Becoming Hewlett Packard: Why Strategic Leadership Matters
Robert A. Burgelman, Webb McKinney, and Philip E. Meza
Abstract
This book documents the differential contribution of Hewlett Packard’s successive CEOs in sustaining the company’s integral process of “corporate becoming,” an open-ended ongoing process for which there is no grand ex ante plan possible and which unfolds through a series of transformations in the course of the strategic evolution of long-lived companies. A comprehensive strategic leadership framework is used to explain the role of the CEO: (1) defining and executing the key tasks of strategic leadership; and (2) developing four key elements of the company’s strategic leadership capability. The ... More
This book documents the differential contribution of Hewlett Packard’s successive CEOs in sustaining the company’s integral process of “corporate becoming,” an open-ended ongoing process for which there is no grand ex ante plan possible and which unfolds through a series of transformations in the course of the strategic evolution of long-lived companies. A comprehensive strategic leadership framework is used to explain the role of the CEO: (1) defining and executing the key tasks of strategic leadership; and (2) developing four key elements of the company’s strategic leadership capability. The book reveals the paradox of corporate becoming, the existential situation facing successive CEOs (which justifies the book’s empathic approach), and the importance of the CEO’s ability to harness the company’s past while also driving its future. Building on these novel insights, the book produces a dynamic theory of strategic leadership that animates an evolutionary framework of corporate becoming. This framework will be helpful for further theory development about strategic leadership and also offers practical tools for founders of new companies and CEOs and boards of directors of existing companies who intend to create, run, or oversee companies built for continued relevance, longevity, and greatness.
Keywords:
Hewlett Packard,
corporate becoming,
strategic evolution,
CEO,
strategic leadership,
successive CEOs
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190640446 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190640446.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Robert A. Burgelman, author
Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Webb McKinney, author
Executive Vice President, Hewlett Packard, retired; Management Consultant
Philip E. Meza, author
Consultant and Researcher
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