October 24th, 2006 by Marion
Recently I attended the first seminar in an excellent four-part series for current and aspiring corporate directors offered by the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. There was a great deal of animated discussion regarding the recent Hewlett-Packard misadventures. Several of the people attending the seminar were veteran board directors and were perplexed by how the issues facing HP had snowballed into a full fledged corporate meltdown so fast. Of course, one of the dimensions to the HP story is the accelerated compression of the traditional news cycle, due to the rabid competitive demands of battling news outlet websites, coupled with the new found ability of stakeholders to weigh in with their views in real time through blogs and emails directly to corporate executives or media. It was a “click” moment for me. The challenges and opportunities derived from online communications will have the same wholesale impact on corporate governance as Sarbanes-Oxley. The HP saga gives a peek into this new world’s expectations regarding investor transparency and timely disclosure.