In one chapter of the book Outliers, Gladwell discusses the history of Korean Air. Prior to 1999, they had an accident rate which was, IIRC, about 17 times that of other major world carriers.
After taking a hard look at itself, the airline made major changes to how its air crews interacted with each other. One of the biggest changes was the implementation of crew resource management, the tenets of which seem to conflict with Korean culture. The centerpiece of CRM is that although the captain may be the person in charge, he’s not the only smart person in the cockpit, and he is not necessarily in possession of all the facts relevant to any given situation. CRM encourages subordinate crew members to voice their concerns in a courteous but unambigous/clear manner, and encourages the captain to acknowledge and consider their concerns. However, prior to 1999, Korean culture elevated the captain to a status just short of diety, and subordinate crew members dared not challenge his wisdom (except maybe through very subtle hints), even if the plane was about to plow into a mountainside. In other words, CRM represented a BIG change in how this small subset of Korean citizens interacted with each other.
The adoption of CRM and the other remedies worked: KAL is now one of the safest airlines in the world. But I’m wondering about how this adoption of CRM - particularly its apparent flattening of authority structures, and its encouragement of subordinates to speak their minds - might have changed Korean culture. Presumably by now it has also been incorporated into firefighting crews and other disaster response teams. Has it also been adopted into business management? Do male CEO’s, firechiefs, and airline pilots now go home in the evening and find themselves more open-minded when it comes to considering input from their wives? Do they teach their sons to listen to girls more, and teach their daughters to speak their minds more?