Collision course: Bob Nardelli and the Home Depot shareholders

The case covers Bob Nardelli’s 6-year tenure at Home Depot from 2000-2006. During this time, he posted impressive numbers as well as changed Home Depot’s strategic orientation. He failed however to improve the company’s share price. This difficulty, allied to Nardelli’s pay package (negotiated at a time of economic euphoria when he was one of the two most wanted executives in America), severely strained his relationship with the company’s shareholders. The case traces their deteriorating relationship through the lens of the annual general meetings. These were transformed from “lovefests” under his predecessor into increasingly fractious occasions – culminating with a disastrous meeting in May 2006 that indirectly led to Nardelli’s resignation at the beginning of 2007. The case considers Nardelli’s relationship with two key stakeholders – the board and the shareholders – as well as issues of self-management. At first view, this case can be read as a story of greed and weak corporate governance – an excessively greedy CEO/Chairman who manipulates the board into giving him high compensation and reducing performance pressures. While acknowledging some of these aspects, we are proposing a different take on the situation, focusing instead on the self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing nature of the dysfunctional dynamic between the CEO and the shareholders – and on the inability of the board to offset it. We concentrate on the psychological and behavioral processes that drove the parties toward a perfectly avoidable collision.

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