Hewlett Packard and Its Vision

Problem Statement
#2 The Problem
The problem with Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) vision of how to run a successful organization shifted dramatically in the 2000s, beginning with its plan in 2002 to outsource “PC manufacturing facilities worldwide, in keeping with its longstanding strategy to decrease operations costs and improve profitability” (Mourdoukoutas, 2014). By outsourcing its manufacturing, HP entered into a phase of self-destruction, inviting the collapse of its own supply chain through fragmentation inevitably caused by outsourcing. One of the big consequences of this, in turn, was its loss of market share, as the handicap that HP placed upon itself was welcome news for new competitors who now saw their opportunity for entry; HP’s product cycles were shortened, and its invested capital was strained—all as a result of outsourcing.
HP also made a number of unwise acquisitions in an effort to be relevant in the tech sector. However, the company was looking backwards instead of forwards. By purchasing Compaq, Palm and Autonomy in 2001, 2010 and 2011 respectively (at substantial cost to the company), HP thought it would be able to scale in the PC, mobile phone, and software markets. Instead of looking forward in terms of innovation to see how it could make the markets better for consumers through the development of new products, it was playing catch-up and the companies it purchased brought no real added value to the firm in the end; instead, they left HP with mounting debts (Mourdoukoutas, 2014). As Bandler and Burke (2012) point out, “the company didn’t boast a single hit consumer product even as 67% of its revenue stemmed from hardware.” Competitors like Apple, IBM and Oracle were forward-looking and innovation-focused, delivering products and services that consumers were clamoring for in the new Digital Age. HP was viewing the market as though it were still in the 1990s.
Finally, HP was suffering from a decline in the quality of its organizational culture, which stemmed from a lack of leadership. Under CEO Leo Apotheker, employees had become “disengaged” and the workplace felt “traumatized”—layoffs were just around the corner, creativity had been stymied, and workers were uninspired to perform. Indeed, workers were fatigued from more than a decade of lackadaisical leadership, from Carly Fiorina’s appointment to the top spot in 1999 to Mark Hurd’s tenure, Leo Apotheker’s aloofness, and Meg Whitman’s survivalist mode of cold, calculating cost-cutting.
Because of all this, profits were declining substantially. In the third quarter following its announcement that it would write off $8.8 billion because its acquisition of Autonomy was a essentially worthless, HP had already lost $6.9 billion (Kalb, 2012a). The company’s shares were sliding dramatically. Its leaders seemed clueless as to how to stop the hemorrhaging: From Fiorina to Hurd to Apotheker to Whitman, none of HP’s executives seemed to realize that the way to save the company was to get back to its innovative roots: this was the vision that had catapulted the firm to the top of the industry in the beginning. Now, innovation had stagnated, and the company’s culture was writhing. Executives were grasping for straws and trying a number of tricks to change the company’s image, cut costs, or focus on the bottom line. None of it mattered because HP was not addressing the most crucial issue: the matter of vision.
Manaement’s Dilemma. Management’s dilemma is that it has lost a sense of the vision needed to transform the company and pull it out of its downward spiral. Transformational leadership is about providing a vision and motivating workers to want to reach that vision. Management at HP was not implementing this style of leadership—namely because its vision had been lost and that was the fault of its CEOs, who set the tone and tenor of the company. Management did not want to continue to in the negative feedback loop the company was mired in, but it saw no way out because it was not paying attention to its core values—the principles that allowed the firm to thrive in the first place. As Mourdoukoutas (2014) put it: “Bad acquisitions drained resources that could have been used for R&D to foster internal innovation. And the lack of internal innovation fostered bad acquisitions and outsourcing as a way of catching up with competition.” Deciding how to break out of the cycle of bad acquisitions while playing catch-up with other competitors in the market was the matter management had to settle. If it did not return to its innovative roots, it would cease to have a compelling reason to exist at all. In order to get back to research and development, it would have to get its vision back. How to do that was the problem.
Research Outcomes
#3 Outcome statement
As a result of getting back to the company’s core founding principles and values, HP will be able to strengthen its organizational culture and become innovative and dominant in the industry once more as demonstrated by the method implemented by Apple in the 2000s when HP was looking backwards at past products instead of forwards at new possible product lines and services (like cloud computing).
Research Question. Why do the core founding principles and vision of a business serve as the most suitable foundation of stable growth and development in a firm and what causes organizational leaders to lose sight of that?
Research Hypothesis. It was hypothesized that core founding principles and vision of a business serve as the most suitable foundation for stable growth and development in a firm because they serve to guide the firm’s conduct, mission, outlook and strategy, and organizational leaders to lose sight of the power of core principles when they began to put their own self-centered or short-sighted interests before the company’s—i.e., they put the illusion of “profits” before the reality of people.
#4 Importance to Business
The research question is important to business because it identifies one of the core concepts of successful organizations in the marketplace—the concept of having a strong, meaningful vision based on sound principles. Vision and principles are interdependent, as the both complement one another: vision gives the incentive for principles to be applied, and principles support the discipline needed to obtain the vision (Hardy, 2014). While it is irrelevant which comes first, the vision or the principles (essentially a chicken or egg issue), the fact is that businesses must have both core founding principles and vision if they want to be competitive year over year. The vision helps to inspire, and the principles help to achieve.
#5 Benefits
The benefits to management are that it receives a better understanding of why relying on core founding principles and values to determine the foundation of the company’s strategy is essential to strong growth and development. By always having a sense of the core founding principles and vision of the firm, the organization can inspire the workplace culture with a mission that is supported by these principles (a mission that is not supported by the principles should be rejected).
Background
#6 Background of the Company
Hewlett-Packard began business in Palo Alto in 1939 and went public in 1957. Innovation was always at the heart of the company’s vision, and its first successful product to hit the marketplace was the precision audio oscillator known as the Model HP200A, which used a small pilot light to stabilize the device’s output. The product beat competitors’ products in terms of pricing by more than half and brought the company to the attention of major corporations like Walt Disney, which used HP’s oscillators in its theaters. Over the next several decades, HP’s dedication to innovation made it into a leader in the tech industry—though it missed out on engaging one of the more compelling innovative minds in Steve Wozniak, who was an HP employee with ideas that the firm rejected again and again—which prompted him to team up with Steve Jobs and form Apple (Ong, 2010). This shows that even in the early days of PC development, HP was taking its eye off its original founding principles and vision.
In 2015, the company was split into HP, Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with both divisions trading under their own ticker symbols—HPQ and HPE, respectively. Dion Weisler is the current CEO of HPQ and Antonio Neri is the current CEO of HPE. HP, Inc. focuses on producing printers and PCs while HPE focuses on servers, networking, and storage. Hewlett Packard Labs serves as the research and development wing of HP, Inc. The headquarters of HP is still Palo Alto after all these years. Revenue for HP, Inc. was $52 billion in 2017 with net income of approximately $2.5 billion. Revenue for HPE was $29 billion in 2017 with net income of $344 million. Altogether, HP employs more than 100,000 workers between the two divisions.
#7 Background of the Problem. The essence of the problem with HP is that it has lost a sense of its core founding principles and vision and needs to return to its innovative roots. As the organization manifested a loss of this sense in the 2000s (or well before if one chooses to mark this departure from innovative spirit to the year in which Wozniak left HP to team up with Jobs), it turned to more reckless and detrimental “solutions” to the problems it was encountering in the industry: it lacked competitive, innovative products, and instead of hunkering down and focusing on research and development, it turned to quick-fix solutions that its managers thought would do the trick. These “solutions” turned out to be more costly than effective—as the ill-advised acquisition of Autonomy proved, for instance (Kalb, 2012a). Another ill-advised “solution” was HP’s attempt to use “intermediaries to bribe foreign government officials in order to obtain profitable technology contracts” (Lawrence, Solomon & Bosworth, 2014). As a result, in 2014, HP “agreed to pay more than $108 million to settle enforcement actions by the DOJ and the SEC”—a small sum compared to the much larger write-off loss associated with its acquisition of Autonomy, but nonetheless indicative of the wayward direction that the company was heading in as a result of its loss by management of a sense of the firm’s core founding principles and vision.
This problem is part of a much larger problem that many companies are facing in the light of a globalized economy and fiercer competition from all corners of the globe. Rather than focusing on vision and principles, organizations are attempting to find shortcuts or easy solutions to the age-old problem of how to stay relevant. Some focus on strategic acquisitions and mergers: HP is not alone in this; Wal-Mart, a giant retailer around the world, has also used this strategy to get to the top of the discount retail market (Mitchell, 2015; Mourdoukoutas, 2016; Felstead, 2017). Others try to cut corners by skirting regulations and trying to reduce costs by ignoring safety issues, as BP has done (Hargreaves, 2010; McNulty & Pfeifer, 2010; Urbina, 2010), or engaging in outright fraud, like in Caterpillar’s case (Drucke, 2017; Gruley, Voreasco & Deaux, 2017).
HP’s executives were mainly to blame for this loss of principles and vision within its organization. Starting with the appointment of Carly Fiorina in 1999, the company’s downward trajectory picked up pace. Fiorina was lauded “as a star from Lucent Technologies” (Kalb, 2012a), which is ironic considering that Lucent collapsed under the weight of its own lending policies—essentially paying customers to buy Lucent’s products (Kalb, 2012b). HP paid Fiorina handsomely for leaving Lucent, though Lucent’s valuation was insubstantial because of its lending practices. HP under Fiorina accelerated its lackadaisical approach to the tech industry: its performance declined and she was criticized for “transforming a company that was an innovative market leader focused on high-growth, high-profit businesses into a company that was a market follower focused on low-growth, low-profit businesses” (Kalb, 2012a). Fiorina’s arrival and departure from HP cost the firm almost as much as it paid in penalty fees to the SEC for its bribery violations.
Fiorina was replaced by Mark Hurd in 2005 and while Hurd oversaw HP’s increase in net income, his main instrument in achieving this outcome was not innovation but rather cost-cutting—which was not a specific core founding principle or vision of the company but rather a tool for masking over deeper underlying problems related to the organization’s departure from its core values and vision as an innovator (Kalb, 2012a).
Leo Apotheker replaced Hurd and HP’s stock price plummeted by nearly 50%. Apotheker completely lost sight of HP’s vision and principles and employee morale disintegrated under his watch. He left Meg Whitman to clean up his mess, but she inherited a company in 2011 that was facing extensive lay-offs, a deteriorated organizational culture, a loss of innovative focus, and a lack of principles within the organization’s structure (Taylor, 2011).
Whitman attempted to fix the problems that HP was facing by splitting the company into two entities and she realized that returning to its innovative roots would help the company to become strong again (Hardy, 2014). However, she did not entirely trust in the core founding principles and vision, and for that reason successful growth still lagged behind (Kalb, 2012b; Hardy, 2015).
#8 Statistics/data
As a result of HP’s outsourcing, much of its manufacturing went to other parts of the world: “60% of HP’s business was now overseas” (Bandler & Burke, 2012).
The problem faced by HP has been shown to be evident in the company’s dismal earnings under Whitman. As Hardy (2015) notes, in the wake of its split into two entities, HP “ended its life as one public company with a whimper.” Whitman’s goal in splitting the company was to boost the organization’s efficiency and growth. Like Hurd before her, Whitman wanted to focus on cutting costs; however, she also emphasized a need for getting back to the organization’s innovative roots and principles. The outcome, after four years at the helm, signified that the company still needed to do more to make its mark in the tech industry in the Digital Age. Hardy (2015) notes that “for the quarter that ended Oct. 30, Hewlett-Packard had net earnings of $1.32 billion, or 73 cents a share. Revenue was $25.7 billion, down 9 percent from a year earlier. The earnings were below Wall Street’s expectations, which used nonstandard accounting popular in analyzing tech companies. By the nonstandard formula, HP earned 93 cents a share. Analysts had expected HP to make 96 cents a share, on revenue of $26.4 billion.” This failure to meet expectations did not do much to win the already flagging confidence of stakeholders.
However, as Whitman began to focus more on innovation and get the PC division back on track in terms of getting consumers products that met their demands, HP’s revenues began to turn around: Bloomberg (2017) notes that “HP Inc. reported revenue that beat analysts’ estimates, with an industry-defying surge in personal-computer sales driving a fifth consecutive quarterly increase”—and this has come at the hands of the new CEO, Dion Weisler, who has not only focused on cutting costs like his predecessors but also on innovation, which is in line with the core founding principles and vision of the company.
Likewise, by “introducing new products and expanding the Palo Alto, California-based company’s 3-D printer offerings” HP has enabled itself to “push revenue 11 percent higher from a year earlier to $13.9 billion” (Bloomberg, 2017). HPQ shares have blossomed as a result, “rising about 71 percent to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 47 percent, by embracing higher-end products and producing revenue increases” (Bloomberg, 2017). All of this has come on the back of “net income [which] increased to $660 million, or 39 cents a share, from $492 million, or 28 cents, a year earlier” (Bloomberg, 2017), and though costs rose about 10%, these costs were not wasted: on the contrary, they were put into HP’s research and development department—the biggest sign that the company is back on track with its core founding principles and vision, the need for innovation as a driver of growth, as the source of inspiration for the company’s mission.
Analysts have remarked that HP’s appreciation over the past two years in investors’ eyes stems from the fact that it has returned to its innovative roots: “they are innovating in new segments” according to IDC analyst Crawford Del Prete (Bloomberg, 2017). The difference in the company’s earnings prior to returning to its innovative philosophy and after returning to its innovative philosophy speaks for itself. HP was in terminal decline as a result of abandoning the core attributes of its founding principles and vision. The decline lasted for roughly two decades as it struggled to be relevant in a dynamically changing tech industry. Once the company realized there was only one way to go—back to its origins as an innovator—morale improved, the company’s workers regained their confidence and inspiration to excel (Bloomberg, 2017), and revenues began to increase.
Annotated Bibliography
Scientific
Bandler, J., & Burke, D. (2012, May) How Hewlett-Packard lost its way. Fortune.
Retrieved February 11, 2018 from http://fortune.com/2012/05/08/how-hewlett-packard-lost-its-way/
This article describes the methodological steps taken by HP that resulted in its apparent fall from grace in investors’ eyes. It looks at the corporate strategy, the leadership styles and approaches of its CEOs, its decisions in terms of how it viewed the industry, and its souring workplace culture. It provides direct observational analysis of the new CEO at the time—Meg Whitman as she took the helm in the face of aggressive and hostile employee attitudes. It examines the background of the company and how it stumbled and sat on its heels while other companies in the tech market focused on innovative new products, and it describes how HP was constantly having to play catch-up with its competitors as a result of abandoning its core principles.
This was a quality article and it was accepted because it offered keen insight into the issues faced by HP and how it responded to them as a well as a unique view of the incoming CEO’s perspective on HP’s struggles.
Kalb, I. (2012a). Here’s where it all started to go wrong for HP. Retrieved from
http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-from-healthy-profits-to-help-please-2012-11
This article discusses the roles of HP’s CEOs since the late 1990s and how they played a part in leading the company in a destructive trajectory that resulted in the organization’s loss of market share over the course of a decade. It describes the leaders’ focus on cost-cutting initiatives instead of on research and development and indicates that in order for HP to be a meaningful company once again it must get back to its innovative roots.
This article was selected because of its good details and quality journalism, which provided strong insight into the mistakes made by HP’s leaders since 1999 and how they could have done more to help the company become stronger instead of weaker among its competitors.
Kalb, I. (2012b). Everything at Hewlett-Packard started to go wrong when cost-cutting
replaced innovation. Business Insider. Retrieved February 12, 2018 from http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-where-everything-at-hewlett-packard-started-to-go-wrong-2012-5
This article provides insight into the misguided measures on the company’s part to emphasize cost-cutting at a time when it should have been looking to invest more capital into its research and development divisions. Instead of focusing on consumer needs and expectations, the company was focusing on shoddy mergers and acquisitions that only took capital, in the end, out of the company.
This article was accepted because of its strong, quality attention to detail and sufficient insight into how a functioning tech company must apply itself to research and development if it wants to stay competitive in the Digital Age.
Lawrence, A. M., Solomon, P. A., & Bosworth, M. (2014). U.S. foreign corrupt practices
act enforcement and anti-corruption trends: A 2014 mid-year review. World Securities report, 20(9), 1-8. Retrieved February 11, 2018 from
https://files.skadden.com/sites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fpublications%2FPDFArtic_1.pdf
This article provides a great deal of information into how HP among other companies violated SEC and other FTC laws in order to pursue contracts using bribes. The article shows that HP paid substantial fines as a result of its crimes. The article is helpful in showing examples of HP’s misdeeds during an era in which it sought quick fixes and easy solutions to its problems instead of hunkering down and delivering maximum energy into its R&D department to develop products that could make a real difference in the industry.
The article was accepted because it showed a side of the company that was not very well represented already in the other articles used for the study.
Ong, J. (2010). Apple co-founder offered first computer design to HP 5 times.
Retrieved from http://appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/06/apple_co_founder_offered_first_computer_design_to_hp_5_times
This article provides insight into some of HP’s problems regarding its blindness to innovative concepts when they were introduced to the firm by one of the most innovative technicians in tech history—Steve Wozniak. The article describes how Wozniak then took his ideas to Jobs and together they started Apple, which then went on to dominate in the tech world because of its focus on innovation.
The article was accepted because it highlighted how HP could have led the way in the tech frontier had it just retained its commitment to the core founding principles of the company and its vision.

Organization
Drucke, J. (2017, March 7). Caterpillar is accused in report to federal investigation of tax
fraud. The New York Times. Retrieved February 12, 2018 fromhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/business/caterpillar-tax-fraud.html
This article was helpful in illustrating how other companies also engage in criminal activities in order to mislead shareholders. In this case, the company was caterpillar and the problems that Caterpillar faced were because of a downturn in the economy—so it felt the need to avoid paying taxes in order to keep cash flow up. The article was helpful in seeing how the problems of leadership and loss of a sense of core principles faced by HP were not confined to the tech sector but were also experienced by companies like Caterpillar as well.
This article was accepted in order to show how HP’s problems were indicative a broader problem in the business world—i.e., a lack of concern for the principles that should be the foundation of business.
Gruley, B., Voreasco, D., & Deaux. J. (2017, June 1). The whistleblower behind
caterpillars massive tax headache could make $600 million. Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved February 12, 2018 from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-01/the-whistleblower-behind-caterpillar-s-massive-tax-headache-could-make-600-million
This article also focused on Caterpillar and discussed the big tax problem that the company was having. It reinforced and supported the ideas discussed and evaluated by Drucke and showed how organizations face difficult questions and issues when push comes to shove.
The article was accepted because it supported the illustration of how the broader market was being negatively impacted by leaders who make bad decisions regarding the application of principles within the overall organization’s practices.
Hargreaves, S. (2010, May 14). BP knew of problems hours before blast. CNN. Retrieved
February 12, 2018 from http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/12/news/companies/bp_house_hearing/
This article focuses on BP and discusses the lack of concern the company showed with regard to its oil drilling plant and why it did nothing to address the issues prior to the blast that caused billions in damage to the ecosystem. The article shows that ethical issues are really endemic in the business world and in order for a business to succeed it must remain committed to ethical principles.
The article was accepted because it reinforced the notion that ethics and principles are sorely needed in business.
McNulty, S., & Pfeifer, S. (2010). BP listed 390 problems on Gulf rig. CNBC. Retrieved February 12, 2018 from https://www.cnbc.com/id/38829047
This article identified nearly 400 issues that the BP Gulf oil drilling rig was having prior to its explosion. It is helpful in showing how this company ignored various warning signs and applies to this paper’s focus on HP because HP too also ignored signs that might have altered its course for the better had it just been willing to pay them attention and respond accordingly—such as the sign from Wozniak of a new PC design.
This article was accepted because of its quality details on the BP rig explosion and how BP was negligent in its operations—a symptom of poor leadership and lack of principles.
Urbina, I. (2010, August 4). Oil rig’s owner had safety issue at three other wells. The New York Times. Retrieved February 12, 2018 from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/us/05transocean.html
This article also focuses on BP’s problems, not just with the Gulf rig that exploded but also among other wells. The article highlights the fact that BP was having systemic problems and that this was not just an isolated incident. The point it makes is that businesses have to be focused on their core principles in order to be truly effective over the long run.
The article was accepted for its focus on the systemic issues BP was having, as this reflects the main theme of this paper regarding the necessity of having a principled approach to business.

Practitioners
Felsted, A. (2017, June 2). Walmart’s big new problem isn’t Amazon: A new adversary in the discounting war. Bloomberg. Retrieved February 12, 2018 from https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-06-02/walmart-has-a-big-problem-landing-and-it-isn-t-amazon
This article focuses on Walmart and Amazon and their battle for dominance in the discount retail space. It is important because it shows how an innovator like Amazon can come along and steal the spotlight (and the market share) if the previously dominant player is not paying attention to market shifts and consumer trends.
The article was selected because it showed how competition can turn on a dime when there are new technological changes—like the arrival of the Digital Age—which make old models of business obsolete.
Mitchell, D. (2015, February 15). Wal-Mart’s problems go beyond underpaid workers.
Time. Retrieved February 12, 2018 fromwww.time.com/3715877/walmart-satisfaction-index/
This article describes how Walmart was underpaying workers in order to stay “competitive”—i.e., in order to save its bottom line. If a company has to underpay its workers in order to save its bottom line, however, its principles are out of sorts—and that is the story that Mitchell tells in this article.
The article was selected because it had good quality information and helped to explain how companies can stoop to low measures to cut costs when they realize they have been slacking on the innovation department.
Mourdoukoutas, P. (2016, February 18). Walmart needs to reconnect with customers and
employees. Forbes. Retrieved February 12, 2018 fromhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2016/02/18/walmart-needs-to-reconnect-with-customers-and-employees/
This article explains what Walmart did to try to reestablish itself in an industry where it was quickly losing market share to the new kid on the block—Amazon. It discusses the methods of Walmart’s reconnecting with its core founding principles in order to address issues that were plaguing the firm’s development and growth, including its emphasis on innovation. In order to solve these issues, Walmart had to get back in touch with itself and with its workers and customers. Essentially, HP had to do the same and that is why this article is helpful: it shows that this is really a universal issue among businesses.
The article was selected because it explained how businesses must reacquaint themselves with their principles and vision—not just strive to cut costs—if they want to be relevant in the 21st century.
Woolley, S. (2010). Carly Fiorina’s troubling telecomm past. Retrieved from
http://fortune.com/2010/10/15/carly-fiorinas-troubling-telecom-past/
This article describes where HP’s CEO, Carly Fiorina came from before taking over as HP’s CEO in 1999. It discusses how she allowed Lucent to put on a veneer of success, only to have the mask stripped off and the company exposed once she was out the door and on to doing the same thing at HP. It is relevant because it shows that HP needed real leadership and guidance—not just masks and tricks.
This article was rejected—even though it describes Fiorina’s tenure at Lucent and Lucent’s problems with its financing of customers in order to goose sales, it was not deemed completely relevant. Though the information is helpful in understanding the issues faced at Lucent, the role that Fiorina played was already established by Kalb (2012b) and therefore did not require another source to justify this argument.
Taylor, B. (2011, September). How Hewlett-Packard lost the HP way. Business Review.
Retrieved February 12, 2018 from https://hbr.org/2011/09/how-hewlett-packard-lost-the-h
This article describes how HP lost sight of itself and its core founding principles and vision during the rise of Apple and other competitors in the tech industry. The article is helpful in showing why HP needed to return to its innovative roots.
The article was selected because it highlighted in a quality way the real reason HP was failing: it lacked vision and the innovative spirit that had been at the heart of the company in the beginning.
Stakeholders
Bloomberg. (2017). HP revenue beats estimates as PC maker bucks industry declines.
Retrieved from https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/21/hp-revenue-beats-estimates-as-pc-maker-bucks-industry-declines-2/
This article discusses how HP turned the tables on its problems by returning to its innovative roots following the arrival of Whitman in the CEO’s position. It took a few years for the turnabout to happen, but it did.
The article was selected because it proved that what HP needed was more focus on innovation and research and development, which were the foundation of its core founding principles.
Hardy, Q. (2014). Meg Whitman finds a vision for HP. Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/technology/meg-whitman-finds-a-vision-for-hp.html
This article describes how Whitman returned HP to its original vision—the need for innovation in the tech industry so that stakeholders in the company could truly be rewarded.
The article was selected because it explained how vision was so important to the company’s success and how culture, revenues, and research all depended on this vision being in place among the company’s leaders.
Mourdoukoutas, P. (2014). What’s haunting Hewlett-Packard? Outsourcing, bad
acquisitions, and lack of innovation. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2014/05/23/whats-haunting-hewlett-packard-outsourcing-bad-acquisitions-and-lack-of-innovation/#29cfa2d7608c
This article describes the problems that HP was having as a result of trying to cut corners instead of addressing directly its lack of commitment to innovative new products that could make a difference in the market.
The article was selected because it detailed the problem of HP in precise, quality terms.
Saintvilus, R. (2014). HP has plenty of problems and few solutions. Retrieved from
https://www.thestreet.com/story/12717566/1/hp-has-plenty-of-problems-and-few-solutions.html
This article showcased the many issues that HP was having under its new CEO and discussed whether the steps taken by Whitman would really be embraced by stakeholders.
The article was rejected—because while it describes the issues that HP is having, it retreads old ground already covered by other researchers and for this reason it was rejected for this paper.
Zook, C. (2016). How Dell, HP, and Apple rediscovered their founders’ vision.
Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/07/how-dell-hp-and-apple-rediscovered-their-founders-vision
This article describes how HP was one among several tech companies that was returning to its roots finally after years of trying to be “smart” by doing everything but promote its founding principles and vision.
The article was rejected: while this article is more helpful in showing how Dell and Apple rediscovered their founders’ visions, it is less helpful in showing how HP did so, and in fact other researchers have argued the opposite—that HP still has yet to accomplish this task; for that reason this article was rejected.