HP: Corporate Politics Affecting CEO Changes Since 2005 - Essay Sample

Introduction

Hewlett-Packard is one of the companies which deal with the making of computer as it sells them to many parts of the world. From the year 2005, the company has had several Chief Executive Officers due to the politics which have affected the company for a long period. Corporate politics has been an issue in existence for a long time and for the HP Company the matter has been different because of the leaking to the general public.

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Each time there has been a change in the CEO there has been several controversies at the company. The matter started back in the year 2005 when Fiorina Carly was attacked from the members of the board. The matter was in public and when Carly lost to the board members she was replaced with Patricia Dunn who was latterly outstayed following the investigations. In this case, we shall discuss several aspects such as types of political behaviors at the company and if the leaks were ethical as well as what factors led to political behavior.

The political conflict in the company was fueled by the competition for resources by the company resources in the company. This brought division in the company and each of the board members and the company CEOs started to fight each other (Hertel-Fernandez, 2018). This was evident by the many replacements which the company has been able to for a short period. This could have been addressed through appropriate leadership strategies where all members go onboard and can give their views. Each of the members should be respected and perform the designed duties for the growth of the company.

The political behavior which has been evident in the company has been as a result of the lack of clear goals for running the multinational company. This had resulted in a division in the company as the company directors and the company CEOs have had different goals for a long time. Instead of the company conducting the meetings to set the goals which will help them to move forward and each of the members given some time to listen to his or her views, this has not been done and has resulted to members sharing their dissatisfaction with the general public which has tainted the image if the company by exposing their weakness to the public. This has resulted in wastage of time instead of working as the top management conduct investigations of which they should have been busy doing their daily works. This has resulted in more division instead of addressing the real challenges facing the company.

The issue of lack of trust has resulted in the divisions which have affected the company. The board of directors for a long time has lacked trust with the organization CEOs and they have advocated for the removal which has not been a good act. The fact that members of the board could not face the management and hair their concerns is an indication of lack of trust among the organization members.

The mistrust has originated from the board members who have big shares in the company and they have been very strong in protecting their interests (Kim, Woo, Baek, Kim & Ahn, 2016). These challenges have resulted in a decline in company sales. Most of the decisions which have been made by the company have been personal and this to a large extent has resulted in the many challenges which have faced the company. This management turmoil has resulted in a decline in the company profit, margins.

Performance factors have also been a factor which has affected the company to a large capacity. To just name an example Carly who was the company chief executive officer was sacked as a result of failure to deliver what had been agreed on by the board members. This information was able to leak to the media and Hurd was made to apologize for the leak of information to media. This was as a result of mishandling the internal conflicts. After some time he left the company as the board had lost confidence in him. He, however, joined oracle which is also a technological giant in the world.

The individual factors also facilitated to the divisions which affected the HP Company. The individual factors are much fueled by personal ambitions which interfere with those of the company. Though the company had some challenges the best method to address the challenges could have been sought but not to take the matters to the public. Greed for power was a factor which facilitated to the challenges which faced the company. Dunn wanted to have control over everything in the company and thus facilitating to the company challenges (Myers, 2015).

It is bad for personal factors such as greed for power to affect the company as a whole in the negative direction. The technology which was used to get the information was unethical as the pretexting method was applied. The method involved the use of less to be able to get the required information. This method brought the battle in the company and even resulted in more issues such as lack of trust from the company Chief Executive Officer.

Information distribution mechanism was another factor which contributed to the challenges which affected the company. There was no appropriate channel of communications and this resulted to further divisions in the company. Some of the members felt left out and thus shared their frustrations to the general public and this created a negative image for the company and resulted in low working morale for those who felt left out.

The result of selective dissemination of information results in cartel formation where some members of the company feel more superior compared to other company employees. If there had been proper channels of information flow many of these challenges could have been dealt with in a better manner.

The leaks to the press were not ethical as the matter could have been addressed in the better capacity in the company. The political actions which took place in the organization facilitated the decline in the sales and profit of the company. The investigation which was done by Dunn was not ethical in the investigation in which he conducted as the members were not consulted. The kind of investigation done interfered with the company as the members were not even aware of was being done.

The best method could have been sought to help improve the welfare of the employees. The method was not the best as it interfered with the rights of the employees. Any investigation done should be done following the duly process and the intention of the investigation should have been clear to the board members and the management. The method increases the descriptive justice in the company. The political actions which were undertaken violated the individual rights where issues were reported to the media.

References

Hertel-Fernandez, A. (2018). Politics at Work: How Companies Turn Their Workers Into Lobbyists. Oxford University Press.

Kim, D., Woo, S., Baek, J., Kim, H. P., & Ahn, C. (2016). U.S. Patent Application No. 29/508,553.

Myers, C. (2015). Is your company encouraging employees to share what they know. Harvard Business Review, 6.