3 ms·

Serious question: how would you go about determining who is at fault in such a situation?

rectang 7y ago
Very difficult, just as it would be in any large organization. Facilitation of plausible deniability is a principle design requirement for company structure. Worse, because of the corporate shield, any malefactors get to keep their ill-gotten gains. (Wells Fargo's execs, even after clawbacks, wound up tens of millions of dollars ahead.) There's no serious deterrent -- the system encourages wrongdoing at the individual level, the perpetuation of entities where wrongdoing occurs, and the creation of new entities where wrongdoing will commence. Prediction: everyone at Boeing will come in for a safe landing after a bit of turbulence.
- hef19898 7y ago
  Not sure. Every single design change goes through well documented review processes in Aerospace. The bigger the change the higher the up the hierarchy it goes. The definitely is a paper trail here. If someone is willing to investigate. Agree with rest, organized deniability is pretty much how large orgs are set up.
rhizome 7y ago
Start with the people whose signatures exist on paper, or however the approval chain works in this context.
JudgeWapner 7y ago
1) find the systems-level people (business and engineering) who signed-off on MCAS as being safe. point to them and say "how could you not have tested the failure modes of MCAS, specifically AoA sensors?". There's no answer to that. Off to prison. 2) find the people who allowed the Max to keep flying after the first wreck. Not literally one hour later, but once they had information that MCAS might have been involved, a crime was committed (endangering public safety) allowing flights after that moment. 3) If any whistle-blowers emailed their superiors about MCAS failures, whoever ignored the complaint committed a crime unless any written concerns were properly documented, filed, considered, etc.

Very difficult, just as it would be in any large organization. Facilitation of plausible deniability is a principle design requirement for company structure. Worse, because of the corporate shield, any malefactors get to keep their ill-gotten gains. (Wells Fargo's execs, even after clawbacks, wound up tens of millions of dollars ahead.) There's no serious deterrent -- the system encourages wrongdoing at the individual level, the perpetuation of entities where wrongdoing occurs, and the creation of new entities where wrongdoing will commence. Prediction: everyone at Boeing will come in for a safe landing after a bit of turbulence.

hef19898 7y ago
Not sure. Every single design change goes through well documented review processes in Aerospace. The bigger the change the higher the up the hierarchy it goes. The definitely is a paper trail here. If someone is willing to investigate. Agree with rest, organized deniability is pretty much how large orgs are set up.

rhizome 7y ago

Start with the people whose signatures exist on paper, or however the approval chain works in this context.

JudgeWapner 7y ago

1) find the systems-level people (business and engineering) who signed-off on MCAS as being safe. point to them and say "how could you not have tested the failure modes of MCAS, specifically AoA sensors?". There's no answer to that. Off to prison. 2) find the people who allowed the Max to keep flying after the first wreck. Not literally one hour later, but once they had information that MCAS might have been involved, a crime was committed (endangering public safety) allowing flights after that moment. 3) If any whistle-blowers emailed their superiors about MCAS failures, whoever ignored the complaint committed a crime unless any written concerns were properly documented, filed, considered, etc.