Raytheon chief admits using another's aphorisms

Rule number 22 in ''Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management": ''Cultivate the habit of making quick, clean-cut decisions."

That rule came in handy yesterday when it was revealed that many of the homespun insights compiled by William H. Swanson in a booklet that burnished his reputation as the common-sense chairman and chief executive of Waltham's Raytheon Co. were actually cribbed from a book written six decades ago by a California engineering professor, W.J. King. Even rule number 22.

On the same day that the allegations arose, Swanson swiftly decided to acknowledge the striking similarities between his booklet and King's 1944 book, ''The Unwritten Laws of Engineering." ''I regret that over the course of the years and in the process of compiling the 'Unwritten Rules,' any reference to Professor King's work was not properly credited," he said in a statement.

At least 16 of the 33 aphorisms listed in Swanson's 2004 booklet, which the company has distributed free to hundreds of thousands of people after it gained cult status among business titans like Jack Welch and Warren Buffett, are similar or identical to the adages published by King when he was at University of California at Los Angeles.

Business professors and ethicists yesterday described the apparent plagiarism as a serious breach that could damage Swanson's credibility and undermine his effectiveness at the company. Management professor Frank J. Benzoni, who teaches business ethics at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, likened Swanson's booklet to ''a Gucci bag that's not really a Gucci."

But Raytheon's lead director, former US Senator Warren B. Rudman, said he was confident the board would continue to stand behind Swanson. ''He's got just too much good will with the customers, the board, and the employees," Rudman said.

The similarity between Swanson's rules and King's laws was brought to light by the New York Times yesterday after a California blogger and chemical engineer, Carl Durrenberger, compared passages from King's book with the Swanson rules posted on USA Today's website. Several other magazines and newspapers, including Business 2.0 and the Globe, have written about the popularity of Swanson's rules.

More than 300,000 copies of the 76-page booklet have been distributed inside and outside Raytheon, boosting Swanson's image as a no-nonsense leader who has helped turn around the giant defense and aerospace company. People ordering copies from the Raytheon website have been asked to donate money to a Raytheon foundation that promotes math and science education in US middle schools.

In an interview yesterday, Swanson said, ''I want to deal with this up front" through his statement.

''You should understand I'm not a writer. It's not my profession, and I don't know how to do it," he said.

He explained that, in the introduction to his 2004 booklet, he sought to share credit for the ideas generally, writing, ''This is really a product of experiences over the better part of a lifetime, of people I have learned from, and things I have heard and read." But he conceded King should have been explicitly credited in the book and in earlier versions of the ''unwritten rules" that appeared in Swanson's motivational talks or slide presentations before they were finally committed to writing.

Swanson, while acknowledging the similarity of the wording is ''beyond dispute," insisted he never copied the wording directly from King's book. While he said he couldn't recall how the language evolved, he said the rules grew out of notes he took and papers he kept dating back to his school days in California and early years at Raytheon in the 1970s.

Some of these notes might have included versions of King's rules photocopied by professors or supervisors, he said. His saved ''scraps of paper" became part of PowerPoint presentations that could have been ''wordsmithed" by associates that helped him prepare the presentations, he said.

Nell Minow, who specializes in business ethics for the Corporate Library research firm in Washington, said she viewed Swanson's failure to have credited King earlier as a serious violation of ethics. ''It is a core credibility issue," Minow said. ''This is something the CEO promotes to people as an example of the firm's core values and his own integrity."

And Benzoni, at Duke, said, ''The real issue is what it does in terms of his credibility as a leader. What he does as a leader, ethically or otherwise, becomes part of the de facto rules of the organization."

Rudman, however, said he thought Swanson's statement would bring the matter to a close. ''I've known Bill Swanson for more than 20 years," Rudman said. ''He is a person of incredible character, and I cannot believe that Bill Swanson would intentionally do something unethical."

Securities analyst Paul Nisbet at JSA Research said he doubted the controversy would hurt Raytheon's performance on Wall Street. Noting that the company's share price climbed 1.25 percent yesterday to $45.99 on the New York Stock Exchange, he said, ''Investors obviously aren't concerned with it. I'm surprised, and I don't think he should have done it. But he doesn't make his living from writing."

Swanson, for his part, said he might have taken more care with attribution if the material had been published as a real book -- rather than a free booklet he thought would be distributed to just 500 people.

''This experience has taught me a valuable lesson -- new Rule #34," he said in his statement. ''Regarding the truisms of human behavior, there are no original rules."

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.