To avoid losing a huge chunk of market share overnight, Boeing promised airlines that it would produce a new version of its popular 737 outfitted with more powerful and fuel-efficient engines. In 2010, Boeing needed a new plane to meet competition from a new version of Airbus’s popular A320. This change in focus had several unfortunate impacts, but none worse than its influence on the 737 MAX rollout. Engineers were sidelined in numerous ways, and the new firm’s emphasis shifted decisively from passenger safety to shareholder value.
VOX YOUTUBE 737 MAX SCANDAL CODE
As all three textbooks mentioned above note, the first of the six fundamental canons of the National Society for Professional Engineers code of ethics is that engineers shall: “Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.” As Robison explains it, Boeing’s downfall began when it merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997 and managerial power over the new combined company shifted from the engineers who had run Boeing to the financial engineers who had already run McDonnell Douglas into the ground. However, by the time we finished reading the book, our sympathy had evaporated.Īccording to Robison, and he tells a convincing story, Boeing was long one of the most admired companies in the world largely because it was run by engineers with an engineering point of view. Just one wrong choice can cost lives and, in retrospect, appear unethical. Designing an airplane requires tens of thousands of decisions, most of which involve cost versus safety considerations. When we started reading this book, we were largely sympathetic to Boeing. However, the most educational book on engineering ethics published recently is likely Peter Robison’s new book on the Boeing 737 MAX scandal: Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing (2021). Although each of these texts lacks a behavioral ethics section which we believe is a weakness, all three are substantively excellent. Johnson, Ethics for Engineers (2020) by Martin Peterson, and Ethics and Engineering: An Introduction (2021) by Behnam Taebi. Many of these disasters are rooted in ethical lapses, so it is well that several engineering ethics textbooks have been published recently, including Engineering Ethics: Contemporary & Enduring Debates (2020) by Deborah G. When engineers have a bad day, many people can die and significant environmental harm can be done-consider the Volkswagen pollution control device scandal, the Deepwater Horizon fire, the Kansas City Hyatt walkway collapse, the Challenger space shuttle explosion, the Ford Pinto fires, and the General Motors ignition switch debacle. When college professors have a bad day, their students don’t learn as much that particular day.
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