Blaming this on MBA/Accountant culture is a fallacy.
Okay, let's run with that.
A good businessman/woman realises what the core factors are that are essential to making a business profitable and that profit is not the only measure of success.
On the face of it, how could you argue with that? But it veers into some interesting territory. Allow me..
MBA's and Accountants run a whole spectrum of competencies and core focus of intent. So while a long term focus is good for the company, it is not universal. I'm not certain it is the majority for all that matter, because not all companies have such a drastic fault case, be it software causing a plane to auger in, or half attached doors to pop off in flight. You could have a big pizza company with next quarter profits the prime focus without such drastic public fails.
A lot of the bloom has fallen away from MBA programs, and applications are falling. Turns out not many kids can graduate from college to the C-Suite. But the problems as I see it are the transition of the accountant from another employee to a commodity where the CFO is the same level as the CEO.
The Accounting community didn't try to make this happen, but they were happy to take part in it.
And yes, you are right about the good businesspeople. But there is an interesting anomaly brought about by the nature of the accounting process and how the accountant thinks.
The bottom line. The accountant/MBA might say that more than anything. But they aren't looking at a long term bottom line. What they do is what accountants do. They tell everyone the cost difference between usingStainless steel bolts on a wing and using cad plated bolts. And what made it pernicious is when they got to pull accounting tricks along with that, on the way to becoming a commodity. But the accountant does not tend to play the long game. They aren't even supposed to play the long game.
In this case it is above all safe aircraft. Boeing, Airbus, they all stand and fall with their safety record. Anybody who forgets that is a poor MBA/Accountant/Business-person. The problem with America’s business community is that it seems to think Gordon Gekko is someone to emulate.
Oh those pesky Americans, always up to something, and it's always wrong.8^) Nah, there are plenty of American companies that act properly.
Anyhow, I really don't disagree with you about the problems, just some of the details. Big details though. Accountants should be what they used to be - internal consultants. Not perform short term profit tricks. MBA types? Well there's a big problem. Instead of learning the ropes, they graduate full of the knowledge that they are the masters of the Universe, with hidden knowledge that they and their trusty accountants will provide the real reason for companies - to service the shareholders.
Yes, the entire company should be playing the long game. But if you look into the 737 Max saga, you can see that they definitely were not. They redesigned the 737 body rather than start anew. Money. In doing this, they had to raise the wings and the engines, putting the nacelles into the air path at high angles of attack. That made an "unstable airframe" because at high angles of attack, the nacelles would actually provide lift, making a stall more likely.
That could be compensated for by simulator training of pilots. They didn't want to do that because money.
So they came up with the MCAS software system, which faked the handling of a regular 737. Problem was it was a half assed solution, and the decision was made to not tell pilots about it, which led directly to a lot of dead people when it unilaterally decided to take control of the planes.
So how does that tie in with the MBA's and Accountants? The marching orders were to make the plane - which was by now quite different from its predecessors - fly in similar manner to it's stablemates. And without the simulator time, the customers could save money, and Boeing would likely sell more planes, so profit.
As we've seen quite painfully, that was a bad idea, being produced by a culture that placed quarterly profits far above good engineering.