"Let's be clear: Stonecipher wasn't fired simply because he had an extra-marital affair with an employee. Many CEOs have done that in the past, and plenty more will do it in the future. It is a bad idea, it often violates company 'fraternisation' policies, but for the most part, it isn't a firing offence--yet", Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
"No, the Boeing CEO was fired because, among other things, he had the bad judgment to detail his actions and desires in a series of very explicit e-mails to the woman in question.
E-mail is not protected. The sender may think he has zapped it, but it will be hiding somewhere to be retrieved. No confidential communications are possible by e-mail", it said.
Snooping e-mail by software, said the paper, is now a workplace norm. "What every employee ought to realize by now," is that their e-mail is not private."
In a recent survey of 840 companies by the American Management Association, 60 per cent said they now use some type of software to monitor their employees' incoming and outgoing mail, up from 47 per cent in 2001.
Other workplace privacy experts place the current percentage even higher. The Pentagon, which does business with Boeing on a large scale, said that the dismissal of Stonecipher was an internal affair of Boeing.