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Thanks! A follow-up question would be why MD's management won, even though it wreaked havoc. Or it was really just the hindsight...
by hintymad 2y ago
Thanks! A follow-up question would be why MD's management won, even though it wreaked havoc. Or it was really just the hindsight...
- crop_rotation 2y agoIn almost all mergers the management of the worse comapny ends up winning, provided there was no loopsided difference in size. The thing is, since those executive were not good at creating product, they are more likely to be good at politics and hence they end up overtaking management of the new combined company, even if their company was the smaller one.
- robbomacrae 2y agoI’m curious to know of similar examples happening or references that back this up if you or anyone has them.
- crop_rotation 2y agoA good series of examples is in the book "Barbarians at the Gate", chronicling the career of F Ross Johnson. His company would get acquired and then he and his folks would outmanoeuvre the acquiring company management.
- collin128 2y agoI enjoyed Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric by Ted Mann and Thomas Gryta
- philistine 2y agoNeXt leadership completely overtook Apple. I don't know if it ended up panning out.
- cvwright 2y agoUS Air buying American Airlines just to become American Airlines, is one of my (least) favorites
- petre 2y agoThey should have fired the failing company's management after the merger. It failed due to the fact that they were incompetent.
- User23 2y agoWorse-is-better, it’s not just for operating systems. Or maybe management is just another operating system.
- Tuna-Fish 2y agoBoeing was known as a great engineering firm that was not that great at turning their engineering excellence into shareholder returns. The shareholders wanted executives more focused on said returns.
- robotnikman 2y agoSounds like the solution is to turn it into a privately owned company then. Of course, that's greatly simplifying things, but it would be a right step in the right direction.
- jordanb 2y agoFinance people prefer finance people. MD's bean counter management were seen as being more responsible and "hard nosed" than the Boeing management who were focused on things that "didn't drive the bottom line" like the product, culture, etc.
- theGnuMe 2y agoPeople like what they understand. But they need to respect what they don’t when the experts say so.
- dotnet00 2y agoI recall that in a previous thread, someone had explained that the agreement between Boeing and MD was that MD's management would be retained at similar positions in Boeing, and that many of MD's management gamed this agreement by raising their position before the merger. Leading MD's management to end up higher in Boeing's management.