Raytheon Cuts CEO’s Compensation Over Controversial Book

In an issue of ethics, Raytheon’s board said it will not give CEO William Swanson a raise this year and will cut his stock compensation next year because it claims that he didn’t properly credit others in a recent book he wrote about management techniques, the Associated Press reports on Boston.com.

The article reports that the incoming and outgoing lead members of the board both expressed “deep concern” over recent disclosures that Swanson copied management advice without crediting the original author in his free booklet, “Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management.”

However, the board still maintains its full confidence in Swanson’s leadership of Raytheon and credits him with “extraordinary vision and performance,” the AP reports.

The story also states that Swanson admitted plagiarizing the sayings in his booklet after The New York Times published a story that described his book as being very similar to a 1944 book titled “The Unwritten Laws of Engineering,” by W.J. King, a University of California at Los Angeles engineering professor.

Swanson also apologized to Raytheon shareholders, board, management and employees.

“This was an error in judgment on my part which I sincerely regret,” Swanson told the AP.

For more on ethics, read Making a Place for Ethics.

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By Paul Kerstein