Factors that Led to HP’s Intense Political Behavior

Factors that Led to HP’s Intense Political Behavior
One of the individual factors is the internal locus of control. This factor was demonstrated by the former CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina. In this case, internal locus of control refers to the action of trying to control the internal business environment so that it favors a person. The major way through which Fiorina demonstrated this quality was by acquiring the Compaq Computer for a whopping $25 billion (Price, 2016). She made the acquisition with the intention of stamping her control as far as expansion strategies are involved.
Further, Patricia had demonstrated high expectations for success. One of the factors that stamped this demonstration is the acquisition mentioned above. The decision to acquire Compaq Computer caused great controversy among HP board members. Trusted sources show that one of the members who was disgruntled with the decision was Walter Hewlett, who is the son of one of the HP founders. This matter, therefore, sparked an intense political environment within HP and ultimately led to the resignation of Fiorina.
Fiorina’s successor, Patricia Dunn, also greatly demonstrated this quality of internal locus of control. She demonstrated this quality by hiring some private investigators to find out who leaked information concerning the company wrangles. She was so determined to unearth those who leaked the information that she ended up using illegal methods to gain the information (Price, 2016). When it was discovered that she was using pretexting to gain this information, controversy increased even more. Therefore, Patricia’s ambition to unearth the leaks led to further controversy and heated the organization's politics even more.
There were also organizational factors that led to the intense political behaviors observed at HP. The most notable of these factors was the high expectations from some of the CEOs, such as Fiorina and Whitman. These CEOs expected the leaders of the company to overperform. Consequently, the leaders were subjected to immense pressure to meet set goals. In addition, the CEOs also forced the leaders to consider specific strategic approaches to maximize productivity. While maximizing productivity is a good thing, the methods employed by these CEOs were unrealistic and led to immense political behavior (Price, 2016). In addition, it is postulated that the promotion opportunities in the company and the manner in which they were awarded could also have led to immense political behavior observed at the technological company.
Types of Political Behaviors Exhibited by HP’s Board Members and CEOs
Both the CEOs and board members portrayed varied political behaviors. One of the dominant behavior was the blame game. One of the most notable intentions to blame came out when investigations were carried out to unearth the individuals who leaked information to the public. The aim of carrying out this investigation by the CEOs Fiorina and Dunn were to find out who the individuals were and lay the entire blame on them. Further, when the value of HP fell by 47% in 2011, the best start would have been for the CEO and the board members to sit and find strategies to improve the shares (Hochwarter et al., 2020). However, Whitman’s...