Rule No. 34: Give credit where credit is due

After pooh-poohing the controversy for several weeks, Raytheon directors finally took action Wednesday against chief executive William H. Swanson, docking his salary $1 million for plagiarizing most of his “Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management” booklet. Last month, a blogger reported that half of Swanson’s 33 rules were written in 1944 by W.J. King. Then Wednesday, The Boston Globe reported that five other rules were previously published by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and humorist Dave Barry. Swanson and the Raytheon directors say the plagiarism was inadvertent — that he gave a collection of maxims to staff members, who compiled them into the booklet in 2004, which was distributed for free. Still, Swanson has been more than happy to accept praise during the past two years for his management wisdom, which he knew wasn’t original. Apparently, giving credit where credit is due wasn’t one of his rules.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

4 Comments

  1. XXX
    Posted May 4, 2006 at 1:44 pm | Permalink

    The chief executive of Raytheon is unprincipaled. Gee, that sure comes as a surprise.”Swanson and the Raytheon directors say the plagiarism was inadvertent”

    Uh…Yeah, Right.

  2. Brian
    Posted May 4, 2006 at 3:43 pm | Permalink

    Extends down the corporate ladder too. Managers taking credit for the work of those that report to them, including suggestions and novel ideas for improving the business. As the old saying goes, “success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan”.

  3. WSU Professor
    Posted May 4, 2006 at 5:59 pm | Permalink

    What typical spin for him to deem his plagiarism as “inadvertent”. How silly it was for Swanson to actually think that no one would ever catch this. This reminds me of last fall when a MBA student turned in a paper to me in which he had plagiarized 1/3 of his formal paper with a copy and paste from a website. He didn’t think he should have been penalized because it was just an “honest” mistake. He and Swanson seem to have a lot in common.

  4. Joe Williams
    Posted May 4, 2006 at 10:23 pm | Permalink

    How man CEO’s of companies have a paper mill degrees?