First, there's the kind of leak that oozes 200,000 gallons of petroleum from deteriorated pipelines and spoils the environment while the responsible managers rack up record profits for the company. Here's a statement from the head of British Petroleum's US operations, Robert A. Mallone:
"We have fallen short of the high standards we hold for ourselves, and the expectations that others have for us…"
Translated from corporate talk, this means: "We screwed up and got caught slacking off and being cheap with our operations so we could keep more bucks for ourselves and our investors."
Today's corporate values seem to be:
Do whatever it takes, including unethical behavior, to get the most profit you can—just don't get caught.
Unethical behavior is not considered bad management today; it's getting caught that's bad. A company representative's response usually gives away this philosophy, as it did when Mallone "vowed to manage Prudhoe Bay in 'a safe, efficient and environmentally sensitive way.'"
Right. Just like you did last time. And they all keep their jobs so they can go on to find other ways to hide inefficiencies that produce short-term monetary gains.
Second, there's the kind of leak that oozes information that is supposed to be proprietary among Board members. That in itself is bad enough, but in Hewlett Packard's case it caused bad bosses on the Board to turn on each other.
In what California's Attorney General referred to as a "colossally stupid" tactic, which may also be illegal, Chairwoman Patricia Dunn hired private investigators to impersonate some of the other Board members to get copies of their home phone records. One of those investigators obtained the last four digits of a Board member's social security number, opened an online account with AT&T, then called AT&T and impersonated that Board member, "offering up his social security digits as proof of identity and asking AT&T to send a record of phone calls to and from his house…to a free, Web-based e-mail account."
A Professor at the University of Maryland's school of business said, "If the chairman thinks this is the way business ought to be conducted, maybe it's time for her to take a sabbatical...it's arrogant and inappropriate."
So this is what business schools teach? The punishment for unethical behavior, which may also be illegal, should be a sabbatical? A sabbatical? What would an executive learn on such a sabbatical? How not to get caught next time?
Or perhaps this sabbatical would include a class in business ethics. Commenting on this reprehensible and possibly illegal behavior, a professor of business ethics at Seattle University said, "This sends a message to employees that the company is willing to do just about anything to protect itself…This sends a bad message to existing employees, and it's bad for attracting good employees from outside the organization." Let's hope so.
Don't they teach classes in prisons?
