> Sure there is. If all the management at Boeing stayed in charge, there would be no MD executives and management to have tarnished Boeing's culture. But that's

> Sure there is. If all the management at Boeing stayed in charge, there would be no MD executives and management to have tarnished Boeing's culture. But that's not what happened. MD DID take over management and DID change the culture. The problem with this narrative is that Boeing CEO/President/Chairman Philip Condit knew precisely what he was doing when he sought the merger. The board had elevated him precisely to make a strategic move like that--in fact, to make that particular move. And most importantly the board knowingly chose the financial pitches of the McDonnell Douglas executives over the protests of the more risk-averse Boeing CFO Givans and his faction. Givans was pushed out shortly after the merger by Condit and the board, including original Boeing board members. (See https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19980715&slug=2761320 https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19980715&slug... Unfortunately I can't find some of the more informative contemporaneous accounts that explain it better.) All of which is to say, Boeing's engineering-first culture was already on the way out before the merger. Yes, McDonnell Douglas executives ended up winning the power struggles, but that was Condit's and the board's plan from the get go. McDonnell Douglas was the vehicle, not the instigator. But top Boeing leadership didn't want too much spectacle because they needed to keep stringing along a handful of board members and major investors who were wary of the strategic and cultural shifts.