I'm so tired of seeing this ridiculous "mba and accountants are evil" trope. You realize Tim Cook is one of those evil MBA people, right? And the CEO that oversaw Boeing during the launch of the MAX was a career aerospace engineer?
My point is more that you don’t want people focused on business and profits instead of people who have deep knowledge in the area and passion for the product.
Accountants and business majors are better at managing insurance companies, banks, etc, because they understand the space. Engineers are better at managing engineering companies for the same reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_engineering#Sub-dis...
gasp, there's that evil "business" word again
Having a production engineer as an exec is probably the best way to run a successful team if you project involve multiple field of knowledge (as Apple probably does).
Tim Cooks understand tradeoffs, and this understanding should be expected of any top exec. Is it often the case?
But isn't focusing on business and profits also focusing on safety of your products since you want to make sure your planes don't crash and passengers come to their destination alive and unharmed.
(2) profit = selling price - production\development cost - expected downsides of accidents(penalties, tarnished image). "Expected downsides of accidents" can be reduced by reducing risk, but also in some other creative ways (blackmailing, lobying, promoting the right candidate, marketing, rebranding, migrating to different markets, insurance, coverups. And lets not forget deals with friends: If I can win 5billion, I can allow my self to split it 100 ways and still end up with a nice big yacht).
In practical terms, it doesn't appear to work out that way.
https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...
You can argue all you want about who shoulders more responsibility, but Muilenberg was an executive throughout the entire program, and more importantly, was the CEO who oversaw the decision for the certification of the MAX prior to first flight, which was the critically faulty decision.
Though of course he would have had the knowledge to understand something didn’t smell quite right after. Whether he had the sole authority to order a delay or redesign in the intervening time is questionable. It may have been that he couldn’t wrangle enough support from the board to do something dramatic.