Strategic Management Report: Leadership Challenges at Hewlett-Packard

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the strategic management and leadership challenges encountered by Hewlett-Packard (HP) due to changes in CEO appointments. It begins with an executive summary highlighting the lack of positive leadership across four CEO changes, identifying problems tied to leadership styles and analyzing the company's changing environment. The report examines the leadership styles of Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd, Leo Apotheker, and Meg Whitman, detailing the impact of their decisions and the employees' responses to these changes. It discusses the board of directors' responsibilities, the capacity of employees to adapt, and various strategic options. The report concludes with recommendations for effective leadership, emphasizing the importance of a strong board, innovative strategies, employee development, and ethical policies. The analysis covers the company's environment, capacity to respond to changes, and potential strategic options, offering a detailed view of the leadership challenges and potential improvements for HP.

Running head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Strategic management
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Executive summary
The report concentrates on the challenges related to the leadership style of that exists in
Hewlett-Packard. The company went through a change in the appointment of four different
CEOs. During this process the company went through many challenges that turned out to be
negative for the company. The common factor that lacked during all the four changes were a
positive form of leadership. The report identifies the problems that were related to the
leadership factor in the company. The changing environment of the firm has been analysed in
the report and the way to respond to the changes have been included further in the report. The
style of leadership has been reported to be different in the tenure of the different CEOs. The
report analyses the capacity of the employees to respond to the change. The report briefly
consist of the various opinions on the same. It concludes with a recommendation.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Analysis:.....................................................................................................................................4
Analysis of the firm’s changing environment:.......................................................................4
Capacity to respond to the changes:.......................................................................................5
Various options at disposal:...................................................................................................6
Recommendation and implementation:......................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Hewlett-Packard, intends to fulfil all the responsibilities that are related to the
development off the organization (Larker and Tayan 2011). Hiring CEO from the external
source can be stated a major part of one of those strategies. The strategies have been distilled
down to the evaluation and the approval of the corporate strategy and the hiring and
terminating the CEOs from the organization. The aim of the report is to analyse the
leadership styles that has been followed during the tenure of all the CEOs. All the CEOs who
were hired from the external sources landed up in dethroning the revenue of the company.
The point that has to be considered in this light is the responsibilities of the board of directors
in the approval of their formation of the corporate social responsibility and the selection of
the CEO in order to execute those strategies. The objective of the report is to understand the
fact whether the board of HP has settled on the corporate social strategy. It further recognizes
the leadership style that should have followed.
The report follows a specific method to address the study. In the first section the
report consist of the changing environment of the firm. The firm undergoes the problem of
changed leadership style of different CEOs that were appointed as well as fired at different
intervals. The employees were found to be uncomfortable with the massive changes that
occurred due to this change. In the next section the report discusses the capacity to respond to
those changes. In the next section the report analyses the options that an individual can avail.
In other worlds the options at disposal are discussed in the report. The final section of the
report consists of the recommendations. The recommendation would include those factors
that I would implement if I was made the CEO of the company. The recommendation would
include the factor that would judge the alternative way out of the issues. This would also
include the reason of choosing one particular alternative above the existing one (Larcker and
Tayan 2015).

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Analysis:
Analysis of the firm’s changing environment:
The environment of the firm was changed when the board decided to recruit as well as
terminate the CEOs. With the change of the CEOs, the environment of the firm got changed
in terms of the production of the company as well as the acceptance of them by the
employees of the company. In order to understand the changing environment the leadership
or the developmental strategy of each CEO have to be analysed. The company initially took
the decision of recruiting Carly Florina as their CEO. She was the senior executive of Lucent
Technologies before this. This was a striking change as the company recruited an external
CEO for the first time. Moreover she had no idea of engineering. She had no experience of
managing the team of the size of HP. Florida made plans to reenergize the company. She
introduced the individual performance-based compensation plan in order to lay all the focus
on the individual performance. She redesigned the sales and marketing function of the
company. The remarkable decision that was taken by her was the decision of cracking a deal
in order to acquire Compaq computer for 25 billion in stock. This step was taken in order to
take the company ahead of its existing position. The change was however not a positive one.
This turned out to be a loss for the company. This was the reason the committee of the board
members had to ask her to resign (Beyer, Larcker and Tayan 2014).
After her Mark Hurd came into the position of CEO. It was after his resignation that
the real reason of his resignation was leaked. The contractor of the company accused him of
sexual harassment. In order to bring a change an abrupt resignation was given. It had the
chance to cause damage to the shareholders. In losing Hurd the company posed threat to their
shareholders, employees, customers and the partners. The board was split into six to four
segments (Andersen and Ross 2014).

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Leo Apotheker was the next appointed CEO of the company. During his tenure the
stock of the company declined. The investors were dissatisfied with this. This made the board
of directors to terminate him.
The next CEO of the company was Meg Whitman. He was the director before this.
She had no experience of managing the company of HP’s size earlier. The investors were
found to be puzzled and dissatisfied with the sudden news of appointment.
Capacity to respond to the changes:
The continuous change of the CEOs had a negative impact on the employees of the
organization. In case of Carly Fiorina, the employees thought the changes was too much and
they found it to be difficult to abide by all the changes. She tried to change the structure of
the company. The decision of acquiring the stocks of Compaq computer changed the entire
environment of revenue of the company. It did not turn out to be a transformative event.
From a figure of 0.9 percent it came to the figure of 0. 1 percent. The earnings report of the
company was not impressive and therefore it was turned out to be an undesirable one. The
company had no larger capacity to bear the further loss in the revenue and this is the reason
she was asked to resign. With the resignation of Fiorina the board gave the explanation that
the board is firmly committed to the business strategy that is in place. The board members
were not ruling strategy related to the corporate structure and leadership. While Hurd
resigned of being accused of sexual harassment, this was held to be an abrupt resignation.
The shareholders could not accept this. The others however believed that he could not be
trusted and therefore he could not be kept any longer in the board. The organization lacked a
proper leadership style. The employees of the organization could not get a proper style of
leadership. The appointment of Whitman as the next CEO made the investment committee
confused. The board was reluctant to make any kind of pretexting. The board made no efforts
to develop the internal as well as the external factors. The negative reaction of the investors,

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the shareholders brought about no change in the attitude of the board (Plattner, Meinel and
Leifer 2015).
Various options at disposal:
The three different CEOs produced three different leadership style. Carly did not
know the structure of the company and she implemented changes that were related to the
structure of the company. She followed the autocratic leadership. This is the reason the
employees could not accept the ways of Carly. She should have followed the transformational
leadership style. She should have sat with the team and the employees and should have even
taken consider their views before taken a big decision. He took a big decision of the
acquisition of the leading computer stock. She should have taken the opinion of the board
members and the employees in case of the acquisition (Leeson 2016). This is the reason this
move is stated as unruly. The employees accused her of not understanding the culture of the
organization and taking decisions. She did not believe in taking opinion and as a result she
had to resign as her decision turned out to be major loss for the organization. On the Mark
Hurd completely lacked all the qualities of corporate strategy and leadership. A leader is
expected to keep the internal environment comfortable. He was accused of sexual
harassment. He broke all the expected norms of being a leader. He resigned in a sudden way.
This gave rise to a controversy inside the company. This way of resigning was termed as the
most reckless way of making change. He did left the company to face the damage. This made
him no good leader. Apart from this, Meg Whitman, who was the next CEO adopted the
process of following the existing strategy of the company. He failed to bring an innovation in
the strategy. The board was reluctant on conducting the research outside. It was required for
them to do it in a proactive manner. They showed no interest in bringing a positive change in
the organization. The board should have formulated strategies in order to hire an effective
CEO who would be transformational in his approach (Cifuentes-Férez 2014).

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Recommendation and implementation:
If I were the CEO of HP I would form a strong team of board members that is not
present in the company. I would form innovative strategies that would develop the structure
of the organization. All the decisions should be taken by taking an opinion of the board
members. This will make the board of members positive about their approach. The existing
board members of the organization are not proactive to do their job. They lack in the
formation of organizational strategy. This is the reason they changed four CEOs. This is not
healthy for any organization. The organization gets used to the ways of their leaders but if the
leader keeps on changing they find it difficult to adjust with the ways of leadership. As a
CEO I would make the change related to the development of the staffs and the employees.
They form major part of the organization. This is the reason certain strategies like staff
motivation and staff training and seminars should be arranged in order to develop the internal
environment of the organization. The final and the most important factor that I would
implement as a CEO is the implementation of proper ethics and policies that would preserve
the dignity of the workers who are working inside the organization.

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