Europe must no doubt be thrilled to see America's latest idiotic puritan spanking: the firing of Boeing's CEO, Harry Stonecipher. He had an affair, and the board tossed him out, saying Stonecipher himself had created a no-second-chance ethics policy that left no choice.
Why would Europe be happy? Because that's Airbus, the only serious competitor to Boeing in the civilian aircraft market, is located. Seeing its adversary thrown into such turmoil over something so minor has to be a big win for Airbus.
Anyway, it's close to inconceivable that a European company would toss overboard a CEO for having an affair with another adult. In fact, it's totally inconceivable. An affair makes the guy look bad, but what on earth does it have to do with his job?
Maybe, as the linked Seattle Times story suggests, something else is going on -- because this firing doesn't make a lot of sense.
Or maybe America is turning into a nation that has totally lost proportion.
The CEO's conduct amounted to a fireable offense under the company's code of conduct and the terms and conditions of his employment contract.
Whatever the totality of the reasons for the firing, THIS was the grounds that cost the company the least in payments upon the CEO's departure.
You have to be quite narrow minded and wearing blinders (if not downright PURITANICAL) to believe the Board didn't have a multitude of good business reasons for firing him, which didn't add up to "cause" and hence would have been much more costly.
Posted by: rathersilly | March 09, 2005 at 04:51 PM
I divorced my husband a few years ago because he had an affair with a woman he worked with. Now she works for him and they still have a relationship but are not married. Coincidentally, his department (he works for a well-known automotive company) is now under heavy investigation for misspent monies by supplier. As Joe I. compared the probability of ..personal ethics vs. business ethics......could there be a correlation?
Posted by: June S. | March 10, 2005 at 09:56 AM
> Had this not been the issue, I'd agree with you - there's no
> indication that the relationship affected performance at all,
> nor was she a direct report.
Well, everyone in the organization is a direct report to the CEO.
But if you read the more detailed reports found on the aerospace web sites, you will find that the Board stated it did not fire him for having an affair, nor even having an affair with an employee, but for "errors of judgement" found while investigating the affair. We don't know what those errors are, but presumably the Board thought they were firable.
Cranky
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Posted by: beltonen logo | May 06, 2005 at 01:20 PM
Dan: Don't you prune your trackback & comment spam, Dan?
I've just posted a new trackback to this post since someone tried to get to it with the old permalink you list in my March 9, 2005 trackback. You may delete that one & I hope display the new one which has the new permalink (linked also to this comment) for my new WordPress blog.
Posted by: Richard Silverstein | July 15, 2005 at 10:14 PM