Editor’s note

Citation

Healy, N. (2012), "Editor’s note", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 33 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs.2012.28833eaa.001

Editor’s note

Article Type: Editor’s note From: Journal of Business Strategy, Volume 33, Issue 5

I find the Yahoo CEO story of deception and non-redemption quite fascinating. Briefly, Yahoo, which has been struggling for a few years now in the face of competition from Google and Facebook, hired a new CEO in January 2012 after firing the previous CEO. Scott Thompson, Yahoo’s new leader, came from PayPal, which he had headed since 2005.

Heidrick & Struggles had headhunted Thompson for the PayPal job, but apparently did not check his resume because, even back in 2005, Thompson listed his major as accounting and computer science. It was listed that way in official filings as well, including with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In reality, his major was simply accounting and his college, Stonehill, did not even offer a computer science major at the time. Stonehill comes in at number 112 among national liberal arts colleges in the US News rankings this year. When and how Thompson began listing his major as computer science and accounting is unclear, but in an interview with public radio, he commented specifically on how useful the computer science major had been.

From our college days, job counselors urge us to put our experience, however measly, in the best possible light to entice future employers. I think most people exaggerate on their resumes. A fine line, even if it is a bit wobbly, exists, though, between making up facts and stating actual facts in the most positive manner. Besides, if you are going to lie outright, one should be clever enough to cover one’s tracks permanently.

Thompson seized the reins of Yahoo aggressively and, in April 2012, less than a month before the resume debacle, and after firing 2,000 Yahoo employees, he announced a strategic restructuring of the company to restore its fiscal integrity and ensure its future. But his own future was already in doubt.

Through a simple Google search, the hedge fund seeking seats on Yahoo’s board had discovered Thompson’s fictitious major. It was a serendipitous find that led to a CEO’s demise with minimal grace. In May, now outed with the board, Thompson stonewalled questions as if he doubted the basic intelligence of his employees, his board and the public. As James Stewart noted in the New York Times on May 18, 2012, “what at first seemed a small and improbable allegation from an annoying dissident shareholder turned into a major crisis, thanks largely to Mr Thompson’s own evasions and missteps.” According to Stewart, the departing board chairman, Ray Bostock, urged that the only solution was to tell the complete truth to the public, believing that if Thompson admitted his error, apologized and offered to resign, “the board might well have stood behind him.”

Thompson apologized obliquely and did not receive a severance package when he resigned, small comfort to those he had deceived.

We are certain there is much more to this story and that the motivations of the participants, not limited to Scott Thompson, remain to be explored. But, put in the context of modern morality, itself a suspicious term, we agree with James Davison Hunter, Professor of religion, culture and social theory at the University of Virginia, that “we used to experience morality as imperatives […] Now we experience morality more as a choice that we can always change as circumstances call for it” (quoted by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, Sunday, June 17, 2012).

We hope the readers of this issue of JBS will send their comments, on the Yahoo story or any other topic, to the editor. People in general are endless fascinating in their duplicity as well as their sincerity, aren’t they?

Nanci Healy