What happened at Boeing reflects the same forces that have roiled corporate America since the Reagan revolution ushered in an era of imperial leaders like Welch, obsessively focused on stock market investors. The same year that Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, the Business Roundtable, a lobbyist for the largest U.S. corporations, did away with any pretense that employees, customers, or communities also had important voices. The group declared that the first duty of any company was to shareholders; everything else would follow, as if by some natural law.
