in the organization. Such competencies and expertise would have helped to equip the TMT with a better approach toward business risks and therefore more likely to restructure to improve business efficiency and adapt to the modern realities of the marketplace. Rather, many of the executive board mem- bers and ofcers consisted of mainly former pilots with limited or no busi- ness experience. As a former senior manager noted, In the 40 years of its history, Ghana Airways had about 39 chief execu- tives. About 50 percent were soldiers; the posts were rewards for their service to the nation. The rest were politicians and pilots . . . So the people who managed the business were those without the real world business experience. Let me say this, the fact of the matter was that they didn't have the background, skills or expertise to understand the prob- lems of Ghana Airways, let alone the environment we were operating in. Similarly, a former manager who spent 15 years at the airline added, We had a number of pilots appointed as chief executives. They arrived in the post with the notion that their experience as pilots would some- how translate into general management skills and it never worked. They refused to listen and took the company down the hill. . . . In addition, the majority of the management team consisted of people with political "connections" rather than based on the expertise they possessed. The skills required to manage and respond to the changing realities in the business environment were lacking. This apparent lack of necessary business skills and independence to carry out painil reforms put the airline on a downward spiral of decline. These findings point out that the decision mak- ers' characteristics, such as previous business experience, are critical to a firm's ability to detect and respond to early signals of organizational failure