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Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Business and politics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For business executives, politicians, generals, admirals and CEOs, Thinking Right today offers free career-saving public relations advice — though I note with some shallow pretension of sadness that it comes too late for Hewlett-Packard’s Chairwoman Patricia Dunn. She announced Tuesday that she is stepping down on Jan. 18 after revalations that investigators hired to find the source of media leaks impersonated at least one board member and journalists who cover H-P in acquiring their personal phone records. The director and suspected leakee, George Keyworth II, resigned too.
The free advice, highly valuable to all in positions of authority, is this: Don’t ever be this stupid. Obsessed efforts to find leakers, so tempting, are invitations to trouble. H-P executives have learned their lesson. “I am taking action to ensure that inappropriate investigative techniques will not be employed again,” said CEO Mark Hurd.
Two questions arise. One is whether those in business, or in some particular segment of it, like energy or finance, are less ethical than the rest of us?
The second concerns business and politics. The premise of much of the class/political warfare in this country is that Big Business, and certainly Big Oil, is corrupt and, furthermore, that it has undue influence in politics, especially on the GOP. Do you believe any or all of those allegations to be true — and if so, what should be done about it?
