Abstract
Between 2018 and 2019, two Boeing 737 MAX aircrafts crashed after the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) activated on faulty sensor data, killing 346 people and prompting a worldwide grounding of the aircraft. This case reconstructs the aircraft's development, certification and entry into service to show how a competitive commercial programme, incremental design and regulatory decisions and delegated oversight combined to erode safety margins without any single failure or act of wrongdoing. It operationalises Sidney Dekker's framework of drift into failure, scarcity and competition, decrementalism, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, unruly technology and the protective structure as an analytical lens for a socio-technical accident.
Additional Information
| Product Type | Case |
|---|---|
| Reference No. | OB0258(B) |
| Title | Cheaper, Faster, Familiar: The Boeing 737 MAX and the Drift into Failure (B) |
| Pages | 9 |
| Published on | Sep 28, 2026 |
| Authors | Sharma, Vipin Kumar; Gupta,Vishal; |
| Area | Organizational Behaviour (OB) |
| Discipline | Organizational Behaviour |
| Sector | Manufacturing, Transportation and Logistics |
| Learning Objective | On completing this case and its teaching note, participants should be able to: (i) Distinguish a drift-into-failure account of the 737 MAX from a component- or pilot-centred ("broken part") explanation, and state what each makes visible or conceals. (ii) Trace how scarcity and competition, decrementalism, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, unruly technology, and the protective structure operated across the MAX programme. (iii) Explain how MCAS design and certification decisions appeared locally rational to the engineers, managers, and regulators who made them. (iv) Assess the role of delegated regulatory oversight (FAA/ODA) in condoning definitions of acceptable system performance. (v) Identify the organisational conditions and weak signals that, recognised earlier, might have interrupted the drift, and weigh the limits of hindsight in judging them. |
| Keywords | Drift into failure, Boeing 737 MAX, Normalisation of deviance, System thinking, Aviation safety, safety- production trade-offs |
| Country | USA |
| Courses | MBA(PGP), MBA-FABM, MBA-PGPX, EEP, ePGP, ePGD-ABA, AFP, FDP |
| Access | For All |
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