Leadership Styles at Boeing: A Comparative Case Study Analysis

This case study delves into the strategic leadership and management practices at Boeing, examining the leadership styles of former CEOs Frank Shrontz and Philip Condit. The analysis provides a literature review on leadership, discussing various leadership theories and their application within the context of the aerospace industry. The paper evaluates and critiques the leadership styles of Shrontz, who employed an autocratic style focusing on cost reduction and efficiency, and Condit, who adopted a more democratic and strategic approach. The study highlights the impact of these different leadership styles on Boeing's operations and performance, drawing conclusions about the importance of strategic leadership in influencing organizational success and maintaining financial stability. The document references several academic sources to support its analysis.

Running head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP
Strategic Leadership and Management: Boeing Case Study
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3
2. Literature Review on Leadership...........................................................................................3
3. Evaluation and Critique of the Leadership and Management Styles of Shront and Condit
with Leadership Theories...........................................................................................................5
4. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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1. Introduction
Strategic leadership could be referred to as the potential of a manager for expressing
the strategic vision for the company for motivating others to obtain the vision (Conger 2015).
Boeing Company is one of the most popular American MNC, which designs and
manufactures the rockets, satellites, telecommunications, missiles and equipment in the entire
world. They provide different product support and leasing services. It is amongst the largest
global aerospace manufacturers and is the 5th largest defence contractor. The CEO of Boeing
Company is Philip Condit, who had provided some of the most significant and important
changes in the organization. Moreover, the predecessor of Condit, Frank Shrontz has also
been responsible to ensure that the organization is getting higher success.
2. Literature Review on Leadership
An organization has to manage change and ambiguity for ensuring that better
effectiveness and efficiency is gained (Bolman and Deal 2017). For successfully dealing with
the changes, the manager or the leader has the major responsibility for making the staff
understand about the significance of these changes within the business. Leadership is the
procedure, through which an executive could easily direct, influence and guide the work and
behaviour of others for subsequent accomplishment of the goals and objectives for a specific
situation. It is the core capability of the manager for inducing the subordinates to work with
high zeal and confidence (Daft 2014). Moreover, leadership is also referred to as the potential
to influence behaviours of other individuals.
The leaders are needed to develop the futuristic visions and even motivate the
organizational members for achieving the visions. It is the inter personal procedure, where
the manager is involved into influencing as well as guiding the employees for successful
achievement of the objectives. Leadership also denotes few qualities that are needed to be

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present within an individual that involves intelligence, personality and maturity (Antonakis
and Day 2017). Leadership is a group procedure and it involves two or more individuals to
interact amongst one another. The leader is included in shaping as well as moulding the
behaviour of the entire group for successful achievement of objectives. Leadership is
completely dependent on tackling of various situations and hence ensuring better
effectiveness and efficiency in the organization or situation.
Leadership is the practical skill that encompasses the capability of an individual for
guiding or leading any other person, organization or even a team (Cameron et al. 2014).
Various approaches are eventually present for this particular aspect and hence it helps in
ensuring that social influence could easily enlist the support and aid of others for achieving a
common task. Different traits of leadership include situational interaction, charisma, power,
values and vision, function, intelligence, behaviour and several others. Major dependency is
placed on intelligence for understanding the level effectively (Chemers 2014). It is the
distinct capacity of the organizational management to set as well as achieve the most
interesting goals and taking conclusive and faster activities, whenever needed for outdoing
the high competition and motivating others to perform at the highest level as possible.
It can be extremely difficult to place a specific aspect on leadership as well as
qualitative aspects of the company, which are commonly being tracked for comparing
between the companies. The individuals with stronger leadership skill within the company
also rise to certain executive position like CFO, CEO and chief officer, president or even
chairman (McCleskey 2014). It helps in providing direction for the organization as well as its
workers. As a result, this particular skill can easily provide direction to the organization and
its workers. The respective employees require to learn about the direction, where the
organization is headed and reaching out to the destination.

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3. Evaluation and Critique of the Leadership and Management Styles of Shront and
Condit with Leadership Theories
Both Philip Condit and Frank Shrontz are the CEOs of Boeing Company. They have
ensured that the respective organization is obtaining maximum advantages without any type
of complexity. These two leaders are responsible for providing maximum effectiveness in the
business. Boeing jets eventually represented 2/3rd of the dollar values of every commercial
airplane that was ordered in the year of 1995. Condit had made his mark, as soon as he
oversaw development of the most recent airplane of Boeing (Grint et al. 2016). The
commands of these two managers were taken into consideration, as they followed proper
leadership and management styles, as compared to others.
Philip Condit has followed strategic leadership style for his work and for ensuring that
there remains a proper interaction within the main operations of the organization and the
growth scope. Strategic thinking majorly provides support to numerous categories of
employees and the leaders, who are operating in similar method, could easily set out a basic
precedent with respect to the number of people, supported and provided direction in the most
effective manner (Rosenbach 2018). In spite of such strategic approach, Condit has a casual
approach, which allows him in maintaining a friendly approach towards its subordinates. He
is even casual in his dressing sense and dresses casually, sometimes without ties.
The management style of this particular leader, Philip Condit is democratic style. He
is able to plan, prioritize as well as organize working efforts for the purpose of accomplishing
objectives in a business organization. It is the most significant method, by which the
managers can go for accomplishing the goals (Saeed et al. 2014). It eventually encompasses
the method they make up decisions for planning and organizing work. Condit is following
collaborative democratic style for managing his work. As a result, he is communicating

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extensively with the staff and also making decisions by the majority. Condit believes that
involvement of every individual and making the team taking ownership would eventually
result in the most effective decisions, taken by him. One of the most significant disadvantage
of this specific management style is that it is highly time consuming and the final decision is
being undertaken by the manager itself (Antonakis and Day 2017). However, Condit takes
inputs from all the staff and hence the decision is being taken after proper communication.
Frank Shrontz, on the other hand had a different leadership and management style
than Condit in Boeing Company. He had eventually hammered at reduction of cycle time for
cutting expenses to the highest point and Boeing had to deliver an airplane within ten months
of the original order as compared to previous order of 18 months. Moreover, he had pushed
towards better standardization of the parts, after reducing the total work force from 161700 to
108000 in the year of 1990.
The leadership style that Frank Shrontz had followed in this work was autocratic
style. As a result, he made decisions without even taking input from any staff, who reported
to him (Baillien et al. 2014). Hence, the team members in Boeing were neither consulted nor
considered prior to any decision taken, however they were expected to adhere to the decision
at one time as well as the speed stipulated by the leader. He even followed a persuasive
management style in his work. With the help of this particular management style, the
management makes every decision for the staff, however then convinces the staff that the
decisions were being made for the betterment of the team (Chan, Sit and Lau 2014). He had
reduced order time by 8 months and convinced the team that it is an effective method to
attract more customers in the business and they would gain more profit.
4. Conclusion

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Therefore, a conclusion can be drawn that strategic leadership is needed for
influencing any other individual in willingly making decision, which enhances the prospect
for the organizational long term success and also preserving short term financial stabilization.
Various approaches of leadership have positive impact on the direction of growth and vision
of the organization. This literature review has analysed the case study of Boeing Company
for understanding the management of its two managers, Philip Condit and Frank Shrontz.

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