The Boeing Company: Organization Structure

Without a formal Organization, no business can withstand the challenges of serving clients, marketing its products and services, daily operation, and managing human resources. An entrepreneur organizes numerous factors of production such as capital, land, machinery, and labor by channeling them into productive activities. In other words, the organization is a structural framework of responsibilities and duties needed of the workforce to perform various functions. This paper will expound on the Boeing Company organization’s formal structure, culture, leadership, environment, and possible change needed.

Formal Structure of the Organization

Boeing is an American corporation and the largest aerospace company worldwide. The company manufactures commercial jets for air transport, helicopters, military aircraft, missiles, and space vehicles. Formerly known as Boeing Airplane Company, the corporation assumed its present name in 1961 to replicate its advancement in the fields beyond manufacturing aircraft. The company has its headquarters in Seattle up to 2001 and then relocated to Chicago (Boeing, 2021). The company constituent units of business are organized into three key groups: military aircraft and missiles, commercial airplanes, and space and communications.

Boeing Company has a long history of aerospace innovation and leadership as it continues to expand its line of products and services. The company manufactures seven different commercial airplanes assembled in Renton and Everett facilities in Washington and California (Boeing, 2021). The narrow-body airplanes are built at the Renton plant, while wide-body crafts are assembled at the Everett plant and South Carolina facility. The company’s military-connected activities are primarily on the manufacturing, design, and support of fighter bombers, aircraft, helicopters, transports, and missiles.

Specialization

Boeing has a division that oversees airplane development by hiving the function from production to ramp up factory output. The organization’s cumulative organizational experience or task experience entails the domain of workers’ allotted focal task (Madiedo et al., 2020). Boeing Company divides its operation into different segments which specialize in their operations; they include:

• Commercial Airplanes: The companies manufacture several commercial jetliners such as 737, 747, 767, 777, and 787 (Boeing, 2021). Moreover, the newest products include 777X, 787-10 Dreamliner, and 737MAX, though the latter has received some safety challenges.
• Defense, including Space and Security: It is a diversification, where the organization provides solutions for modification, production, support, and service of commercial derivatives, satellites, military rotorcraft, human space exploration, satellites, and autonomous systems.
• Boeing global services: The Company offers aftermarket support for mixed fleets worldwide. There is the delivery of comprehensive, innovative, and cost-competitive service solutions for commercial space and defense clients, notwithstanding the tool’s original manufacturer.
• Boeing Capital Corporation (BCC): The department delivers financial solutions for the company’s customers by working closely with Defense, Space, and Security and commercial airplanes. BCC merges the company’s financial muscle and worldwide reach.

Formalization

It is the extent to which the organization’s procedures, policies, rules, and job descriptions are written and clearly articulated. The formalized structures have several written regulations and rules that control employee’s behavior in a documented guideline. Boeing allows its employees to be well-informed and involved in all decisions that affect their work. Furthermore, the HR department has established a connection between highly dynamic company staff and profitability. Boeing has defined employees’ engagement as they have a personal attachment to their roles and tasks both at an emotional and intellectual level. The company measures employee’s engagement by using three fundamental behaviors such as:

• Say- employees constantly speak positively of the organization to coworkers and refer potential customers and recruits.
• Stay- Staff members have an intense desire to remain working for the company despite other opportunities elsewhere.
• Strive- employees put more effort into their work and show behaviors that contribute to the business’s success.

Centralization

The practice entails the degree to which the decision-making process is concentrated at the highest level of the organization. The organization maintains a traditional vertical corporate hierarchy, whereby the overall company structure is like a matrix structure that is segmented along with horizontal departments. Boeing’s company structure is divided into functional units with their separate departments. However, it is highly centralized, with all decisions coming from the top leadership in the company.

Boeing Organizational Culture

Boeing highly values the company culture, ensuring that employees understand what they are required to do. The organizational culture comprises a pattern of shared typical assumptions (Nikpour, 2017). These patterns include values, beliefs, and learned methods of dealing efficiently with experience that expands during the organization’s lifetime. Culture is primarily demonstrated in member’s behaviors and material arrangements. Furthermore, the company culture is represented through the collective beliefs, values, and principles of the team members. Some of the Boeing culture attributes include integrity, quality, diversity and inclusion, trust and respect, corporate citizenship, stakeholder’s success, and safety.

The rituals, jargon, and distinguishing characters of Boeing organizational culture can be explained using the attributes mentions earlier, such as:

• Integrity: The company takes a higher level by practicing the uppermost ethical standards by honoring customers’ commitments (Boeing, 2021). Boeing takes personal responsibility for all actions and strives to mitigate any challenges.
• Quality: The Company’s quality commitment is enshrined in its culture by a constant improvement in the operations, products, and services offered by either meeting or exceeding excellence standards that all stakeholders expect.
• Safety: The overview inspires the company safety culture that human life and health are paramount above any other thing else. Therefore Boeing maintains high safety standards in their working places, products, and services, and each staff is accountable for personal, collective, and client safety. The company strives to meets its goals for cost, quality, and schedule without compromising safety.
• Diversity and Inclusion: The Company values the diverse strengths and skills of the mixed team. No member of Boeing is discriminated against due to their color, race, religion, gender, and orientation (Boeing, 2021). Employees work as one big family complementing each other.
• Trust and Respect: Boeing fosters a collaborative working environment whereby every employee is respected and entrusted with their roles. The company staff is engaged in finding solutions for advancing common business objectives and customer satisfaction.
• Corporate Citizenship: Boeing is a responsible partner, citizen, and neighbor to diverse customers and communities they serve. The company is at the forefront of promoting the well-being and health of Boeing people, their families, and the communities. Furthermore, the corporation’s support environment causes education, financial support, and volunteering in various community activities.
• Stakeholders Success: By operating with integrity and profitably, Boeing provides clients with the best-value competitiveness and innovative edge in the marketplace they serve. The company culture enables employees to work ethically and in a safe environment, where they are offered a highly competitive and attractive mix of benefits and pay. Ideally, employees can share in the success of the company. Moreover, investors are rewarded handsomely with the increase of shareholding value. The company conducts business ethically and lawfully by engaging suppliers and supporting their business while ensuring customers get value for money for products and services.

The Boeing culture has developed due to historical, market, product, and strategy, types of employees, national culture, and management style (Nikpour, 2017). This organizational culture inclines to a series of shared mental expectations whereby the description of numerous positions describes actions and interpretations.

For decades, Boeing’s corporate culture comprises consistency, adaptability, mission, and involvement of its various stakeholders. Organizational commitment has proved to be among the core variables for many years as the daily operation of the corporation guides it. Something observable in the culture of Boeing is the desire to learn, whereby a better-progressed workforce leads to substantial benefits to the customers, the company, and the society at large.

Boeing Organizational Leadership

In 2020, Boeing Company announced an expanded executive council to increase leadership expertise and depth for better customer support and enhancement of internal decision-making. With the board of director’s approval, the company president and CEO Dave Calhoun pronounced a new Executive Council (ExCo) (Boeing, 2021). The new team outlook’s main focus is re-strategizing Boeing operating structure by absorbing fresh talents, enterprise capacities, best practices, and leadership from across the corporation. The expanded group is more prominent, dynamic and brings novel perspectives by fostering fresh debate and steering strategic decisions. The team provides more actions and speed that benefit stakeholders and the workforce enabling the company to modernize its operations. The new team joining the executive council includes:

• Uma Amuluru – Vice President, Compliance;
• Grant Dixton – Senior Vice President, Law;
• Dave Dohnalek – Senior Vice President, Treasury;
• Chris Raymond – Vice President, Sustainability;
• Kevin Schemm – Senior Vice President, Finance.

Leaders and Authority Figures

The company business is conducted by its corporate officers, employees, and managers under the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) leadership, with oversight from the Board of Directors. The Board’s Governance, nominating committee, and organization periodically evaluate the company’s current practices and corporate governance principles (Boeing, 2021). The board of directors and the corporate officers identify Boeing’s long-term interests are enhanced when there are responsive concerns. These concerns include the communities, employees, suppliers, public officials, and stakeholders. The directors settle to conform to ethical business practice, corporate governance principles and other applicable disclosed ethics, conflict of interest, and business guidelines. The company top leadership comprises:

• David L. Calhoun: president and CEO, he masterminds the direction of the aerospace company. The company has employed 140,000 people globally and has leveraged the talents of a worldwide supplier base (Boeing, 2021). Calhoun 64 became the company president and CEO in January 2020 and had previously served on the company’s board since 2009. The CEO has vast expertise in business, strategy, safety, and regulatory issues in numerous industries.
• B. Marc Allen: He is the chief strategy office and senior vice president of strategy and corporate development.
• William A. Ampofo II: the vice president in charge of supply chain and Boeing Global Services. He also leads all distribution, engine maintenance repair, and components.
• Uma Amuluru: Vice president and chief compliance officer and a member of ExCo. She is in charge of the ethics and compliance program.
• Michael A. Arthur: Vice president and president of Boeing international. He is responsible company’s international corporate and global strategy outside the United States.

Decision-making Process

In each business undertaking, it is common and mandatory that executives make several decisions, either complex or simple, with a low or high impact. The maximum action of any executive is decision-making (Marchisotti et al., 2018). There are two decision-making techniques mainly used, intuitive and rational. The company’s success has over the decades attributed to timely and strategic decisions made by managers in their departments. Planning is the crucial function of management since it sets the company’s pace into an unpredictable future. Having a good plan ensures that all decisions are well thought and there is smooth coordination.

Boeing executives use reflective thinking that contemplates organizational goals and deriving techniques to ascertain them. Power struggle at Boeing has never occurred since its leaderships work ethically with responsibilities. Employees work with their departmental leaders to resolve any issues that may arise or cause uncertainty and stress in their lives (Boeing, 2021). Furthermore, solving problems together is part of the day-to-day functions of leaders at Boeing, which reduces labor turnover, and most employees are happy to work for the company.

Most Critical Elements of Boeing Environment

Every organization has its environment that is always ever-changing and dynamic. Changes in the business environment are currently bringing numerous challenges that require executives to be vigilant. The environments of any organization comprise its surroundings and can impact its operations, either favorably or unfavorably (Marchisotti et al., 2018). Organizations are social entities with a hierarchical structure, and all necessary items are combined to reach a collective objective. Boeing has critical elements of the general environment, task environment, and internal environment.

The company’s general environments include:

• Technological dimension: The Company encounters several technical dimensions since technology evolves at a rapid pace. Boeing must keep on advancing technology in its product to meet client’s needs.
• International dimension: The Company operates in a global arena, satisfying the needs of aviation industries in various countries.
• Political-legal dimension: Boeing, in its operations, encounters several issues from home and abroad that have a political and legal inclination as it serves its customers.
• Socio-cultural dimension: the company’s operations entail collaboration from different stakeholders, including customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, and financiers with diverse cultural and social dimensions. Therefore, Boeing utilizes social theories such as Symbolic interaction theory, whereby perspective focuses on the symbolic meaning that individuals develop and rely upon social interaction. The other social theory used by the company is a conflict theory that emphasizes power and coercion on producing social order.
• Economic dimension: Boeing is a leader in aviation, defense technology, and the aerospace industry. The company supports airlines worldwide, the U.S. allied customers in over 150 nations, whereby the technology, tailored services, and products contribute to the economic being of the company.

The company task environment comprises:

• Competitors: Boeing’s top competitors include: Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Loral Space & Communications, SpaceX, BAE Systems, Embraer, and Bombardier. Nonetheless, competition impacts are asymmetric and differ on the type of organization and its competitors (Zhou et al., 2021). When the company ignores competitiveness environment impacts, it leads to an overestimation of products and services reliability.
• Customers: Boeing experiences customers’ environments, including government agencies such as the military, spaces stations, and commercial airlines across the globe.
• Suppliers: the company expands targeted collaboration and prioritizing improvements by sharing ideas with selected suppliers. Furthermore, there are forums to advance fair practices among supply chain players.
• Strategic partners: in 2019, Boeing and Embraer established a strategic partnership for positioning the two companies in delivering more excellent value to flying public and airline customers.
• Regulators: aviation industry is amongst the most regulated sector. Therefore Boeing encounters regulatory environments from different aviation regulators, environmentalists, consumer bodies, and safety agencies.

The company internal environments include:

• Employees: the company has over 140,000 employees in the United States and across other 65 global nations. This represents a most diverse, talented, and innovative team that ensures the company’s business strives.
• Board of directors: the company separates the tasks of chairman and CEO to enable the complete focus of the running of the business. The boards of directors are critical pillars in guiding how the company runs its business and being progressive.
• Culture: the company culture acts as a guideline of historical experiences the company has undergone since its inception.
• Owners: The top shareholding in Boeing includes individuals and institutions such as Timothy Keating, Leanne Caret, Theodore Colbert, Vanguard Group Inc., BlackRock Inc. (BLK), and Newport Trust Co.

Appropriates Changes in the Organization

All organization needs constant change at some times, for improvement and innovation. Nevertheless, human beings tend to resist change if they alter the status quo (Bourne, 2018). Despite people being positive is not an indication that they will readily accept change. It is essential to make some changes at Boeing Company using social concepts as a guideline. Particular areas that need urgent change include operation, gender balance, and modernization.

Operation

The company operations can be changed using the functionalism and Marxism concepts. Functionalism concept: It entails norms and values. Norms can be described as typical, normal, or expected patterns of behaviors associated with specific contexts. At Boeing, the primary operations are manufacturing products, offering supports and services. Therefore best behaviors are expected from employees, the board, and the executives. When there are best practices in the company’s operations, the customers’ confidence is won. Furthermore, values and lasting beliefs and ideas will be incorporated into the company’s culture.

The Marxism concepts: They are important, though they are shunned or criticized in some quarters, the theory aims to bring some equity in society. At Boeing, the company’s employees are the organization’s backbone as they work hard daily to ensure the firm’s mission and vision are accomplished. The company’s operation needs to change in a way the employees rip benefits for the hard work and struggles they undergo to ensure processes are streamlined. The bounty harvest should not be only for top management and company owners alone but should be shared prosperity by all.

Gender Balance

Gender parity may have an enormous impact on the success of the company and society. Ideally, using feminism and social action theory will positively enhance gender balance in all Boeing’s undertaking.

Feminism concept: Boeing is at the forefront of ensuring equity at all its levels, especially on gender balance. However, more is needed to be done to accord women more position and better salaries and job promotion. The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 by the World economic forum state that North America will not see gender equality for the next 151 years (Carosella, 2020).

Social action theory concept: will positively enhance gender balance in all Boeing’s undertaking. The gender scripts will incorporate a comprehensive range of gender norms linked with being male or female. The company will have to focus on equalizing the employment position between men and women, training, remunerations, and vendors such as suppliers. The social action theory concept will ensure people’s behaviors and their life possibilities are not determined by their social settings, such as gender. Women should be inspired as individuals and interacted with the company’s different roles to ensure gender balance.

Modernization

It is evident today; organizations and businesses worldwide have undergone numerous changes in the past decades, especially in digitalization. The modern customer has different needs and expectations than two decades ago. Boeing Company must modernize all its operations, products and services, to meet the evolving customers’ needs in the 21st century. Interactionism concept: Using this concept will enable the company to accomplish its mission. Most of the players in the aviation industry are embracing technology and digitalization in all aspects of their operations.

Postmodernism concept: The concept will ensure Boeing enhance and support the service sector where most of the people are working worldwide. The practice will later spur travel across the world which will lead to more demand for airplane manufacturing. Interactionism concepts see social behavior as an interactive product between the person and situation. In other words, it derives social procedures such as cooperation and identity formation. This will enable the people at Boeing Company to strive to modernize the company to a higher status. Furthermore, the company will have a competent team that embraces technology and digitalization.

References

Boeing. (2021). Boeing: The Boeing Company: General Information. Boeing. Web.

Bourne, P. (2018). Implementing change in an organization: A general overview. Scholarly journal of psychology and behavioral sciences, 1(1). Web.

Carosella, C. (2020). Council Post: Why gender equality matters in business success. Forbes. Web.

Madiedo, J., Chandrasekaran, A., & Salvador, F. (2020). Capturing the benefits of worker specialization: Effects of managerial and organizational task experience. Production and operations management, 29(4), 973-994. Web.

Marchisotti, G., Domingos, M., & Almeida, R. (2018). Decision-making at the first management level: The interference of the organizational culture. Ram. Revista De Administração Mackenzie, 19(3). Web.

Nikpour, A. (2017). The impact of organizational culture on organizational performance: The mediating role of employee’s organizational commitment. International journal of organizational leadership, 6(1), 65-72. Web.

Zhou, C., Albuquerque, P., & Grewal, R. (2021). Competition and firm service reliability decisions: a study of the airline industry. Journal of marketing research, 58(2), 377-399. Web.