Management Style Dispute With CEO : Sematech’s Chief Operating Officer Resigns

Paul Castrucci resigned Monday as chief operating officer of Sematech in a dispute over management style with the high-tech consortium’s president and chief executive, Robert Noyce.

In a statement released by Sematech, Noyce said Castrucci quit because “it has become apparent that our individual management styles are not compatible.”

Turner Hasty, Sematech’s director of external resources, will replace Castrucci temporarily.

Sematech spokesman Miller Bonner said Castrucci’s decision to leave the consortium of 14 semiconductor firms was made during a meeting Monday with Noyce.

“It’s simply a case of two men’s styles making it very difficult to work effectively together,” said Bonner. “There is not a single incident that we can point to that led to this. It was just two folks that didn’t get along very well.”

Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit and a founder and vice president of Intel Corp., and Castrucci, a former technical executive with International Business Machines Corp., were named to their Sematech posts last July 27.

Castrucci was hired to manage Sematech’s day-to-day operations.

Sematech, a joint government-industry venture with a $250-million-a-year budget, conducts advanced computer chip research and development with the aim of passing its results on to member firms.

“Every successful organization depends on a management team that works well together, and that is especially true for a consortium like Sematech . . . . During the past seven months, it has become apparent that our individual management styles are not compatible,” Noyce said.

After meeting with Noyce, Castrucci said leaving “is the most difficult decision I ever had to make. For Sematech’s good, I felt it was important for me to resign in order to allow Bob Noyce to install a management style which he believes is necessary for this consortium.”

Hasty had been responsible for establishing Sematech’s “centers of establishing Sematech’s “centers of excellence programs” at various universities around the nation.

Hasty, who has been with Sematech since September, 1987, held several senior management posts in research and development in his 30 years with Texas Instruments.