In 2006, HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn contracted a team of security experts to investigate board members and several journalists in order to identify the source of an information leak. During the investigation, the security experts used a spying technique known as pretexting (investigators impersonating HP board members and journalists to obtain their phone records). The information leaked related to HP’s long-term strategies was published on a CNET article in January 2006.
The investigation found out the source of the information leak in a short time, however, it also incensed some innocent board members. As the violation of the privacy of the board members made public, on September 22, 2006, HP announced that Patricia Dunn had held herself responsible for the misdeed and resigned.
HP is a struggling company. In my opinion, HP is currently lack of a strong ethical organizational culture. Culture conveys a sense of identity to organization members, creates commitment to something larger than an individual’s self-interest and works as the social glue that helps hold the organization together. To improve HP’s organizational performance, the first thing HP should do is to create a strong ethical culture, which can be created by communicating ethical expectations, providing ethics training, visibly rewarding ethical acts and punishing unethical ones, and providing protective mechanisms.
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