Boeing's Ethical Failures: Harry Stonecipher Case Study Analysis

This report presents an in-depth analysis of the Boeing case study, specifically focusing on the ethical failures associated with Harry Stonecipher's leadership. It begins with an introduction that outlines the structure of the analysis, which is divided into two main assessments. The first assessment delves into Stonecipher's leadership through a personal ethical lens, evaluating his decisions based on ethical theories and concepts such as moral motivation, moral judgment, moral sensitivity, and ethical decision-making frameworks. The report then examines how Stonecipher's actions and leadership style impacted Boeing's reputation and the need for ethical workplace improvements. The second assessment focuses on the ethical decision-making process within the context of the case, assessing Stonecipher's application of ethical decision-making steps and the role of moral sensitivity, judgment, motivation, and character. The report highlights the importance of ethical interpersonal communication and the necessity of ethical codes of conduct to prevent future ethical lapses within the organization. The case study underscores the significance of corporate social responsibility and its integration with ethical, political, and social perspectives to maintain stakeholder trust and organizational integrity. The analysis includes Stonecipher's character, spirituality, and transformation aspects, as well as the ethical decision-making process and the role of interpersonal communication in managing the crisis.

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Introduction
The report comes up with the analytical report on Boeing case study and its corporate
failure resulted in unethical conduct of Harry Stonecipher. While conducting the analysis, it
has been categorised into two assessments, in which the case will analysed on the basis of
Harry leadership through personal ethical perspectives. The report applies theories and
evaluate with the help of personal ethical theories. Most importantly, transformation is
necessary so that unethical practises can be controlled in several aspects. The report beings
out ethical interpersonal communication used by the leader to cope up the situation and with
this, leader has applied the ethical code of conduct highlighting moral motivation, more
judgement, moral sensitivity, and features in decision making (National Society of Genetic
Counselors. 2018).
The second assessment highlights major improvement, which can be made to comply
with the ethical performance. The leader has asked the team to firstly make code of ethics and
then apply to every course of action to achieve organisational goals in an ethical way. Just
with an aim to increase the profitability, the top-level management asked the engineers to
disregard the aim of safety and fasten their production (Verver, 2018). This action and poor
leadership has affected the reputational image of the company. This assessment will reveal
how to create an effective ethical workplace and how leader comply with legal and social
standards. Furthermore, CSR is an important component of the company with the increasing
scandals. The report has some important outlines regarding the CSR responsibility of the
company with the integration of ethical, political, and social perspective to achieve maximum
faithfulness.

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Part A
Personal ethical perspectives
Harry’s Character
Harry Stonecipher C. born on May 16, 1936 is a former Chief Executive Officer at
two important multinational companies. Initially at American aerospace companies
McDonnell Douglas since 1994 to 1997 and later in Boeing since 1997 to 2005. Entire
duration Harry live with Boeing present many issues with his decisions and he was found
involved in the merger scandal of the Boeing and many decision of changing the
organisational proceedings and finally after a long and profitable journey with Boeing he was
fired on the base of ignorance of organisational code of ethics, after having an extra martial
affair with office staff. This female was not directly reporting to him in any manner hence all
these issues raised issues to the character (Matiland, 2005). Many questions were raised over
the ethical and personal liability of a CEO in such a big organisation, ignorance of ethics is
seen as the disrespectful act which was possible to lead furthermore ignorance among the
employees in the lower department. Harry holds the effective control over the planning and
managing the engineering activists at the Boeing but this behaviour was raised as the dark
side lead the changes in his life. Imposing the “Zero Tolerance Policy for the ignorance of the
code of conduct” ended the tenure of Harry’s CEO post with a resignation and after that in
the same year he face divorced from her wife in the base of poor character (Driscoll, 2011).
Another issue with the professional character of Harry was associated with his leadership
strategies; employees reported not believing as he used to say one thing and do another
frequently.
Harry’s Spirituality
Official code of conduct is not burden but it leads the employees to set an example of
effective organisational management in and represent the spiritual success of an
organisational policies. Boeing has “zero tolerance policy” in case of ethical misbehaviour as
the rights of other employees get disturbed hence same was applicable to the Harry.
Spirituality of Harry seems unclear as performing the act of organisational misconduct was
unethical and it was known to him, avoiding this and keeping the affair in the professional
environment affected the image of board of Directors as well (Blome, 2017). Personal needs
and requirement are related to basic needs and pleasure needs; spirituality makes difference

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between proper pleasure and improper pleasure. Lack of spiritualty in personal beliefs
affected the Harry’s career and lead end as resignation. Desire to fulfil the pleasure more than
making the ethical activities fulfilment found in the nature of Harry that lead to continue to
have an affair with the same office staff.
Aspects of transformation
Setting the business ethics and codes of the conduct in an organisation require
effective support from the employee’s whether it is from top management or from the lower
management. In 2005 board of directors at the Boeing faced breaking of the code of the
organisational conduct and this lead the issue so far that company took decisions to fire the
top most senior employee of the organisation. Many aspects resulted and supports the
resignation as essential was (Crane, Matten, Glozer, & Spence, 2019)
Envisioning the productive community
The decision of the resignation was shocking for the entire company and corporate
world as this decision was s representation to keep the values of ethics above over the
personal interest and satisfaction. Same as an example of UBER case study, misconduct
against the sexual harassment was avoided by the HR deportment due to the powerful
position of the accused, finally that also lead resignation by the senior manager as found
guilty by investigation team. Protecting an employee for the breach of code of code of
organisational ethics can lead many negative vibes emergence to protect this and to lead the
development and productivity this decision was taken by the Boeing managers fir
transformation (Grant, Arjoon, & McGhee, 2017).
Embodying a vision of the common good
Besides personal spirituality and beliefs no differentiation is possible to parallel with
organisational ethical practices. If an employ making misuse of power making illegal
activities and unethical practices it should not be tempered by the organisational managers
and other employees as well. As Harry was really guilty for the merger scandal, but due to
lack of awareness and inappropriate evidence was not proved guilty and this sets
dissatisfaction among the members of organisation. Affecting the organisational image
negatively no misuse is portable hence to manage the ethical practices in the organisation and
to manage the common serving spirituality transformation was required (Koçyiğit &
Karadağ, urkish Journal of Business Ethics).

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Disturbing the system
Entire case of official affair of Boeing CEO was a point of concern from the initial
stage, employees found difficulties to manage the cooperation with the leadership because
this personal attachment was making the leadership critical and this was seen as reducing the
profitability and productivity of a CEO for the organisation (Matiland, 2005). An official
with diverted mind creates disturbance in the entire system, because according to the
Maslow’s needs hierarchy self-desires and satisfaction for the pleasure is found burdening
over the official of common goals. As found this affecting negativity among employees and
reducing the productivity of the organisation due to failure of many decisions continually
Board of the Directors at Boeing found this act intolerable and charges the resignation from
the CEO (Koçyiğit & Karadağ, urkish Journal of Business Ethics).
Ethical Decision making and action
Nine steps of sound ethical decision making:
1. Exercise ethical behavior dynamically. Pledge a special ethical consciousness
platform, counting the meaning of personal view and evaluation of fundamental ethical
values. Summon up, the moral enterprise specialized is steadily ethical. Harry builds program
to focus over the small and little ethical values as an important in the decision making
activities (Hoeppner, 2017).
2. Look out of "innovative" ethics programs where effective practices along with
focussing the development of the ethical perceptions. Harry used to always eager to found the
innovation to lead the employees towards newly adapted ethical developing ideas to change
their personal perception (Grant, Arjoon, & McGhee, 2017).
3. Describe problem after it ascends. Finding a way to make the employees cooperative
in ethical programs application Harry defined that it is essential to describe each and every
aspect of the ethical program without ignoring the minor points of issues.
4. Express replacements. Harry used the basic concept of keeping the things clear and
ready to face challenges to avoid "first impulse" solutions, mandatory. But effective planning
of replacement of ethics but it is not profitable because it lead the flexibility in the code of
ethics making the organisational control challenging to apply (Downe & Morgan, 2016).

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5. Evaluate the alternatives. Effective evolution of the taken ethical decision is important
as it guides the managers to evaluate the use of ethical decisions is beneficiary for all or not.
This evolution allowed the effective implementation of most suitable and profitable code of
ethics in an organisation.
6. Strive for extra support, as applicable- Harry used his previous work experience to
account the best ethical practices, failure of ethical policy is not supposed to make useless but
it can be used to manage the effective involvement in future to avoid same mistake repetition
(Crane, Matten, Glozer, & Spence, 2019).
7. Pick the top ethical substitute. Harry used to Mark surety to the substitute selected
needs to be one that does the most good for all the right explanations this assuredly is
essential to reduce the conflicts among the employees.
8. Appliance the best substitute. Changing and adapting the best ethical values and their
implementation rewires effective support from the employees as well. Leadership strategies
to manage the conflicts management and raised issues will open the implementation of two-
way communication (Crane, Matten, Glozer, & Spence, 2019).
9. Observe and measure the result. Continuously stare at how to progress the next time
Importance of morals in decision making
Moral theories, sensitivity, judgement practice and moral character, are important
aspects associated to the entire practice of the ethical and effective decision making
procedure. In the given case of Harry and his resignation entire discussion was based on the
use of moral judgement procedure in investigation. As in the judgement Boeing clearly
defined that a long series of unethical behaviour and misuse of the power found against the
ethical guidelines. This lead to the conflicts arises at high level and jury involved in the
procedure found management of the ethical issues difficult (Culiberg & Mihelič, 2016).
The “zero Tolerance Policy” designed to manage the effective contribution of
employees for effective management, many activities of Harry was against the ethical
practices and due to making the activities losing the organisational context, ethical and moral
judgement were prevail in the entire case study (Downe & Morgan, 2016).

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The first bit of silliness in the issue was related to the Zero tolerance policy that leads
the issues about making the policy equally applicable for the CEO. At the end BOD accepted
that the reason behind the firing of the CEO was related to being into an affair as they found
it against the ethical values. Hence the question remain unanswered here as that can an affair
in the office lead the suspensions of such a high profile employees or company was making
effort to find a reasons to fire him for his previous mistakes (Giri & van Ufford, 2003).
Ethical Interpersonal communication
Interpersonal communication during an issue in the office is essential to manage by
the members as it focuses to manage the effective flow of information to make the necessary
decisions (Crane, Matten, Glozer, & Spence, 2019). Management in the Boeing supported the
effective flow of information and used the confirmation form the Harry about the ethical
misbehaviour for having an affair with office female staff. Following aspects were found
presented in the interpersonal communication at the Boeing;
Aspects of interpersonal communication
Confirmation
Raising issues and taking decisions is not counted as the effective decision making
activities in an organisation, as in the case of harry raised issues about the affair was put
clearly to the Harry and a confirmation mail was supposed to get from him whether he has
sufficient proves to prove it wrong, being involved in the affair relatively from a long time he
confirmed the raised issues and make the communication complete in profitable manner
(Koçyiğit & Karadağ, urkish Journal of Business Ethics).
Effective listening
No communication is complete without active listening, on case of Harry during the
judgement session all members listened the arguments made in favour or in against the Harry.
Equal opportunity was given to all and jury practiced the listing and evaluation the presented
comments with effective conclusively of the case. Ethical issues allows the communication
in an organisation used to be two way and each party needs to hold effective communication
skills to manage the processing of judgement (Hoeppner, 2017).

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Exercising ethical influence
Harry found the use of ethical power to profit the organisation and to profit the
development of one’s personality as well. Harry focused to so the things correctly as merging
the Mcolles and Boeing was an important and very ethical step, however this lead the many
challenges as leading the loss to the organisational image and perception (Hoeppner, 2017).
Misuse of power is one of the important ethical misbehaviour recorded against the
harry by the organisation in the numerous ways as signing the deal of the 787 flights carriers
and hiring the already hired entities and most importantly violating the organisational code of
ethics after being in the position of the CEO where he was supposed to hold effective use of
position to manage the ethical practices (Hoeppner, 2017). Acceptance for being guilty in the
case of Boeing with affair many changes he faced in his personal and professional life. After
the decision taken against him, he married to that lady but his wife divorced him after 40
years of marriage. At the ended the false representation of his acts in the entire world of
global nosiness challenged his future and possibility to move in a new organisation (Blome,
2017).

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Part B
Steps opted by the Harry to enhance the group performance at Boeing
Their successful efforts must include empowerment of employees in which employees
getting higher authority power can be neutralised. It is important rely on ethical code of
conduct and control over the work so that they can justify the process of ethical decision-
making. It also includes improvements in procedures and communication policies where data
can flow frequently (Cutler, 2019). Boeing must enforce the situations, which includes
discipline regardless of offender`s low and high status. The organisation can maintain careful
documentation of employee frauds terminating the employee from the ethical violation.
These documentations help in providing the confirmation and verification of authenticity to
clients showing correctness and completeness of information along with proper stating of
practices. This also helps in scaling and increasing the efficiency while think about
passengers registered for airlines.
In case of Boeing, this might help in protecting the business from any kind of fraud
and to ease procedures for its customers. It is possible by implementing technology as per the
need of detection method with using resources for eliminating this concern of fraud. It is
essential for the company like Boeing to create and follow stricter policies while dealing with
such kind of fraud issues in relation to ethics and anti-fraud policies with appropriate ways of
controlling operations, controls and procedures for expansion on the process of fraud risk
management within a strategy and prevention techniques context of fraud. Boeing required
using the enforcement policies including zero tolerance approach for attracting and retaining
employees and customers after the fraud is identified through such approach along with
taking responsible action. Within the company, accomplishing the implementation of
extensive corporate governance procedures, policies and tools are also important to respond
and prevent any sort of fraudulent activity. Also, this will be more supportive when
referenced and used the IEC and ISO standards while implementing policies internationally
in relation to company like Boeing as per the future objective of making amendments.
Harry must recruit and hire well based on high moral and ethics keeping the brand
strong (Shvindina, 2019). To maintain healthy environment, leaders must contend to portfolio
regarding the board members to comply with integrity and finally translate liability rather
than asset. The leader can educate and train the employees for risk management and safety

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concerns in an accountable way. Also, training employees to avoid fraud is possible by
boosting their morale to make commitment with ethical operations and attaining solution
along with making them understanding about the Boeing’s procedures and policies and
following all the guidelines and rules as well to prevent any kind of fraud which can also be
possible by implementing anti-fraud training program within the company effectively so that
they can identify and deal with such concerns related to fraud. Ethical lapse inculcates a wink
where they have failed to understand the risks, which includes transparency regarding the
finances. Otherwise, an external legacy always has a set of compliance to be followed or the
company is greatly exposed to imposition of penalties (Shvindina, 2019). Moreover, it is the
duty of ethics committee to maintain the integrity culture of the company along with robust
program creation of processes and controls for the promotion of compliance and ethical
conduct to improve group performance as well. Ethics Committee helps the company like
Boeing at this time of situation to guide group personnel towards the behaviour of
professional activity for improving performance and maintenance of avoiding fraudulent
activities.
Leadership and following ethics
Two ethical challenges of leadership faced by the Harry includes when the internal
business employees started filing complaints regarding unethical procedures by saying that
while developing 737 Max Jet, the organisation rejects safety system with the idea of
reducing the cost (Yammarino, & Gooty, 2017). This situation to achieve maximum profits
and minimise the costs have resulted in two fatal crashes. Here, the federal investigators has
kept allegations, which has crashed Boeing’s company`s culture where the company try to
repair the reputation. It severely reached worst hazardous failure, which reflects MCAS,
malfunctioning as the larger reduction in safety margins. The company does not meet any
standard, where it intakes input and lead to designation failure. Serious and fatal injury
related to small number of safety margins. MCAS is unable to cope with the sensor
malfunctioning (Jacobs, Gordon, & Solis, 2016).
Harry is a transformational leader who creates a sense of performance and motivation,
which inspire the changes by strong purpose and then create a sense of innovation in the
company (Jacobs, Gordon, & Solis, 2016). A transformational leader tries to transform
situations to better one by self-management, capability to opt for right risks, make the
difficult decisions, inspirational acknowledgement, entertaining new ideas, sharing collective

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consciousness, adapt with new situations, become proactive, and lead with a vision (Akbar,
Udin, & Djastuti, 2018). As a transformation, the leader have decided to keep some distance
while making company planes. Moreover, present disaster of 737 Max traced in two decades
brings out Boeing`s leadership out of its existing organisational culture, which would
promote passion for affordable and lessen the family and promote team spirit, which is
enough to drive white collar engineering unions. The company decided to keep a 40-day
strike, which would shut down production in 2000 to cycle through scandal and replace it if
needed (Verver, 2018).
Furthermore, current Boeing formers privately discussed the issue with the design and
other decision-making procedures. The engineers then further have detected attack sensors
that measure plane`s position, which are malfunctioning and have prevented systems rather
than faulty data because Boeing remained concerned with schedule and costs than quality and
safety. About a year ago, Boeing started facing signs in exhibition revealing leadership
abilities while making MAX aircraft (Pandian, Pecht, Zio, & Hodkiewicz, 2020). This
indicates that systematic issues with the organisational culture proved to remain weak. Harry
leadership at Boeing has turned out to become biggest corporate failure in Boeing as he could
not manage the paradigm shifts leafing to bad leadership and faulty products. Recent news on
Boeing tells the story of Max crashes telling the story culture of not valuing people’s
experience, common sense, feedback, and knowledge with a series of failures on the basis of
wrongheaded though process (Russo, 2016).
Creating the ethical workplace
Here is the analysis of ethical culture at the company when Harry has started his role
of leadership as the CEO. To improve the bolster commitment towards the ethical standards
which includes Boeing to maintain a level of commitment for achieving higher ethical
standards required in every aspect while conducting ethical business (Mohiuddin, & Hossain,
2016). A company can prompt to renew the dedication to ensure legal compliance to the
company and regulatory needs. In order to create an ethical workplace, a leader has to make
strict code of conduct regarding behavioural ethical practises and organisational operations
(Mohiuddin, & Hossain, 2016). It can be achieved to restore complete confidence among the
employees, stakeholders and customers also making significant improvements in the
processes and finally training after the implementation of initiatives from four independent
reviews (Lawrence, & Thornton, 2017). The external reviews has been initiated by the

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Boeing to inquire regarding Air Force in 1998 evolved through expendable launching the
vehicles to competition and suspension of expending businesses examined by the
organisational ethics and integrating training initiatives to the compliance practises.
Furthermore, internally also the company has to focus on law department, procurement
integration, investigation process, employment practises, and employee training (Mohiuddin,
& Hossain, 2016).
There were several changes made in the culture of the company, which lead to
changing effort such as on the part of management involvement, serious nature of violations
forced the leader to respond appropriately so that he can address the issues (Alharthi, &
Khalifa, 2019). After the announcement of Boeing integration defence system and ethics
commitment day, it is seen that nearly 80000 employees are forced to stop working and rely
on ethics for the procurement integration. The leader thinks that it would be quite helpful if
they could stop each employee to take wrong decision (Adelstein, & Clegg, 2016).
Harry has combat and reduced antisocial behaviour (Downe, Cowell, and Morgan,
2016). On the other hand, the current behaviour has revealed that culture often valued
production process more than quality of process. Workers were claimed for the whistle
blower claims and the safety complaints with the regulators prescribing the issues such as
defective production, and pressure not to report the crisis was left on planes (National Society
of Genetic Counselors, 2018). However, Kevin McAllister (head of commercial airplanes)
has maintained that he was certainly proud of his teams because of committing towards the
quality. Now the question is how the company`s failure can ensure the customer`s safety as
these reports long stand of bad behaviour through Boeing`s behaviour, leadership, bullying
and disrespect for the rules (Adelstein, & Clegg, 2016). Although, it is quite difficult to
combat the losses incurred by the company as poor leadership because top-level management
expects to make a short way to achieve maximum profits and stand to the selfish motives.
Furthermore, the leader has introduced antisocial behaviour where they can sustain ethical
work environment and increase the business performance (McNamara, Smith, & Hill, 2018).
This will finally intend to improve the top-level management who forced the engineers to
fasten the operations rather than focusing on safety standards. Here, leadership is quite
important to promote ethical code of ethics and conduct and regulate it within the whole
organisation (Akbar, Udin, & Djastuti, 2018). Harry must take initiatives to set the
organisational goals so that it can motivate employees in working efficiently. Another same
example of unethical behaviour at top-level management is Sepp Blatter involved in scandal,