Values 2.0?

This past seven days have been intriguing if you are interested or follow how CEOs are acting as they face challenges where values and principles are put in dialogue and consideration. A week ago today the news broke that Mark Hurd was resigning from his position as CEO of HP for issues relating to a sexual harassment charge and expense reporting violations. Since we learned that he resigned, or was asked to leave, over the expense report irregularities that totaled no more, by reports, of $20,000. Later in the week, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, came out with his own statement that the HP Board had made the wrong decision in firing Hurd over this infraction. I was quite curious when I read his statements, as I wondered where he was coming from. The best I could garner was that in his mind, that the results and performance of HP, which have been stellar over Hurd's five year CEO tenure, outweighed the infraction and that HP was putting the wrong emphasis on values and integrity over performance. As I read this, I wondered if anyone at Oracle has ever been fired for falsifying expense reports and if they have, then maybe they should reapply for a job as the CEO doesn't see anything wrong with irregularities, at least up to $20,000. The two of them, Ellison and Hurd are titans of technology and this would have been enough, but then to see the news regarding Michael Dell and how apparently, Dell and his team knew of the 11.8 millions bad PCS that were sold to businesses and decided to not make their customers aware of the problems. Bundle these three examples together and it makes me wonder about what happened to the models left behind by Andy Groves, David Packard and Bill Hewlett's of the technology world? There are still many great leaders in the Tech world and more coming, but let's hope that we aren't entering an age of Values 2.0 where we turn our head to what is right and what is wrong.