[Marxism] Fwd from Jim Craven: "If You're From Boeing, Don't Go 'Ho'-ing"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Indiscreet E-Mail Claims a Fresh Casualty
> By ALAN MURRAY, The Wall Street Journal
>
> (March 9) -- Let's be clear. Harry Stonecipher wasn't fired simply because
> he had an extramarital affair with an employee. Plenty of chief executives
> have done that in the past, and plenty more will do it in the future. It's
> a bad idea, it often violates company "fraternization" policies, but for
> the most part, it isn't a firing offense -- yet.
>
> No, the Boeing CEO was fired because, among other things, he had the bad
> judgment to detail his actions and desires in a series of very explicit
> e-mails to the woman in question.
>
> To borrow from one of my favorite country-music songs: We know what you
> were feeling, Harry. But what were you thinking?
>
> Lest there are others like Mr. Stonecipher out there, a little history is
> in order. In Washington, the last vestige of personal privacy disappeared
> roughly a dozen years ago, when the Senate Ethics Committee subpoenaed the
> 8,200-page diary of Sen. Bob Packwood, who was being investigated for
> various acts of sexual harassment. Even correspondence with yourself, we
> learned, isn't protected.
>
> As for e-mail -- well, unlike love, it is forever. You may think you've
> destroyed every last vestige of it, but it lives on, in some forgotten
> corner of some far-off server, waiting like Sleeping Beauty to be brought
> back to life by a zealous prosecutor or an overcompensated trial lawyer.
>
> A CEO might be forgiven for overlooking these lessons from Washington. But
> has Mr. Stonecipher ever heard of Eliot Spitzer? In the past three years,
> the New York attorney general has built an awe-inspiring career on
> indiscreet e-mail, and now believes they are his e-ticket to the
> governor's mansion. Among his most prized discoveries were Henry Blodget's
> e-mail using the acronym POS (hint: the first two words are "piece" and
> "of") to refer to a tech stock that he was touting to the public on behalf
> of Merrill Lynch. Then there was Jack Grubman's e-mail boasting that
> Citigroup Chairman Sandy Weill had helped his children get into an
> exclusive Manhattan nursery school after he boosted his rating of AT&T stock.
> Meanwhile, former U.S. Attorney James Comey, now deputy attorney general,
> built his successful case against Frank Quattrone on an e-mail the
> investment banker sent to his staff at Credit Suisse First Boston
> "strongly" advising them to catch up on their file cleaning.
>
> Even if Mr. Stonecipher somehow ignored all this, he could hardly have
> missed the case of Michael Sears. Mr. Sears is the former Boeing chief
> financial officer who offered a job to high-ranking U.S. Air Force
> acquisition official Darleen Druyun, then wrote about the offer and his
> "nonmeeting" with Ms. Druyun in an e-mail to top Boeing executives.
> Without that e-mail, Mr. Stonecipher might never have become CEO.
>
> The lesson of all this couldn't be clearer. Don't ever put anything in an
> e-mail that you wouldn't want to read on the jumbotron at Times Square.
>
> Boeing Chairman Lewis Platt has refused to characterize the contents of
> the "correspondence" between Mr. Stonecipher and his lover, and he has
> refused to say that it was e-mail correspondence. But others have
> confirmed the existence of the e-mail and the board's fear it might become
> public -- bringing enormous embarrassment to both Mr. Stonecipher and the
> company. (Companies generally are free to monitor e-mail on company
> equipment or company e-mail accounts.)
>
> At most big companies, document training has long been a standard part of
> good executive education. Corporate lawyers remind clients of the employee
> at Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company, who wrote an e-mail referring to
> "fat people who are a little afraid of some silly lung problem" -- a
> reference to the fact that some diet-drug users had contracted a fatal
> pulmonary disease. Wyeth has paid some $13 billion to settle its diet-drug
> problems. They may also mention the Chevron Corp. employees who touted "25
> Reasons Why Beer Is Better Than Women" -- part of a case that led to a
> $2.2 million sexual-harassment settlement. Then there's the series of
> e-mail by Microsoft's Bill Gates, talking about how to undercut the
> competition, which became part of antitrust efforts against the company.
>
> If there's some good news in this sordid tale, it's that Boeing directors
> proved they are no patsies, and moved quickly to deal with a problem that
> could have hurt the company's reputation at a critical time. Corporate
> governance is changing, and for the better.
>
> But the demise of confidential communications, in government and in
> business, is more troubling. E-mail is one of the great management tools
> of recent decades, making it easier for top executives to manage a
> far-flung work force, communicate with multiple stakeholders and even
> correspond, on occasion, with journalists. Unfortunately, the Stonecipher
> case is one more prod for executives to follow the example of a former CEO
> who never wrote e-mail: WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers.

Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org


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