The funny thing about boards, is that they need to function as a team, while all the members need to retain their individual opinions to avoid the herding effect. It is possible not to agree with a majority of the other board members, but there are ways of doing this. Things have obviously gotten out of hand at HP. If you have missed the story, there is a good description in the New York Times here, and in the Washington Post here. Leaking to the press is definitely a no no. Investigating the leaks is a tough decision, and even harder to implement. The least one can say of the whole situation is that it smells fishy. And fish start stinking from the head. Unless all the remaining board members managed to pull together and get some proper and ethical guidelines in place on how they are going to function, I don't see any other solution than changing most of them for new directors.
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