| Course | GSM-7300 Global Strategic Management |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 5 |
| Paper type | Written assignment 5: strategic leadership and controls |
| Length | About 941 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Thomas Edison State University |
| Program | Master of Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for GSM 7300 Module 5
Forty-Two a Month on the FAA's Terms: Leadership and Controls at Boeing
Student Name
Master of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University
GSM-7300: Global Strategic Management
Mentor Name
Month Day, Year
Forty-Two a Month on the FAA's Terms: Leadership and Controls at Boeing
Hitt et al. (2024) define strategic leadership as the ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility and empower others to create strategic change, and they list six actions effective strategic leaders take: determining strategic direction, managing the firm's resource portfolio, sustaining an effective organizational culture, emphasizing ethical practices, establishing balanced organizational controls and developing human capital. Controls are the formal procedures leaders use to keep strategy on course. Strategic controls are largely subjective criteria that ask whether the firm is doing the right things, while financial controls are objective measures of results. The textbook argues that firms run into trouble when financial controls crowd out strategic ones. Boeing's experience since 2024 shows both what happens when the balance fails and how a new leader tries to restore it.
The Crisis
On January 5, 2024, a mid-exit door plug detached from a 737-9 in flight. The Federal Aviation Administration investigated the 737 quality control system, including the supplier Spirit AeroSystems, and increased its oversight; the 737 program may now raise production only with the agency's concurrence (The Boeing Company, 2026). In the fall of 2024 more than 30,000 machinists, most of them in Washington state, struck for 53 days, halting most commercial production. Boeing lost $11.8 billion that year. The accident was not an isolated failure of one part but evidence that production pressure had outrun the controls meant to catch defects, a pattern the company itself described when it said it slowed rates to reduce work traveling out of sequence through its factory and its suppliers.
A New Strategic Leader
On July 30, 2024, the board elected Kelly Ortberg, a former chief executive of Rockwell Collins with more than 35 years in aerospace, as president and chief executive officer effective August 8 (The Boeing Company, 2024). The textbook distinguishes inside successors, who sustain the current strategy, from outside successors, who are more likely to change it. Hambrick and Mason (1984) argue that an organization reflects its top managers' backgrounds, and Ortberg's career in engineering and supplier businesses, rather than finance, signaled a shift in emphasis. His early actions match the textbook's list. He set direction by putting safety and quality ahead of delivery targets, managed the resource portfolio by selling parts of the Digital Aviation Solutions business, which produced a $9.6 billion gain in 2025, and by acquiring Spirit AeroSystems on December 8, 2025, which brought the fuselage supplier at the center of the accident back inside the company.
Results So Far
Boeing's 2025 results show recovery under tighter control.
| Measure | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial airplane deliveries | 348 | 600 |
| 737 deliveries | 265 | 447 |
| Commercial airplanes operating margin | -34.9% | -17.1% |
| Total revenue ($ billions) | 66.5 | 89.5 |
| Net earnings ($ billions) | -11.8 | 2.2 |
The figures need care. Net earnings turned positive largely because of the $9.6 billion divestiture gain, while the commercial airplanes segment still lost $7.1 billion, including $5.3 billion of combined charges on the 777X and 767 programs; first delivery of the 777-9 slipped to 2027 (The Boeing Company, 2026). Financial controls alone would therefore give a misleading picture in either direction.
Balancing Strategic and Financial Controls
The most telling change concerns the 737 production rate. The rate recovered from below 38 aircraft a month early in 2025 to 42 in the fourth quarter, but only after the FAA and Boeing jointly agreed in October 2025 that key performance indicators and a rate-readiness process guided by Boeing's safety management system supported the increase (The Boeing Company, 2026). In the textbook's language, a strategic control, a judgment about whether the production system is healthy enough, now gates a financial goal, more output. The company describes further steps in the same direction: workforce training, simpler plans and processes, defect elimination and attention to safety culture.
The balanced scorecard was designed to stop financial measures from dominating by adding customer, internal business process and learning and growth perspectives (Kaplan & Norton, 1996). Boeing's recovery fits that design. Internal process measures, such as defects and traveled work, and learning measures, such as training, become leading indicators, while deliveries and margins remain lagging results. The risk is that as pressure to raise rates to 47 a month in 2026 grows, the financial perspective will again dominate.
Culture and Ethics
Controls work only when people report problems. Hitt et al. (2024) treat sustaining an effective culture and emphasizing ethical practices as leadership duties, and Boeing's own filings acknowledge the need to strengthen its safety and quality culture. Formal controls such as inspection sign-offs can be bypassed if employees fear the consequences of stopping the line. Rate gates tied to safety indicators address that by making it legitimate to slow down, but culture changes slowly and is hard to measure.
Recommendation
Boeing should formalize the balance it has begun to build. The board should adopt a scorecard in which quality and safety indicators, agreed with the FAA, act as gates for every rate increase on every program, and executive incentives should give those indicators at least equal weight with deliveries and cash flow. The trade-off is slower growth in output and cash, which means delaying revenue from a backlog of orders and accepting pressure from investors and airline customers. Given the cost of the last failure, slower and verified growth is the better choice.
Conclusion
Boeing illustrates the textbook's warning about financial controls overwhelming strategic ones, and its recovery illustrates the remedy. An outside leader reset direction, reshaped the resource portfolio and made strategic judgments about safety the gate for financial goals. Whether the balance lasts will depend on keeping it built into incentives once production pressure returns.
References
Hambrick, D. C., & Mason, P. A. (1984). Upper echelons: The organization as a reflection of its top managers. Academy of Management Review, 9(2), 193-206. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1984.4277628
Hitt, M. A., Ireland, R. D., Hoskisson, R. E., & Harrison, J. S. (2024). Strategic management: Competitiveness and globalization: Concepts and cases (14th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1996). Using the balanced scorecard as a strategic management system. Harvard Business Review, 74(1), 75-85.
The Boeing Company. (2024). Current report on Form 8-K (filed July 31, 2024). U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Boeing Company. (2026). Annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
What the GSM 7300 Module 5 instructions ask for
The fifth GSM-7300 written assignment covers strategic leadership and the controls that carry strategy out, from the later chapters of Hitt, Ireland, Hoskisson and Harrison. Prompts often ask how a leader shaped a firm's strategy, how its controls work and whether strategic and financial controls are balanced. Choose a firm with a documented leadership change or control problem. Apply the textbook's six actions of strategic leadership with evidence for each you discuss, and distinguish strategic from financial controls precisely. Judge balance with a tool like Kaplan and Norton's scorecard, and end with a recommendation whose cost to the firm is spelled out. Interpret results with care when one-time items distort them. Cite filings for every figure.
How the GSM 7300 Module 5 example is put together
The paper begins with definitions so the analysis can use them, then describes the crisis that revealed the control failure. The leadership section ties a succession decision to research on top managers and to the textbook's list of leadership actions with dated examples. A table shows results, and a short paragraph warns that a one-time gain distorts net earnings, which demonstrates careful reading of financial controls. The central section identifies a specific mechanism, a rate increase gated by safety indicators, as a strategic control, and the balanced scorecard explains why that matters. Culture and ethics receive their own paragraph before the recommendation and trade-off. Each section ends by linking back to controls.
Reading the GSM 7300 Module 5 grading rubric
Mentors grade the fifth assignment out of 100. They reward a precise distinction between strategic and financial controls and evidence of how a firm's leaders use each. Applying the textbook's strategic leadership actions to dated facts, rather than describing a leader's personality, earns credit, as does research on leadership or control systems. Careful interpretation of results, such as separating one-time gains from operations, shows financial understanding. A recommendation that sets out how controls should change and what that costs completes the analysis. Accurate citations of filings, organized headings and APA style round out the grade, and a concise conclusion helps the paper finish strongly. Precise use of terms is valued. Clarity counts.
GSM 7300 Module 5 help: mistakes that cost marks
Many papers on leadership become biographies, praising or blaming a chief executive without connecting actions to the textbook's framework. Others treat controls as budgets alone and miss strategic controls entirely. Our writers can prepare a GSM 7300 leadership and controls analysis of the firm you choose. Read the 8-K announcing a leadership change and the latest 10-K's description of operations and risks, which often reveal how the firm controls quality, safety or performance. Identify one control mechanism and ask whether it measures doing the right things or only results. Then recommend how to rebalance controls and name the cost of doing so. Keep the focus on actions, not personality. Support each claim with a source.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Thomas Edison State University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
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GSM 7300 Module 5 questions, answered
Where can I find a free GSM 7300 Module 5 sample paper?
The fifth Global Strategic Management written assignment appears above in full: Boeing's leadership change and its balance of strategic and financial controls after the 737-9 door plug accident.
What is the difference between strategic and financial controls?
Strategic controls are largely subjective criteria for judging whether a firm is pursuing the right strategy and actions; financial controls are objective measures of performance such as returns and margins.
What are the actions of effective strategic leadership in Hitt's textbook?
Determining strategic direction, managing the resource portfolio, sustaining an effective culture, emphasizing ethical practices, establishing balanced controls and developing human capital.
How does the balanced scorecard help balance controls?
Alongside the money measures it tracks customers, internal processes and people's learning, so early signals sit next to final results.
Why might a board choose an outside chief executive?
Outside successors are more likely to change strategy, which boards often want after a crisis or prolonged poor performance.