I thought I did a thorough search, but if there has already been a thread about this jerk, then the moderators should close this one.
The news about this clown’s plagiarism is rather old (by SDMB standards) but Brian McGrory’s column in today’s Boston Globe rekindled my interest in it.
William Swanson “wrote” a pamphlet entitled ''Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Business" to be distributed for free, courtesy of the Raytheon Corporation.
It was later discovered that about half of these rules were stolen from a 1944 book ''The Unwritten Laws of Engineering" written by the late California engineering professor W.J. King.
As the column points out, Swanson never even made any apology about his plagiarism. AND it seems Mr Swanson must be the recipient of the Luckiest Bastard of the Year Award because this story broke at the same time that Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan was accused of plagiarism which virtually overshadowed this guy’s small “indiscretion”. :rolleyes:
This guy Swanson seems to be the epitomy of corporate arrogance. How could he have possibly done anything wrong? I do not know to what standards Raytheon holds its employees (even if they are CEO’s) but among other things, Raytheon deals with sensitive federal government information. (Among other things they designed the Patriot Missile guidance system). I wonder if this will cause any change in the way corporations (or the federal government) will (or will not) conduct business with Raytheon. Probably not.
I think there’s also the point that one item was a novel being offered for sale and the other was a free pamphlet with a list of rules on it. One is how writers make a living, and someone probably didn’t get their book published in favor of hers. The other is a freebie put out by Raytheon to anyone who wants it.
I think I’ve heard “don’t lose your sense of humor” and “a person who is nice to you and rude to the waiter is not nice” before as well. While it’s still inappropriate to crib from a work without citation, there are degrees of violation, and I’d put plagiarism in a novel above plagiarism in a free pamphlet.
I don’t actually see why him being CEO of Raytheon has anything to do with this. It might ironic if he were the head of a publishing company, or had staked his reputation on good moral behaviour, but as he hasn’t I don’t think him working for Raytheon has anything to with him plagiarising, and I certainly don’t think the government (or other governments) should change their way of working with that company over this issue.
The odds are pretty good that he didn’t have much to do with the actual writing of the document, that it was put out by an employee of his in his name.
