In one column, Hubris at HP and Beyond, author David Holtzman argues that the genesis of HP's spying scandal extends beyond the company's executive suites:
There is a cult of arrogance behind HPGate that pervades the business community and is bigger than any one scandal. It manifests differently from time to time, but its roots all grow out of the same soil. Whether it's option-repricing, insider trading, or spying on journalists, business decisions are made at the highest corporate levels that are at best murkily legal and visibly unethical. Ethical thinking does not seem to be part of today's business environment.
In another commentary piece, author Peter Burrows takes a look at What Carly Doesn't Say in his analysis of former HP CEO Carly Fiorina's new book, Tough Choices.
And apparently she doesn't say a lot, which may come as a surprise to those who saw her 60 Minutes interview in which Fiorina dished out plenty of blame for her eventual ouster from the company. A couple of excerpts:
The book paints Fiorina's tenure as a hard but rewarding and constant drive toward improved performance. That's not what happened. The company she inherited from Lewis Platt was healthy, if not exciting, and Fiorina's rapid attempt at "transformation" did not go over so well. ...[B]y the time she pitched the idea of buying Compaq in September 2001, HP was badly in need of some big move or, as many on Wall Street were already saying on background, a new CEO. In other words, the Compaq deal was not made from a position of strength, but of weakness.
And this:
Fiorina writes a lot about the deficiencies of some top HP managers and about the need for a strong team. While she does explain that she didn't initially want to bring in a bunch of outsiders, she doesn't address her complete record on this front. In her five years at the company, she brought in only one top executiveto replace retiring human relations vice-president Susan Bowick. She got close to luring a few others, including Acer president Gianfranco Lanci, but didn't close the deal. This became a major concern for some board members, as many of Compaq's best operating executives began jumping ship.
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