O Ethics, Where Art Thou?
What has Mr. Mark Hurd been up to in the past two months? Hurd pushed Oracle’s market value up $6.8billion in a day. In August, he dropped $10billion off Hewlett-Pakard’s market value within minutes. He also received a warm severance payment valued around $40million upon his resignation as CEO of H-P. Mr. Mark Hurd, how do you do it? Did you abide to the “social responsibilities” of a corporate executive?
Mr. Mark Hurd
No.
In fact, Hurd was forced to resigned from H-P due to minor inaccuracies in some expense reports to conceal a love affair. However, Oracle is willing to hire Hurd as co-president, despite his lack of “social responsibility”. I believe that Hurd knows that some companies will overlook certain things, if it’s worth it. It seems business ethics only matter when they put the company’s finance at risk. Hurd’s actions did not.
Hurd Hired by H-P Rival Oracle
Hurd resigned from H-P(HPQ) at the beginning of August. Oracle(ORCL) offered Hurd a job early September. How well does the graph reflect business ethics?
I do not believe that a majority of the shareholders, who have no correlation to the company, aside from their investment, would be willing to sacrifice a great return for ethical restrictions within a company.
“In a free society, it is hard for “evil” people to do “evil”, especially since one man’s good is another’s evil.”
Sources:
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-real-reason-hp-fired-mark-hurd-%28as-best-we-can-tell-…-%29-535311.html?tickers=HPQ,ORCL,QQQQ,^DJI,^IXIC,IYW,XLK
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704358904575477870066918884.html?KEYWORDS=hurd
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/09/07/is-mark-hurd-worth-68-billion/?KEYWORDS=hurd
http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html