV station that Barnett had told her that “if anything happens, it’s not suicide.” There were two ways to interpret the story: Either Boeing’s communications strategy had been expanded to include assassination, or its reputation had become so toxic that the public found it possible to believe the worst. Thanks to a string of unforced errors and botched responses, Boeing, like other corporate giants from the 20th century, has devolved from the epitome of world-beating quality to a symbol of managerial fecklessness, focused on short-term profits at the expense of the company’s long-term sustainability. Many feared that squeezing suppliers would harm the quality of their components, but McNerney was determined to recoup the cost of the 787’s development; if the subcontractors complained, they could find their work taken away from them, as happened to landing-gear-maker United Technologies Aerospace Systems.

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Boeing Nosedive