Virtue Ethics and the Parable of the Sadhu

ABSTRACT. This article examines the variouspedagogic models suggested by widely used texts andfinds them to be predominately rule-based or ruledirected. These approaches to the subject matter ofbusiness ethics are quite valuable ones, but we findthem to leave no room for the study of the virtues.We intend to articulate our reasons for supporting acentral if not exclusive role for virtue ethics.

I. Introduction

Our reading of the pedagogic models of manywidely used texts suggests to us that businessethics courses are commonly built upon a singletheme – the application of ethical theory to theresolution of managerial dilemmas, or quandaries,in a variety of settings.1 For the purposes of ouressay, we will characterize this approach as“quandary ethics,” and we understand it to berule-based or rule-directed.2 Quandary ethics cantake many diverse, creative, and productive forms,but it leaves little room, if any at all, for a study

of the virtues. We intend to articulate our reasonsfor supporting a central if not an exclusive rolefor virtue ethics.

II. Virtue ethics and quandary ethics: divergent models

We are not interested in critiquing stereotypicmodels of teaching business ethics courses. Ourobjective is to explore ways that will enrich theinnovative models that are available. Specifically,we want to advance the view that a study of thevirtues merits a central place in these courses.

To generalize from available texts,3 while at thesame time making allowances for the many waysin which experienced classroom teachers relateto their students, business ethics courses aremainly characterized by the application ofKantian, utilitarian, rights, and contractariantheory to the ethical dilemmas or quandaries.Quandary ethics, and the quandary model forteaching business ethics, makes a sound assump-tion followed by a questionable one. The soundassumption is that managers will inevitably findthemselves in moral jams. The questionable oneis that the job of ethical theory is to get themanager out of that jam. It is not surprising,then, that courses built on this model blendethical theory with the case approach. Studentsare forewarned of the dilemmas that they arelikely to encounter, and then they are armedwith the intellectual tools to extricate themselvesform those dilemmas.

Our perception is that the impact thisapproach has on business students is not veryprofound and note entirely positive. It is not veryprofound because it does not relate to the way

Virtue Ethics and the Parable of the Sadhu

Journal of Business Ethics 17: 25–38, 1998.© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Janet McCrackenWilliam Martin

Bill Shaw

Janet McCracken is an Assistant Professor of Philosophyat Lake Forest College. Her recent publications includearticles on Persian philosophy and contemporary aes-thetics, and she is currently writing about the relationbetween moral reasoning and the aesthetic environmentof the home.

William Martin is a scholar in residence at the KierKegaardLibrary in Copenhagen. He has published in Ancient,19th, and 29th Century philosophy, and is currentlyworking on projects in Business Ethics.

Bill Shaw is the Woodson Centennial Professor in Businessat The University of Texas at Austin. He has publishedlegal environment texts, articles in law and ethicsjournals, and is the managing editor of the AmericanBusiness Law Journal.

they live their lives. No one – business student,business manager, or average citizen – lives theirlife from jam to jam, quandary to quandary,dilemma to dilemma. The rule-based approachof quandary ethics is not entirely positive becauseit raises the false hope that there will be a rulefor every quandary.

How, then, do students, managers, and mostother people actually handle troublesome, prob-lematic dilemmas? We believe that they resolvethem in ways consistent with the community orcultural ideals that have influenced and nurturedthem for a lifetime – ideals that they have cometo identify with and to internalize, ideals thathave been instilled in them since childhood byexample and instruction of family, teachers, andfriends. One might characterize their responsesto jams or quandaries as natural, reflexive,instinctive, unthinking, instantaneous, or auto-matic, and they do at least appear that way to anobserver. More accurately, however, theseresponses are the products of good habits andgood character developed over a lifetime.

Young managers see their business careers as anew phase in an on-going pattern, a pattern thatwas beginning to take shape even before B-school. In learning to be good managers, just asin learning to excel in any discipline, theircharacter will be tested by a host of obstacles andnegative influences. For example, what is a youngmanager to do when a group member, or agroup leader, is not handling responsibility well;when relationships get in the way of perfor-mance; when bosses issue conflicting directives;when loyalties are confused, forgotten, mis-placed? Rule-based ethical theories do not speakto these important concerns, and, for that reason,rule-dependence offers a false security. We wantto claim that rules, and the Kantian, utilitarian,rights, and contractarian theories that supportthem, are baselines like the law is a baseline. Theuniversality of these rules is one test for therightness of actions, but it is a primitive test andcertainly not the only one.

Another reason that the quandary model is notentirely positive is its focus on ethical theory asan intellectual exercise. It fosters the belief thatonly university professors – or, at least, the oneswho can understand it – worry about ethical

theory or its application. Worse still, it impliesthat if one becomes articulate enough in ethicaltheory, there is a plausible way out of most jams.We believe that this promotes a “shoppers”attitude toward ethical problems, and that itproduces only the most superficial analysis. Somepeople do in fact go “shopping” for justice – forthat matter, they shop for duty, rights, and utilityas well. That hardly strikes us as an appropriatedisposition to cultivate. We believe that thismind-set, even if we have overstated it somewhat,is true enough, and pervasive enough, to justifyexamination of an alternative model.

The virtue ethics model is focused not somuch on how to resolve problems as it is on howto live one’s life. It is concerned with moralenlightenment, moral education, and the goodfor mankind rather than with resolving dilemmas.As Edmund Pincoffs noted more than twentyyears ago, quandaries, and their resolution, weredistinctly secondary concerns for Aristotle.

[I]f Aristotle does not present us with quandariesinto which the individual may fall, and which hemust puzzle and pry his way out of, this may bejust because Aristotle does not value the qualitiesthat allow or require a man to become boggeddown in a marsh of indecision.4

We claim, then, that preventative medicine –a prescriptive regimen for a healthy moral liferather than a cure for moral quandaries – is whatAristotle had in mind. We believe that preven-tion is the appropriate prescription for businessethics courses, and, further, that the virtue ethicsmodel holds the greatest potential for the devel-opment of healthy business practices. At the veryleast, it is deserving of treatment equal to thatof rule-based ethical theory.

III. Excellence: the mark of virtue ethics

“Excellence” may be the most popular businessbuzzword of the last decade. However overusedthe word may be, there is substance to theconcept. Steven Jobs did not rocket out of hisgarage-lab to the top of his industry by producinga “merely adequate” computer, nor did Bill Gatescreate “merely adequate” windows. From the

26 J. McCracken et al.

mailroom to the boardroom, the express goal isnot adequacy, but excellence.

Students sense the irreconcilability of theperformative excellence that is demanded andrewarded in the business world and the morallyminimal proscriptions – the “thou shalt nots” –that characterize many business ethics courses.5

Such courses seem to foster mediocrity by a focuson conduct that is expected of moral morons,or that which is mandated or minimally permis-sible. Ethics, in the eyes of the student, seems tobe the one pursuit that does not aim at excel-lence. In one sense, it is “bottom line,” i.e.,required of everyone, and, in another, so abstractthat it comes closer to a debating match forphilosophers than it does to a guide for actionin one’s daily life.

If, however, the first requirement of our ethicis that it strive for excellence, the student isimmediately able to understand to appreciate thegoal of this novel activity. Our task, then, is toprovide the student with some notion of whatthis “ethical” excellence involves, how it con-tributes to the set of excellences which supportand even constitute a thriving business, and whya successful businessperson will also be a “good”or “ethical” person.6

In an effort to capture the spirit of our thesisin a single sentence, we want to claim that “Thevirtues of business are virtuous.” By this we meanthat the excellences or “virtues”7 of goodbusiness practices are a consistent and harmo-nious component of those virtues that areidentified with the good of the whole, or thegood for mankind. The argument is simple, andas it has been articulated in detail by others.8 Wewill sketch only the essentials, and we will startwith the first and still the most importantexponent of the virtues, Aristotle.

At the opening of his Nicomachean EthicsAristotle claims that:

Every art and every enquiry, and similarly everyaction and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good;and for this reason the good has rightly beendeclared to be that at which all things aim.9

In any organism, the good of the members isdefined in terms of the good of the whole.10 The

good foot is that which enables the body to walk.In like manner, the good “home economist” isessential to the proper functioning of the house-hold, the good citizen fosters the activity of thepolis, the political community. Aristotle goes onin the Ethics:

Clearly that which we desire for its own sake . . .(everything else being desired for the sake of this). . . must be the good and the chief good . . . It[the chief good] would seem to belong to the mostauthoritative art . . . and politics appears to be ofthis nature.

[F] or even if the end is the same for a single manand a state, that of the state seems at all eventsgreater and more complete . . . though it is worth-while to attain the end merely for one man, it isfiner and more godlike to attain it for a nation.11

Although a particular member of a commu-nity, then, may avail him or herself of tempo-rary advantages at the expense of thecommunity,12 the continued practice of suchbehavior displays, on Aristotle’s view, that thatmember of the community misunderstands whatwill really make him or her happy. The varioustypes of self-interest are all to be understood asdesires for the merely “apparent” good. His orher true good, on the other hand, the “good forman,” which Aristotle calls “eudaimonia” (trans-lated happiness, flourishing, or doing well), isachievable only in a good community, one withgood laws and citizens of good character.Aristotle believes that without a character to beproud of, a person cannot genuinely be happy.It follows, then, that a person’s natural effortsought to be directed toward perfecting his or hercharacter and toward perfecting the communityin which character is defined and on which itdepends.13

Similarly, then, the good of the organismdepends on, and may even be said to be consti-tuted by, the good of its parts. If the foot isbroken, the body cannot walk. This is particu-larly true of those parts which are fundamentalto the organism. The good of the heart is utterlycrucial to the good of the body; we simplycannot talk about the good of any part of thebody unless we presuppose a beating heart. The

Virtue Ethics and The Parable of the Jadhu 27

“heart” of the state or community is its goodcitizens, and these citizens are nurtured andshaped by the state or community with a goodconstitution. We want to claim that the “heart”of the business firm is its good employees, andthat these employees are nurtured and shaped bythe firm with a morally sound corporate policy.

Business activity is an integral part of a func-tioning, productive society. Every person whoparticipates in business activity is both a businesspractitioner (a member of a firm or other cor-porate or cooperative endeavor) and a memberof society. Business, if it is to seek and tomaintain its own good, must also seek andmaintain the good of society.14 Since businessprovides many if not most of the goods that arenecessary for the good of society’s members,15

this is a natural and obvious role for business.16

Further, each business person will necessarilyseek the good of the business in which he or sheis engaged, and the good of the larger societywhich encompasses both the individual businessperson and the business enterprise. This goodwill not be the only good which that personseeks, but it will and must be one of the goods.

The identity we seek to establish is that of agood business person as a good person. Insofaras business is an integral and indispensable partof society, any individual who, as a good businessperson, helps business along also helps societyalong in the process.17

First of all, business is “activity.”18 Organizedactivities of the members of a whole (whetherthey be businesses within society or businesspersons within a business) are “practices.”19

Business is a practice, and it is composed ofvarious practices. That is, within the largerpractice of business – a concept notoriously dif-ficult to define20 – we find many finite practices,such as, for example, management, marketing,accounting, and negotiation. Our concern is notwith the variety of practices within business, butwith their shared goals of “doing good business”in general. The set of general dispositions toward“doing good business” are what we might call“business virtues,”21 and these will include suchgenerally recognized virtues as honesty, prudence,fairness, and trust.22

In business, the virtues are validated by the

social worth of the activity and reinforced by thefact that business operates according to a systemof merit.23 On the small scale, the employee whois hard-working, who seeks and produces thegood of the company, will get the raise or thepromotion, while the lazy employee, who caresonly for his own paycheck and tries to get bywith the bare minimum, will be left further andfurther behind with every review.24 There are alsomore subtle rewards for excellence: the admira-tion of one’s peers, the feeling of “getting ahead,”the irreplaceable sense of a job well done.25 Onthe larger scale, we have the old, persistent andpersuasive capitalist idea that quality goods willbe rewarded by the market. Build a bettercomputer, market it with a sense of honesty, dealfairly and reasonably with your customers, liveup to your contractual promises, and you willflourish, your company will flourish, and societywill flourish.

This brings us back to Aristotle’s idea that thegood life can exist only in a good society. ForAristotle, as for us today, virtue, and its all-important objective, happiness, can only beachieved in a healthy political community pre-cisely because that community encourages andreinforces the virtues which constitute it.Ultimately, all of these good behaviors arenurtured by and tend toward a vision of the goodwhich the society as a whole shares – liberty,justice, and the pursuit of happiness. As this goalor telos of the society is shared by each member,and since all of the particular virtues seek someaspect of this goal, the virtues, like the peoplewho develop them, are brought together in theharmonious pursuit of that telos. As a societyworks best when its members are unified, so thevirtue ethics model, ideally construed, dependson a unity of the virtues.26 An activity whosesuccessful practice is inconsistent with thishighest good, then, is not a good activity,however successfully its practitioners may engagein it. A bad activity done well – for example, aflawless set of financial statements prepared for adrug lord – is still a bad activity, a vice, andshould be abandoned.27

The question then becomes how can abusiness ethics class help business students enrichtheir notion of the good and reinforce their


inclinations to advance the good? That is, in asingle course, how can we best convey themessage that the main concern of ethics is thedevelopment of good character rather than a setof rules to get us out of moral jams? One way isto include a study of Aristotle along with Mill,Kant, and Rawls. But if we down-play Aristotle,for example, by treating the cases and issues as“quandaries” to be calculated according to a setof rules, reading Aristotle won’t help much. Ifwe are to impact the way business studentsunderstand goodness and virtue, we must changeour approach to the cases and issues we examinein class. We need to examine these materials interms of crises of character – not what’s mini-mally right for everybody, but what’s right for aperson of character, for “you.” We need to askquestions about these cases that focus on issuesof character and how strengths and weaknesses ofcharacter play themselves out in a businesscontext.

We have already suggested in our footnotessome assignments that might direct students’attention to questions of moral excellence inbusiness. To really revise the conventional frame-work of moral inquiry, however, a different wayto read and apply moral theory must be offeredto students. What follows is an extended exampleof one such application. We believe that you willfind it to be illustrative of the way in which casesthat you are already familiar with can be given anew, and challenging, perspective.

IV. The story of the Sadhu

In his widely acclaimed article, “The Parable ofthe Sahdu,”28 Bowen McCoy presents a casestudy of a classic moral dilemma. In the text thatfollows, we will explain why we believe thatquandary-ethical models fail to adequatelyanalyze even this obvious case. In a contrastingmode, we explain how an analysis of the case ona virtue-ethical model shows the meaningful andpositive didactic effect which the article can havein the classroom.

The story goes as follows. McCoy’s group anda party of Swiss were hiking in the Himalayas.The weather conditions that day were very

hazardous, and finishing the hike required thatthe party forge ahead and avail themselves ofevery slight break in the weather. A party of NewZealanders was hiking ahead of them, and a partyof Japanese behind.

At one point, the New Zealanders broughtdown to McCoy’s party the half-dead body of anIndian Sadhu, a holy man. Barefoot, under-dressed and malnourished, the man was very illindeed, and needed immediate attention in orderto survive. McCoy’s group and the Japaneserevived the Sadhu and gave him food, water,warm clothing, and directions to safety below,but no one was willing to abandon the trip toaccompany him down the mountain. Finally, noone ever learned the fate of the Sahdu. Did hesurvive or perish – that question was never farfrom McCoy’s thoughts.

The article is McCoy’s reflections upon his andthe others’ handling of the incident, and thesereflection were provoked in part by the admoni-tions of Stephen, a fellow hiker. McCoy leadsone to the view that the hikers’ actions weremorally suspect, but there is no argument thatthese actions were not in accord with the pre-dominant moral principles of our day. By passingthe buck, by investing the very least of them-selves that was necessary and by blinding them-selves, in their individual actions, to the finaloutcome of the group effort, claims McCoy, thehikers all behaved like typical corporate bureau-crats.

McCoy suggests that the moral of the storyof the Sahdu is that the corporate culture shouldoffer more support and direction for the goalsand values of the individuals working within thefirm. Management should “be sensitive to indi-vidual needs . . . shape them and . . . direct andfocus them for the benefit of the group as awhole.”29 He cites the cause of the hikers’blameworthiness in the lack of group support forindividual conscientiousness. “[W]ithout . . .such support,” he claims, “. . . the individual islost”.30

What is the best way to teach this article, orany case or article, that involves real people inreal jams? We believe that these materials shouldbe discussed coextensively with a moral theoryor a set of moral theories which (1) justify


McCoy’s conclusion that the hikers’ actions wereblameworthy, (2) explain the relevance of thestory to the corporate world, and (3) offer soundalternatives to the moral failures that the storycites. We do not believe that business ethicsclasses that focus exclusively on “rule-based” or“quandary-ethical” moral theories – deontology,utilitarianism, and contractarianism (particularlyin its Rawlsian form) – can do this. Thosemodels cannot account for the “values of theindividual” that are necessary to an adequatetheory of business ethics.

We understand the “values of the individual”as those moral values having to do with characterand community – with living a life that one canbe proud of. And we understand these values tobe defined for an agent within the political andsocial context in which he or she lives. By useof a virtue-ethical model then – a model whichevaluates actions in terms of their place in thelife of a particular person, with a particularcharacter, in a particular community – we willbe able to analyze the story in terms of theindividual values which McCoy claims are focalto it. This will enable us to meet the threecriteria that we have offered above for a moraltheory.

V. Analyzing the Sadhu story with rule-based theories

Rule-based theories do not meet the first crite-rion above. We do not, by application of thesetheories come necessarily to agree with McCoy’sconclusion that the actions of the hikers werewrong. In fact, the rightness of their actions caneasily be justified by any one of the rule-basedtheories.

Let us first consider Kantianism. Its applica-tion to the Sadhu story elicits two classicproblems with Kantian moral theory: one, thatKantianism provides no grounds for resolvingconflicts between two duties of the same order;and, two, that sufficiently narrow maxims ofaction may be universalized even when theactions they characterize are ones that we areinclined to call impermissible.

For instance, as regards the first problem, we

find in the Groundwork that while beneficence isa duty (an imperfect duty to others), so is thedevelopment of one’s talents and interests (animperfect one to oneself).31 The case could bemade that members of the hiking party had aduty to themselves to try to finish the expedition(after all, it was an educational and culturalexperience, as well as a recreational one). Parents,for instance, often use similar reasoning toencourage their children to be competitive inschool, even when their classmates suffer for lackof tutoring and reinforcement by these fasterlearners. Some of our business ethics studentstake something like this as their model whentrying to apply Kant. If one takes the hikers tohave such a duty, that duty conflicts irresolvablywith their duty to assure the safety of the Sadhu.

The point can be made stronger still. Grantingthat we can universalize a maxim expressing thewill to help the Sadhu to safety, we can equallywell universalize the maxim for what the hikersactually did. Suppose the tables were turned –say, the Sadhu was visiting the Grand Canyon andfound one of the hikers seriously ill – wouldn’twe want for the Sadhu to see the magnificenceof North America? It is perfectly reasonable toput ourselves in the Sadhu’s position and stilljustify continuing the Hike. After all, no one isbeing left for dead. In reality, the Sadhu was leftwith much better prospects than those in whichhe was found. It is virtually certain that he wouldhave died in the absence of the assistance that wasrendered to him.

As regards the second problem – the univer-salizability of sufficiently narrow maxims – wecould quite reasonably attribute to the hikers amaxim which would pass the strict universaliz-ability test. It might go something like this:“Whenever I am hiking in a difficult terrainwhich is exotic for me, under brutal weatherconditions, and believe that I will not have anopportunity to repeat this rare and wonderfulexperience, I will aid a stranger in need to theextent that I may also finish the hike while it ispossible for me to do so”. Such a maxim isuniversalizable. It would be rational for anyonein this situation so to act. It respects equally theends of hiker and stranger in need.

Again, we find that business students, well


versed in problem-solving techniques, manage-ment of inter-personal situations, and competi-tive strategy, are as likely to come up with anarrow maxim like this as they would be onewhich obliges the hikers to escort the Sadhudown the mountain and see him through hisrecovery. In fact, anyone who has taught one ofthe classic moral “quandaries” in an appliedethics class knows that students do tend tocome up with narrow maxims. It becomes some-thing of a challenge to do this, and it allowsfor questionable behavior. Like many scenarioswith extenuating circumstances, there are severalcourses of action which are all equally rationaland universalizable, and the Kantian test giveslittle help to the troubled individual decidingwhat to do.32

Let us next consider contractarianism. We willhave to begin with a clearly contrived “socialcontract” among the principal parties: the NewZealanders, the Americans and Swiss, theJapanese, and the Sadhu. Together in theHimalayas, we must suppose, they form a proto-community in the state of nature. This is, initself, a questionable move, but one which anyteacher of applied ethics who wants to use acontractarian theory must make. In addition, wewill have to choose a particular contractariantheorist because not all contractarian theoriesagree about even the most fundamental moralprinciples, and some cannot be readily bent to fitthe situation. It would appear, for example, thatHobbesianism would not be applicable here.Since the Sadhu is not able to kill the hikers aseasily as they are able to kill him, the groupwould not appear to be in a Hobbesian State ofNature. Similarly, the duty of beneficence whichis at stake here is not equally important to allcontractarian theories. Judging from the availabletexts, the contractarian theory most commonlyused in business ethics classes today is that of JohnRawls, and so let us try applying Rawls to theSadhu.

Suppose that the members of the three hikingparties and the Sadhu all meet before being giventheir identities or going to Nepal. In this state,they all ware the “veil of ignorance” about theirrespective roles in the upcoming difficulty. Nextthey will choose some set of duties which

preserve the two rules of Justice as Fairness: (1)they guarantee to themselves the most freedompossible for each consistent with an equalfreedom for all, and (2) they guarantee everyone’sbenefit under anyone’s leadership.33

A case may be easily made that none of thehiker’s violated the contract. Not knowingbeforehand who would be in need and whowould be able to offer help, no one can be heldresponsible for the condition in which the Sadhuwas found. All have an equal freedom – no oneis forced to help anyone else, nor has anyonebeen allowed to hurt anyone else.

Given the social inequality in this parable, itis important to note that Rawls’ differenceprinciple is upheld as well. The Sadhu is indeedbetter off with the inequality. If the hikers werein the same state of poverty and debility as he,if they had no extra strength or provisions forthemselves, then the Sadhu’s death would havebeen both more certain and more agonizing thanunder the present unequal circumstances.

Thus, the hiker’s actions are consonant with atleast the Rawlsian version of contractarianism,and, again, the conscientious moral decision-maker has no less a sinking feeling and no morehelp in his or her decision after a Rawlsiananalysis than before. Here, as in the Kantiananalysis, students will be able to demonstrate thatthe “letter of the law” has been observed. Thisis not the lesson we are interested in conveying,however.

Lastly, and most obviously of all the rule-basedtheories, the hikers’ action can be justified onutilitarian grounds. The hikers’ combined enjoy-ment of this once-in-each-of-their-lifetimesexperience, plus their combined absence of painin not risking their own safety, plus the assuage-ment of guilt which each was allowed by doingthe little each one did for the Sadhu, may, despitethe continued danger to the Sadhu involved inthis choice, easily sum to a larger utility thanwould helping the Sadhu minus the expense ofthe hike and risk to the hikers. Even a ruleutilitarian would have to admit that justice andbeneficence were preserved. No one was wronglypunished, and, in fact, the Sadhu’s situation wasimproved. Once more, then, the rule-governedtheory allows a justification for the hikers’


actions, McCoy’s judgment is overruled, andreaders are left without help in making rightdecisions in similar cases.

VI. The failure of rule-based theories

Regarding our first criterion for an adequatemoral theory – that it be able to justify McCoy’sconclusion that the hikers’ actions were blame-worthy – we find that none of these standardanalyses are supportive of that view. Nor, conse-quently, can these analyses support a reader whois sympathetic with McCoy and believes thehikers’ to have been morally blameworthy. Worsestill, each of these rule-based treatments give themore sophisticated students practice in justifyingquestionable behavior, a common and debili-tating problem in business ethics classes.

Rule-based theories fail to meet our secondcriterion as well. None of them explain therelevance of the story to the corporate world. Bycontriving the story into a “quandary” which canbe solved by the application of a rule, thesetheories divorce the dilemma from the context.Consequently the analogy which McCoy drawsbetween that context and the corporate/bureau-cratic one is warped. As the story is colored bya rule-based analysis, each hiker has only anabstract moral obligation toward the Sadhu, butin McCoy’s version the hikers have individualvalues based on a set of shared goals. OnMcCoy’s retrospective view, the hikers want totake care of the Sadhu; they want to finish andenjoy the hike; and most importantly, they eachwant to go on, after the hike is over, to live alife worthy of the admiration of others, includingthe friends they hiked with that fateful day.

McCoy’s friend Stephen, you recall, wasashamed of the behavior of everyone, but espe-cially ashamed his own and McCoy’s behavior.The fact that McCoy included this in his tellingof the story, and that readers can well understandhis friend’s viewpoint, demonstrates McCoy’spoint that we do indeed share goals and defineour individual values in group or communityterms. You can draw your own conclusion, butwe claim that McCoy’s narration of how thosefew moments were actually lived on that icy

mountain path, of how that monumental choicewas made, and of its deeply troubling conse-quences, stands in stark rebuttal of rule-basedarguments that justify the minimal actions of thehikers.

The rule-based theories tend inherently toexacerbate the problems McCoy cites. Their veryunderstanding of moral obligation fosters neglectfor cooperative efforts and for intersubjectiverelationships. Thus, by applying only the rule-based theories, we distort the reality of thebusiness decision-making process. Rule-basedanalysis conceptualizes a moral question as arisingfor a generic agent in total isolation – one whois totally context-free, character-free and whogets his or her moral clues only from his or herinnate faculty of reason.

In keeping with our third criterion, thevirtue-ethical model offers sound alternatives tothe moral failures that the story cites. It con-ceptualizes a moral question as arising for aparticular agent, of particular moral character,who lives and works in association with otherswho share a set of goals, duties, traditions, anda stake in the success of the company. We believethe virtue-ethical model, then, captures the waywe do think about moral problems and aboutourselves. “Quandary-ethical” models screenthese very personal and contextual realities outof the decision process. They supply a minimalbaseline that guards against our worse behaviors,and they respond to the question of what isminimally required or permissible. A moreadequate moral theory accounts, as virtue ethicsaccounts, for the conduct of a real human beingwith a real history situated in a community ofshared values.

So long as we limit business ethics to theserule-based theories, it will remain out-of-touch.Rule-based theories overlook the very principleof corporate business practice, namely that itincorporates the various individual efforts, talentsand goals of its members into a unity.Unfortunately, the inadequate and unrealisticpicture of business decision-making which wederive from the rule-based theories is not aninnocuous mistake. It does and has affected theway business people think about ethics. Manyhave come to think of ethical reasoning as an


alien and inept practice, in opposition to thegoals of business. Mastering the application ofethical theory becomes, for some, just one morehypocrisy necessary to winning the corporategame. For others, it becomes just a pale andoverly long version of their own pangs ofconscience.

Students who are confronted with these modesof analysis are left in an awkward position. Theyfind that the theories they are offered in theirethics class (1) can be used to justify severaldifferent courses of action, some of which jibewith their moral intuitions and some of whichdo not; and (2) seem unrelated to the world towhich their business classes have introducedthem. In response, they may dismiss ethicaltheory entirely as inadequate, arbitrary, and aliento their own intuitive pangs of conscience. Or,they may embrace ethical theory at the expenseof many of their own moral intuitions. They mayeven embrace ethical theory as a magician’stechnique and embark eagerly upon the prospectof justifying questionable behavior. In any ofthese events, both the moral theories and thestudents’ moral hunches are done an injustice,and the class is more or less a failure in its effortto educate students for their role as managers.

VII. How better to understand the Sadhu story

As we mentioned above, an adequate treatmentof the Sadhu case would require validation ofMcCoy’s view that the hikers’ actions wereblameworthy, and support for his analogy tocorporate decision-making. It also calls for atheoretical framework within which both themoral failure of the hikers and its correction canbe understood. The rule-governed theories usedin the standard business ethics class fail on thefirst two counts in that they justify minimalist,less-than-conscientious behavior, and theyoverlook the shared goals and traditions ofbusiness. These theories fail also on the thirdcount – they cannot adequately explain what waswrong with the hikers’ actions nor help usenvision what they should have done instead.

Rule-governed or “quandry” theories fail on

the third count because – modelled as they areon notions of law and penology – they candistinguish only between actions that are morallypermissible or justifiable and actions that are not.Like the law, they mark only a baseline restric-tion on our actions, a minimum requirement.This is decidedly not the distinction most relevantto the Sadhu story or others like it. Thesetheories, like the law in the modern state, takeagents to be equals or alike, not because theyshare a set of values or a sense of what makeslife worth living, but because they each personifyan abstract “lowest common denominator”.Again, this is not the vision of agency relevantto the story.

Surely the actions of the hikers were permis-sible. No moral theory would have forbade themfrom helping the Sadhu to the meager extentthey did so.34 The relevant distinction in casessuch as the Sadhu is not between actions thatare right and those that are wrong, but betweenactions that are merely okay and those that areexcellent – between those that are merely justi-fiable and those that are actually praiseworthy.The Sadhu parable brings into relief our notionsabout the different moral characters of persons,rather than our justifications of the moral worthof actions. The least we expect from others,McCoy implies, is that they act justifiably. Butas moral persons we have an obligation to expectthe most from ourselves and from others, andthat is that we and they behave well.

McCoy regrets, not that he and other groupmembers acted impermissibly, but that they actedmerely permissibly – that they acted only asanyone would be expected to act, and not as agood person would be expected to act. McCoyand his fellow hikers were given one of life’s rareopportunities to be heroes, and they let it passunmet. The hikers’ actions, then, were blame-worthy, because they were merely justifiable in asituation which actually called for heroism andsacrifice.

This vision of moral success as having acharacter to be proud of is fundamental toAristotelian ethics. But the distinction is par-ticularly well drawn in Book One of the Ethics35

as the distinction between praiseworthinessand prizeworthiness. Praise, Aristotle claims, is


properly due to virtue insofar as it produces goodor right actions. But, he insists, that is not whatwe think of as the good, or happiness – a suc-cessful, happy, fulfilling life. Having a modelcharacter is, according to Aristotle, something weought to prize. It is good for its own sake, andit makes all the virtuous things we do worth-while, however much of a sacrifice or an incon-venience they might be. And it is because weprize such a life that we are actually eager to“trouble ourselves” to do more than what ismerely justifiable. In this way, because we wantto be rightly proud of ourselves, better behavioralso becomes easier.

We suggest that a virtue-ethical model couldenlighten an analysis of the Sadhu story andothers like it. This is because only in a notionof virtue, and not in the notions of duty, con-tractual obligation, or utility, is a distinction madebetween mere moral adequacy on the one handand moral excellence on the other – only in thenotion of virtue, and not in these other notions,is the inter-subjectivity inherent to businesspractices taken into account in ethical reasoning.This is because only a virtue-ethical modelsuggests that communities of people (or maybeeven the community of mankind) share a visionof the good life. Thus, only a virtue-ethicalmodel offers a framework in which we can strivesuccessfully to lead such a life by learning goodhabits of practice at the various roles we play inour community, and by learning how these rolesrelate to each other in a successful community.These good habits, the virtues, are the “preven-tative medicine” that keeps us from findingourselves in moral “quandaries.”

Only by use of the notion of virtue can wemake sense of the sort of existential disappoint-ment experienced by an agent when he or shehas cut corners, skimped on the proper thing todo, or passed the buck, as did the hikers inMcCoy’s story. This is because only the notionof virtue supports a moral theory in whichexcellence, rather than mediocrity, is demandedof us.

VII. Conclusion

What follows from our discussion is that tounderstand a case study as a dilemma or quandaryto be solved with a set of rules is a distinct signalthat our prescriptive regimen for a healthy morallife – our preventative medicine – has failed. Fora student to understand a business person whois privy to corporate inside information as aperson posed with a dilemma whether “to tradeor not to trade,” rather than as a person who hasbeen awarded the rare honor of the trust ofcorporate stockholders, indicates that he or sheidentifies with mediocrity of character, calcula-tion, greed, and moral puzzlement. For a studentto understand a business person whose supervi-sors are demanding the completion of 24 hoursof work in 8 hours as someone faced with thedilemma of whether to do bad work or lose hisor her job, rather than as a person with laudablyhigh standards, indicates that the student identi-fies with cowardliness, carelessness, and economicdespair. That with which we identify ourselvesindicates our evaluation of our own character.

To pose questions for our students in termsof moral quandaries is actually to facilitate badhabits of moral thinking by inviting them toidentify with the vices – mediocrity, greed,cowardliness, carelessness – and to justify thosechoices on some minimal, at least permissible,moral standard. To encourage them, on the otherhand, to think of themselves in a business careeras extended moral examples, as contributions to a tradition of the virtues and of the good for man, byposing questions to them in terms of excellencesof character, is actually to facilitate good habitsof moral thinking. We see these good moralhabits as the “dose of prevention” that will helpkeep business persons out of moral jams in thefirst place, and will help them sail heroicallythrough those situations in which they mightotherwise be tempted by the vices.

Without recounting the now-familiar story ofJohnson and Johnson’s decision to recall and todestroy 31 million bottles of contaminated Extra-Strength Tylenol, we want to close with theobservation that, in our view, this remarkabledecision by James Burke and the Johnson &Johnson board evidences the fundamental


business virtues of courage, toughness, and trust-worthiness, as well as plain, unvarnished honesty,compassion, and loyalty towards the people thatJ&J had always placed first in its corporate credo:“We believe our first responsibility is to thedoctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and toall others who use our services and products.”

In view of that credo and of the way in whichit has characterized the moral culture at J&J sincethe 1940’s, one could scarcely imagine that itcould do otherwise. To have done otherwisewould have been as out-of-character as a physi-cian doing intentional harm or as some otherdedicated professional deliberately betraying atrust. Kantians at the helm would have noted thatthe credo made no promises,36 utilitarians wouldhave debated “the greatest good for the greatestnumber” interminably, while Rawlsians wouldhave no guidance on the “least advantaged” – theinnocent victims who were equally vulnerableto the possibility of contaminated Bufferin,Excedrin, Anacin, or Bayer or the innocentstakeholders of J&J who had to contend with a$100 million loss.37 This is not to suggest for amoment that the decision to withdraw Tylenolfrom the market was a snap decision, or that itwas not made reflectively. We do claim, however,that a virtue ethics understanding of the Johnson& Johnson story is the most likely, the mostplausible, and the most satisfying explanation.

Like Buzz McCoy and his band of climbers,a victim – in fact, several victims and innocentones at that – had fallen into Johnson & Johnson’shands. Unlike Buzz, J&J did recognize theproblem. It did not “hike” through the dilemmaor pretend it was not there. One big difference,of course, was that J&J had already articulatedits values, it had already developed a cohesivecorporate culture. For decades, Johnson &Johnson lived with the culture, abided by it andinstilled it into the fabric of the firm. We believethat Johnson & Johnson – the Board, the CEO,the officers and employees – genuinely identifieditself with an ideal, namely, the well-being of itscommunity-of-customers. This took it beyondshort term concerns about profit and loss, and itdid so because J&J could not see itself acting inany other way. It had developed a culture ofcare and healing, and with that culture, it had

developed the virtues, the excellences, thestrength of character to “do the good,” to “dothe right thing.” Did J&J serve its self-interest inthe process? Yes, and we take pleasure inextolling that kind of self-interest. Self-interestlike that is so closely tied to the good of thecommunity, so closely woven into the body ofthe community, that there is no division ofinterest, no hostility or antagonism between selfand community. Self-interest becomes one andthe same with the interest of the community.

On that icy mountain path, the Sadhu was notwelcomed by a community. He was attended toby people who were at least as nice as Buzz was,people who met the minimum, but by peoplewho wanted to be on their way and back ontrack. We are not deprecating their efforts – theymay have saved a life. But we do not envy themtheir special hell – did the Sadhu live or did hedie?

We believe that the study of virtue ethics isespecially relevant to business students and tobusiness managers. It will not make heros of usall, nor is it destined to give us wealth, but whenwe reflect on a life well lived – a happy life – itwill be a life in a community that made us strongwhen we were weak, and a community madestronger still by our identity with its ideals.

Notes

1 Robbin Derry and Ronald M. Green: 1988,‘Ethical Theory in Business Ethics: A CriticalAssessment,’ Journal of Business Ethics 8(7), 521–533.2 Edmund Pincoffs: 1984, Quandaries and Virtues,Quandary Ethics: 1971, Mind 80(320), 552–571.3 George Pamental: 1991, ‘The Course in BusinessEthics: Why Don’t the Philosophers Give BusinessStudents What They Need?’, Business Ethics Quarterly1(4), 385–394.4 See supra n. 2, ‘Quandary Ethics’, at 554.5 Of course all of us who have taught business ethicsremember the student who raises his hand to protest:“Well, this is fine for a university professor, but weall know that no successful businessman worries aboutthese things.” Before dismissing this student from ourminds, we do well to recall that for every one studentbrave enough to raise his voice, fifty have shared thethought but remained silent.


6 The idea being precisely the opposite of thatargued by Alfred Carr in his “Is Business BluffingEthical?” Harvard Business Review, Jan.–Feb. 1968.That is, not only are the excellences of a busi-nessperson not opposed to the excellences of anygood citizen or community member, but the virtuesof the good citizen are required before we can rightlycall a businessperson “excellent.”7 Arete, Aristotle’s general term for human activitybest pursued, is varyingly translated as “virtue” and(today, more commonly) “excellence”. Virtue hastaken decidedly Christian overtones since Aristotle’stime resulting in ideas of virtue which Aristotle wouldneither have appreciated nor understood. It isimportant to note, however, that the “cardinalvirtues” of Christianity (prudence, justice, temper-ance, and fortitude) are all perfectly reconcilable withAristotle’s notion of arete. In his Ethics, the contem-porary moral philosopher William Frankena providesus with a helpful definition of virtue: “virtues aredispositions or traits that are not wholly innate; theymust all be acquired, at least in part, by teaching andpractice, or, perhaps, by grace. They are also traits of‘character,’ rather than ‘personality’ like charm orshyness, and they all involve a tendency to do certainkinds of action in certain kinds of situations, not justto think or feel certain ways. They are not justabilities or skills, like intelligence or carpentry, whichone may have without using.” (2ed. 1963, 63).8 Perhaps the most interesting and compelling ofrecent versions is offered by Robert Solomon in Ethicsand Excellence (1992). The argument which we drawhere does not depend upon any particular argumentof the many available. It is intended to present whatwe take to be Aristotelean arguments.9 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a1.10 As Aristotle affirms when he insists that the goodlife can truly be found only in a good city. Themetaphor of the living organism is also Aristotle’s.11 Nicomachean Ethics 1049a18–b812 Our reference is to the “freerider” problem whichhas yet to see a satisfactory resolution in any ethicalor social theory. There are, of course, any number ofillustrations of this problem, but the mere fact that wehave such rough-and-ready examples of abuse, as in,say, the infamous Pinto case, should perhaps serve toencourage us that these transgressions do come tolight and are recognized as mistakes by their perpe-trators.13 Nicomachean Ethics 1095a12–1101b7.14 We do not immediately move from this to the“social responsibility” argument, because the good ofsociety to which business contributes has yet to be

defined. What we establish here is that business, if itis indeed an activity which seeks its own good, mustalso seek the good of the context in which its owngood is possible.15 Food and clothing, to provide only the two mostimmediate and obvious examples.16 As even Aristotle, notorious for his criticism ofbusiness, would agree. For Aristotle, remember,business had two aspects: oecinomicus and chrematisike.The first involves matters from the running of one’shousehold to simple trade; the other is trade for profit(something much closer to our own idea of business)which Aristotle believed to be a completely unjusti-fiable practice, a practice roughly equivalent to theft.17 What about, for example, Boesky and Milken?They were business people, but were they good forsociety? Clearly not, for the reason that they flauntedthe business rules that society endorsed. They became“free riders” on the system – riders who did not paytheir dues.18 A moment’s reflection upon the etymology of theword confirms this rather obvious truism [busy-ness].19 Perhaps the best and certainly the most populardefinition of a practice is offered by AlasdairMacIntyre in his now-famous After Virtue: a practiceprovides “the arena in which the virtues are exhib-ited . . . [a practice is] any coherent and complex formof human activity through which goods internal tothat form of activity are realized in the course oftrying to achieve those standards of excellence whichare appropriate to, and partially definitive of, thatform of activity, with the result that human powersto achieve excellence, and human conceptions of theends and goods involved, are systematically extended. . . In the ancient and medieval worlds the creationand sustaining of human communities of households,cities, nations is generally taken to be a practice in thesense in which I have defined it.” (2ed., 1984,187–188).20 We have found that a good way to get students“into” the issues involved in business ethics andbusiness ethics construed on an Aristotelean or “virtueethic” account is to ask them to produce a definitionof business. Thus the process of close analysis ofbusiness and the attempt to isolate its most signifi-cant elements begins from the very outset.21 As we suggest above, many different lists of“business virtues” can and should be proposed andexamined by the class. Ingenuity, industriousness andcommitment are three that often come up in ourclasses. Solomon, whose list has also proven fruitfulfor class discussions, suggests honesty, fairness, trustand toughness as the “basic” business virtues, and


follows these up with a detailed discussion of differentkinds of virtues exemplified in different areas ofbusiness (Solomon, 1992, 207–251). We see such listsas pedagogical exercises rather than ends-in-them-selves. Ultimately, the virtues which any person adoptswill be defined by her community and her percep-tion of her own role within that community. Forbusiness students to engage in informed discussions ofthis topic, it is of course important that the class spendsome time on “corporate culture” and the differentroles which do in fact exist within business. For anexpanded list of virtues, see Pincoff ’s pioneeringQuandaries and Virtues, supra n. 2.22 An interesting and valuable component of the classwill be the process of arriving at a list of behavioral“excellences.” We as teachers are not there to tell ourstudents what good business behavior is. On thecontrary, the method which we adopt presupposes acommunity which will determine those behaviors.What is excellence for an engineer may not, and verylikely will not, be excellence for a public relationsperson. Although they will have many things incommon, the differences in their communities willpreserve and even require certain differences ofbehavior. Nevertheless, we find that the lists of virtueswhich different classes arrive at are by-and-large thesame. We take this to be one more piece of evidencethat our society, if we look at it carefully, does informus about the good. Our primary role as teachers is tocall the student’s attention to this happy fact.23 this notion of business as a “meritocracy”, whilecommonly accepted, is far from unproblematic. Seefor example Norman Daniels “Merit andMeritocracy” in Philosophy and Public Affairs 7 (1978):206–223, or Robert Jackall’s Moral Mazes. It ishowever clear that the “merit” system is at the heartof business as we understand it, and that “good” com-panies and good managers will seek to reward thosewho merit reward.24 This, at least, is the popular ideology. For a criticalview of “meritocracy” inside the bureaucracy ofleading firms within oligopolistic industries, seeRobert Jackall, Moral Mazes 41–74 (1988) (especially“hitting your numbers,” at 62).25 This last might fall within MacIntyre’s ratherelusive category of “goods internal to practices”.While no one has been entirely successful in expli-cating exactly what is meant by a good internal to apractice – that is, a good which is not some externalreward, like a promotion or a pat on the back – it istrue that most of us have a general idea of whatMacIntyre means by this notion, and that it hassomething to do with the old idea that “anything

worth doing is worth doing well.” That is to say, thereare some benefits which are accrued through havingdone something well which are entirely independentof anyone’s recognition of your performance – some-thing which takes place between you and your work,when you know you have done a good job. Thephenomenon of the passionate artist who is notrecognized by her age might well be discussed in thisconnection.26 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (2ed. 1984).27 The problem of whether one can “do a bad jobwell” is a common question for virtue-ethical theoryin general, and obviously an important one for itsapplication to business ethics. An accounting studentwho contemplates the possibility that he or she maysomeday be balancing the books for a clever embez-zler will ask this very question. Both Plato andAristotle, as well as, among the Medievals, Anselmand Aquinas, believed that a morally bad activitycould not be done well.28 Harvard Business Review 103–108 (Sept.–Oct.1983). A partial re-enactment of this widely-usedessay is available in video from the Harvard BusinessSchool film series. It includes the observations of apanel of lay-people, business executives, and acade-mics moderated by Harvard law professor ArthurMiller, with concluding remarks by the author,Bowen McCoy.29 Supra, pp. 107–108.30 Supra, p. 107.31 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics ofMorals II, 423.32 Suppose, for classroom illustration, a student hadthe means to save the Sadhu and the means to attenda cultural event, and further suppose that this studenthad to make a choice. One of these choices is clearlyan imperfect duty to someone else and the other animperfect duty to oneself. Kant gives the student noguidance in this situation. While Kant would probablywant the student to save the Sadhu, there is nothingin his theory that would obligate or compel thestudent to do so.33 The Rawlsian version of these criteria may berendered as follows: 1. Each person has an equal rightto the most extensive fundamental liberties consis-tent with similar liberties for all and 2. Social andeconomic inequalities are permissible insofar as they(a) assure the greatest benefit to the least advantaged,and (b) attach to positions open to all under condi-tions of fair equality. John Rawls: 1971, A Theory ofJustice 61, 75–90, 108–114, 274–284, 342–350.34 This paragraph and the following, as well asour thesis in general, take their cue from Edmund


Pincoffs’ work, supra note 2, p. 563. ObserveProfessor Pincoffs’ distinction between the rightnessof an act and the praiseworthiness of an agent. See alsoAristotle’s distinction, noted below, between “praise-worthiness” and “prizeworthiness”.35 Nicomachean Ethics 1101b10–1102a5.36 Kantians would likely argue that the corporationas an oral actor would, in this situation, have onlyimperfect duties to those who were harmed bythe contaminated capsules. Immanuel Kant, TheMetaphysical Principles of Virtues 48 (Ellington trans.1964).

37 James Burke: 1989, A Career in AmericanBusiness (B), Harvard Business School #9-390-030(the figure of $100 million is a James Burke estimateat p. 3).

The University of Texas at Austins,Department of Management Science

and Information Systems CBA5.202,Austin, Texas 78712–1175,

U.S.A.


Documents

Virtue Ethics and the Parable of the Sadhu