Hewlett-Packard turns into an i-spy business

In the wake of the Hewlett-Packard spying scandal, a business ethics specialist from Kansas State University, Manhattan, thinks companies must be careful not to abuse their power and create a surveillance culture that ignores the privacy rights of their stakeholders.

Diane Swanson, associate professor of management, says that, in the case of HP, where its ex-chairwoman and four others face charges in a boardroom-news leak spying case, discovering the source of the leak should have been handled internally without violating the privacy rights of employees and the media.

"We cannot lose sight of the fact that what appears to be a dysfunctional board at the top is the root cause of the problem and that it led to violations of privacy for other stakeholders, not to mention a concern for stock value on the part of shareholders," Swanson indicates.

Given the loss of confidence society is experiencing in the top levels of business and government, Swanson feels that Americans cannot risk deterring the media in its important role as watchdog. "If corporations are allowed to extend their powerful control mechanisms into the pressroom, it will have a chilling effect on media coverage of corporate conduct and threaten the public's right to know. In my opinion, the media is not covering corporate abuses of power nearly enough.

"The antics that HP has been alleged to use will only make matters worse if it sets the bar for future corporate behavior. Unfortunately, many organizations tend to want to shoot the messenger instead of fixing the root problems. The board of directors has a responsibility to exercise due diligence and loyalty, not leak information that will hurt the stockholders."

Ultimately, it is the heavy-handedness of HP's response that most concerns Swanson. "It's a corporation, not a gulag," she stresses. "As an ethicist, the failure of the firm to set the tone for corporate social responsibility is unsettling. Instead of knowing how HP actually serves society and stockholder interests, we are questioning its potentially heavy-handed violations of fundamental privacy rights. It is up to the firm's top officials to get the dysfunctional power dynamics under control and return the firm to a focus on its product and serving constructive social values. "As citizens, we are already tolerating enough of a surveillance culture now. We don't need to have corporations joining the act and getting away with it.

"The mechanisms of government and business are ultimately justified only if they serve the greater good," Swanson concludes. "In the case of HE it appears that many interests are not being served as well as they should be."

COPYRIGHT 2007 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning