MBA-thinking
From what I understand MBA-fication of innovation is inevitable. Innovation is funded by revenue and revenue is backed by sales. Sales is driven by "who you know" aka networking.
Technical prowess will convince someone to buy your product, but networking gets you through the doors in the first. Inevitably you need MBAs to generate revenue. After a certain points MBA-fication creeps in to engineering decisions and innovation.
From what I understand, innovation is largely fueled by chaos and risk. MBA fundamentally is about risk minimization and certainty. So, I can't blame Boeing, like I can't blame Intel, IBM, Ford, GM, General Electric, Phillips etc.
Normally I’ll deep into the apologia and explain stuff like “why VHS is actually better than Beta”, which, yes, is something I believe. But I only have a limited stockpile of apologia for why the market chose correctly and gave us the better product. There is an unlimited supply of counterexamples, where an inferior product won out, even when you consider things like manufacturing cost.
The most mendacious and destructive idea to have ever been been conceived. Customers, employees and governments can screw themselves, only the wealthy matter. Propped up by the concept of a corporation as a legal entity with the same rights as a person, who happens to be a sociopath.
In some EU countries, they put union/employee reps on corporate boards. Generally done by having two boards - a supervisory board containing union/employee reps, which in turn appoints a management board without them. The CEO reports to the management board which in turn reports to the supervisory board
But it doesn’t necessarily stop scandals/mismanagement/corruption - Volkswagen has a supervisory board with employer/union reps, but that didn’t stop Dieselgate. Would employee/union reps on Boeing’s board have stopped the 737 MAX debacle? Hard to know