Carly Fiorina. Demotix/Brian Frank. All rights reserved.Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina made headlines this week by launching her campaign for the US Presidency with the confident message that “what she did for HP, she can do for America”. While potentially being the first female Republican nominee is undeniably newsworthy, it is her business leadership that has garnered the most attention. In the lead-up to announcing her candidacy last February, Fiorina declared “HP requires executive decision-making, and the presidency is all about executive decision-making”.
Despite these optimistic claims, her record as CEO has been criticized as a tenure marked by outsourcing, mass layoffs and internal conflict. Indeed, the issues of her time as CEO were so severe, “that several prominent former HP colleagues recoil at the idea of Fiorina managing any enterprise again, let alone the executive branch”.
While such criticisms are important, they miss a more fundamental issue. Questioning Fiorina’s track record is one thing. But why is being a CEO considered good experience for being a politician? What does such a belief say about the present and future of our contemporary democracy?
