Interestingly enough, I have been following up on HP’s abundant problems and coincidentally Vivek Thakkar has blogged about its layoffs. Despite HP’s accumulated layoffs of approximately 29,000 employees, Meg Whitman, the CEO, plans to lay off an additional 27,000 employees by 2014. It raises the concern that if HP is not committed to its employees, it is difficult for their employees to be committed to HP. This reflects HP’s hardship to compete against other technological firms. Not only does layoffs create fear in the employees, the recently-fired CEOS, Carly Fiorina and Mark Hurd, abused their power as well.

Carly and Mark have imposed their coercive power to constantly be cost conscious and thus, negatively impacting employees’ ability to perform at their highest. The past CEOs have destroyed the organizational culture that was once established by Bill and Dave, the founders of HP. Known as the “HP Way,” one of the values emphasize trust and respect for individuals. Trust cannot be achieved through layoffs and abuse of power. To solve HP’s problems, it must try to re-create their organizational culture that embodies a positive environment where employees are comfortable to work together as a team to achieve a common objective.

Works Cited
Vivek Thakkar’s blog – https://blogs.ubc.ca/vivekthakkar/2013/11/12/will-hewlett-packards-employees-ever-feel-safe/
Fortune – http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/08/500-hp-apotheker/