The New HP Way: Don’t take responsibility
Somehow I don’t think the Dave Packard or Bill Hewlett would duck the blame for actions taken by people working directly for them. After all, this isn’t like asking a corporate chairperson to put her neck in the noose for something done four levels away. But HP Chair Patricia Dunn today defended her role in an inquiry into a boardroom leak that has led the California Attorney General to open an investigation, and said she has no plans to resign unless asked by the board.
Dunn said she did not know private investigators hired by the computer maker had used questionable tactics to access private phone records of board directors and journalists.”Our board certainly had no idea” of the privacy breaches, Dunn said in an interview on Friday, adding, “This problem won’t recur.”
The thing that smells really bad to me about this, beyond the nasty, chilling snoopery, is that Dunn and the HP board knew about the seemingly illegal behavior since at least its May board meeting–four months ago–and yet we’re just finding out now. At least one board member, Tom Kleiner (an HP executive himself before co-founding the legendary Kleiner, Perkins VC firm), had the grace and guts to resign when he learned of the misdeeds; apparently he “ratted out” Dunn and the rest, who preferred to sweep things under the rug, by informing numerous prosecutors and regulators.
Dunn may not plan to resign but I hope that someone else gets to make that decision. As we’re beginning to see in the stock options scandal, corporate leaders are no longer quite as invulnerable and unaccountable as in years past.
CNN Money: HP Chair: Lying, or incompetent. “At Enron, WorldCom, Tyco … this type of conversation probably happened in one way or another. It shouldn’t happen anymore. So which is it? You are either lying now and did actually know what was going on with the phone records … or the whole corporate upheaval of the past three years totally blew by you.”
