Like Campbell’s (1993) hero who faces many obstacles in his path to win the true treasure, Carly persevered to transform HP through the Compaq merger, arguing for synergies in products and services. She even believed a successful meld of the two companies’ very different cultures would occur. Each had elements the other did not, so combined they would create a great new culture.
This view was shared by all board members, save Bill Hewlett’s son, Walter. He opposed the merger believing the end company would make little impact in the PC business and that the cultures could not be integrated. Former HP marketing manager, Theresa Wilcox, supports this, finding that Compaq people were more aggressive and boastful than the humble and honest engineers of HP. Compaq was more autocratic and much less collaborative, with an “us and them” attitude, which would perhaps terminally damage the HP Way.
While Carly had been hired to renew the culture, its risk-aversion and past-orientation resulting from the leadership style of previous CEOs again meant she faced resistance from employees. This supports de Vries’ (1988) argument that leaders can unwittingly disrupt the company for the successor and explains why employees may have idolised Walter, as he represented the past and was perceived as trying to preserve the current culture. In addition, the models in Fig.6 suggest that the level of national collectivism during this time may have seeped into the corporate culture (as employees are also national citizens), perhaps causing them to band together against their “common enemy”, Carly, whose individualist values may have seemed increasingly alien to them.
The air of mistrust intensified during the long public proxy battle which ensued between Walter Hewlett and HP. Carly marketed herself as HP’s cultural hero by saturating the media with images and statements by the founders,