Hewlett-Packard News Leaks

The case over the Hewlett-Packard news leaks was very interesting and full of great examples of different ethical scenarios that have been discussed in the course. The Wall Street Journal published an article that that went over some details about a "closed door" board discussion. The article talked about how HP planned to reorganize management. I learned in Chapter 6 of the book that once an issue becomes public and subject to debate and media exposure, it becomes more difficult to resolve the issue. This definitely showed to be true in this particular case with Hewlett-Packard.

HP wanted to find out how the leaks were getting out, so they hired an external legal counsel to perform interviews on all of the board members. After the interviews they were still not able to pinpoint the leaks. There was evidence of more leaks a year later as some different news organizations described in detail of what was going on inside these private "closed door" meetings. This was starting to make the company look bad in the public eye and HP wanted to react quickly to stop the leaks. It was obvious that it was coming from someone inside, so they hired private investigators. The chairwoman Dunn could not supervise the investigation because she was a potential target. Dunn made sure to let the investigators know that they must conduct the investigations within the confines of the law. In a way, the investigation was successful because it pointed to a person who later admitted to most of the leaks. But the investigation could also be looked at as a failure, because of the way the investigation was conducted.

There was one man that admitted to a majority of the leaks, and he was asked to resign. After being told that he would not be reelected on to the board, he conceded and signed his resignation. The investigation did not conclude on the rest of the leaks, but it seemed like the problem for the most part was solved. It seems as though the leaks were the least of their problems in the end. Although the source of the leaks was eliminated, the way in which the source was found was brought to attention by another board member named Thomas J. Perkins. He also resigned from the board in protest over the way in which the investigation was handled by the private investigators and the HP Company as a whole. He wanted the matter to be dealt with privately and not aired out into the public. He wanted to know how HP investigated the leaks, because he believed that company emails and phone communications were used improperly.

HP states that what they did was in a gray area and technically legal, until they passed a law shortly after this that made it illegal. This could be potentially bad media coverage for HP and its stakeholders. This bad media publicity makes the company look like it can't be trusted and will use borderline illegal methods of finding out information. Most people are already skeptical when it comes to computers