1 BUSINESS ETHICS – PARABLE OF THE SADHU

ETHICS IN PRACTICE:

Parable of the Sadhu

Adapted from Beyer, J. M. and Nino, D. (1999), ‘Ethics and cultures in international business’, Journal of

Management Inquiry, vol.8, no.3, pp. 287-297.

A U.S. businessman named Bowen McCoy (1989) recounted a challenging experience. He

called his story the "Parable of the Sadhu" – a sadhu being a holy man in India or Nepal who

goes through the countryside begging for food.

As the story begins, McCoy was in the mountains of Nepal on his way to a village considered a

holy place, with an American anthropologist named Stephen, a Sherpa guide, and a group of

porters. To get to the village, they had to climb across a mountain pass at 18,000 feet (about

5500 meters). The night before the planned climb they camped at around 15,000 feet near

several other groups: four young men from New Zealand, two Swiss couples, and a Japanese

hiking club.

At 3:30 the next morning, the New Zealanders got the first start up the mountain. The American

party left next, followed by the Swiss, while the Japanese lingered in their camp. When the

Americans reached about 15,500 feet, Stephen began to feel ill and they stopped to rest. Soon

thereafter one of the New Zealanders appeared with a body slung over his back. It was a sadhu

he had found on the mountain-almost naked and unconscious, clearly suffering from

hypothermia, but still alive. The New Zealander suggested the porters traveling with the

Americans take the old man down the mountain and then went back to join his group. Stephen

and the Swiss couples attended to the sadhu, stripping off his wet clothes, wrapping him in

clothing from their packs, and giving him food and drink when he revived.

Meanwhile, the businessman McCoy was growing anxious about the delay because he feared if

he waited any longer to resume his climb, the sun would melt the steps carved in the snow that

he needed to help him cross the mountain pass. Adding to his worry was the fact that he had

previously suffered quite severe altitude sickness at a lower altitude. Neither of these concerns,

however, led him to abandon his goal. He was still determined to cross the mountain pass and

reach the sacred village. So he left to catch up with some of the porters who had gone ahead to

prepare the way. His friend Stephen, who was still not feeling well, and the Swiss couples

stayed behind with the sadhu.

An hour or so later, after climbing most of the way, McCoy himself became dizzy and stopped

to rest, allowing the Swiss to catch up with him. He asked them about the sadhu and was told he

was fine and that his friend Stephen was on his way. When Stephen finally arrived he was

suffering from altitude sickness and could only walk 15 steps at a time before resting. He was

also very angry and accosted McCoy, saying, "How do you feel about contributing to the death

of a fellow man?"

2 BUSINESS ETHICS – PARABLE OF THE SADHU

McCoy was stunned and asked if the sadhu had died. "No," Stephen replied, "but he will." He

then explained that the Swiss had departed not long after McCoy, and that the Japanese, when

asked, refused to lend a horse they had with them to carry the man down the mountain to the

nearest village. The Japanese then went on their way, taking the horse with them. When Stephen

asked the Sherpa and the remaining porters if they would take the sadhu, they also refused,

saying that they would not have the strength or time to get across the pass if they first carried

him down the mountain. Instead, the porters took the old man a short distance down the

mountain, where they laid him on a large rock in the sun, and left him there, awake but weak.

No one in the four groups of climbers ever found out whether the sadhu lived or died, but all got

over the pass and on to the holy village that was their goal.

Some Parallels With Current Business Practice

In the story above, no one assumed ultimate responsibility for the sadhu. The members of each

group did only what did not interfere too much with reaching their initial goal. Ironically, by

focusing so heavily on reaching a holy place, they ignored their ethical responsibilities.

Their framing of the situation and their response is similar to what we see all too often in

business today. Business often seems to pursue single-minded goals to the exclusion of other

considerations. The unremitting competition of the global economy seems to have led to a

revival of the sentiments of social Darwinism, which celebrated the idea of the survival of the

fittest.

According to this idea, it is natural that as some succeed, others are left behind. In a social

Darwinian world, keeping up is essential; getting ahead is better. Maximizing self-interest is

clearly justified; acting according to higher ethical principles by avoiding doing harm to others

or "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you" could be suicidal.

Furthermore, social Darwinism enables its adherents to ignore the moral consequences of their

behavior because the weeding out process supposedly happens through the operation of natural,

impersonal forces. This philosophy thus encourages people to set self-interested goals and

pursue them relentlessly without concern for the effects of their actions on others. In business,

some form of winning (e.g., getting a new product to market first, making assigned targets for

sales or profits, or taking over another firm) can become goals that overwhelm ethical principles

and impulses.

The second parallel between the parable and current business practice is that the groups

involved had no prior experience or model for jointly arriving at a consensus about what to do.

They came from four different cultures and thus lacked a heritage of mutually accepted values

that would indicate appropriate collective action. It seems likely that similar crosscultural gaps

may occur in many multinational firms unless the firm has a strong culture that bridges cultural

differences and thus provides a basis for collective decision making and action. In the parable,

each group passed the problem on to yet another group, expecting another to take care of the

sadhu. Similar buck-passing between departments or multinational divisions is not uncommon

in corporations, especially when managers succeed or fail on the basis on reaching departmental

or divisional goals.

3 BUSINESS ETHICS – PARABLE OF THE SADHU

Third, this parable illustrates a failure to act that then became the decision. This often happens in

business, especially when the issue is whether to stop something that has been going on.

Repeatedly, we have seen glaring examples of hands-off management that seems to have

allowed and perhaps even encouraged serious wrongdoing. The lack of oversight and guidance

given to Nick Leeson (1996), an inexperienced financial trader at Barings Bank in Singapore, is

one tragic example. Another is the apparently widespread sexual harassment that was ignored by

management at the Mitsubishi plant in Illinois. A third is the sexual exploitation of women staff

members by local managers that occurred in the U.S. branch of the Swedish Astra Corporation

(Maremont, 1996). Note that all of these instances occurred in multinational firms, and that the

behaviors that management failed to stop severely damaged the corporation as well as many

individuals within it.

The fourth parallel is that the decision makers were physically and mentally stressed, and they

felt that they were under time pressures. Many business decisions in a hypercompetitive world

are made under pressure and in stressful circumstances. It is precisely under such circumstances

that personal and corporate values are most severely tested. As we have all seen, current

pressures for profits and cost reductions have led to large-scale layoffs in many of the developed

countries. Even the Japanese, long admired for their commitment to their employees, have

begun to downsize their workforces. But, as Hamel and Prahalad (1994) inform us, downsizing

does not necessarily yield long term benefits to either firms or stockholders. Their research

shows that large firms that restructured had only temporary improvements in the price of their

stocks, and three years later, were lagging even further behind in both stock price and overall

performance than they had been before the restructuring began. Other studies have shown the

demoralizing effects on employees who remained, as well as those who were laid off (Brockner,

1988; Brockner, Grover, Reed, DeWitt, & O'Malley, 1987). Nevertheless, the practice

continues. Someone may profit from temporary gains in stock prices, but it seems possible that

either ideology or imitation is also playing a significant role in motivating this deplorable trend.

The final parallel is that, although one of the persons present, Stephen, saw through all of these

considerations to his ethical responsibility, he did not get the support he needed from the others

present to rescue the sadhu. Sadly, it was beyond his individual capacity, a circumstance that

often occurs in business. We want to emphasize this point as perhaps the most obvious and

important business lesson of the "Parable of the Sadhu." Many ethical decisions require the

cooperation and support of the corporate community. We cannot expect even ethically sensitive

and courageous individuals to be able to perform ethically without the support of others. It is

management's job to be sure that such support is an unquestioned part of the corporate culture.

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