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Virtue Ethics and the Parable of the Sadhu Author(s): Janet McCracken, William Martin and Bill Shaw Source: Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 25-38Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25073052Accessed: 17-07-2015 08:07 UTC

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Virtue Ethics and

the Parable of the Sadhu

Janet McCracken

William Martin Bill Shaw

ABSTRACT. This article examines the various

pedagogic models suggested by widely used texts and

finds them to be predominately rule-based or rule

directed. These approaches to the subject matter of

business ethics are quite valuable ones, but we find

them to leave no room for the study of the virtues.

We intend to articulate our reasons for supporting a

central if not exclusive role for virtue ethics.

I. Introduction

Our reading of the pedagogic models of many

widely used texts suggests to us that business

ethics courses are commonly built upon a single theme - the application of ethical theory to the

resolution of managerial dilemmas, or quandaries, in a variety of settings.1 For the purposes of our

essay, we will characterize this approach as

"quandary ethics," and we understand it to be

rule-based or rule-directed.2 Quandary ethics can

take many diverse, creative, and productive forms,

but it leaves little room, if any at all, for a study

Janet McCracken is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Lake Forest College. Her recent publications include

articles on Persian philosophy and contemporary aes

thetics, and she is currently writing about the relation

between moral reasoning and the aesthetic environment

of the home.

William Martin is a scholar in residence at the KierKegaard

Library in Copenhagen. He has published in Ancient,

19th, and 29th Century philosophy, and is currently

working on projects in Business Ethics.

Bill Shaw is the Woodson Centennial Professor in Business

at The University of Texas at Austin. He has published

legal environment texts, articles in law and ethics

journals, and is the managing editor of the American

Business Law Journal.

of the virtues. We intend to articulate our reasons

for supporting a central if not an exclusive role

for virtue ethics.

II. Virtue ethics and quandary ethics:

divergent models

We are not interested in critiquing Stereotypie models of teaching business ethics courses. Our

objective is to explore ways that will enrich the

innovative models that are available. Specifically, we want to advance the view that a study of the

virtues merits a central place in these courses.

To generalize from available texts,3 while at the

same time making allowances for the many ways in which experienced classroom teachers relate

to their students, business ethics courses are

mainly characterized by the application of

Kantian, utilitarian, rights, and contractarian

theory to the ethical dilemmas or quandaries.

Quandary ethics, and the quandary model for

teaching business ethics, makes a sound assump tion followed by a questionable one. The sound

assumption is that managers will inevitably find

themselves in moral jams. The questionable one

is that the job of ethical theory is to get the

manager out of that jam. It is not surprising, then, that courses built on this model blend

ethical theory with the case approach. Students

are forewarned of the dilemmas that they are

likely to encounter, and then they are armed

with the intellectual tools to extricate themselves

form those dilemmas.

Our perception is that the impact this

approach has on business students is not very

profound and note entirely positive. It is not very

profound because it does not relate to the way

Journal of Business Ethics 17: 25-38, 1998.

? 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.



26 J. McCracken et al.

they live their lives. No one - business student,

business manager, or average citizen - lives their

life from jam to jam, quandary to quandary, dilemma to dilemma. The rule-based approach of quandary ethics is not entirely positive because

it raises the false hope that there will be a rule

for every quandary.

How, then, do students, managers, and most

other people actually handle troublesome, prob lematic dilemmas? We believe that they resolve

them in ways consistent with the community or

cultural ideals that have influenced and nurtured

them for a lifetime ?

ideals that they have come

to identify with and to internalize, ideals that

have been instilled in them since childhood by

example and instruction of family, teachers, and

friends. One might characterize their responses to jams or quandaries as natural, reflexive,

instinctive, unthinking, instantaneous, or auto

matic, and they do at least appear that way to an

observer. More accurately, however, these

responses are the products of good habits and

good character developed over a lifetime.

Young managers see their business careers as a

new phase in an on-going pattern, a pattern that

was beginning to take shape even before B

school. In learning to be good managers, just as

in learning to excel in any discipline, their

character will be tested by a host of obstacles and

negative influences. For example, what is a young

manager to do when a group member, or a

group 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 speak to these important concerns, and, for that reason,

rule-dependence offers a false security. We want

to claim that rules, and the Kantian, utilitarian,

rights, and contractarian theories that support

them, are baselines like the law is a baseline. The

universality of these rules is one test for the

Tightness of actions, but it is a primitive test and

certainly not the only one.

Another reason that the quandary model is not

entirely positive is its focus on ethical theory as

an intellectual exercise. It fosters the belief that

only university professors -

or, at least, the ones

who can understand it -

worry about ethical

theory or its application. Worse still, it implies that if one becomes articulate enough in ethical

theory, there is a plausible way out of most jams. We believe that this promotes a "shoppers"

attitude toward ethical problems, and that it

produces only the most superficial analysis. Some

people do in fact go "shopping" for justice -

for

that matter, they shop for duty, rights, and utility as well. That hardly strikes us as an appropriate

disposition to cultivate. We believe that this

mind-set, even if we have overstated it somewhat, is true enough, and pervasive enough, to justify examination of an alternative model.

The virtue ethics model is focused not so

much on how to resolve problems as it is on how

to live one's life. It is concerned with moral

enlightenment, moral education, and the good for mankind rather than with resolving dilemmas.

As Edmund Pincoffs noted more than twenty

years ago, quandaries, and their resolution, were

distinctly secondary concerns for Aristotle.

[IJf Aristotle does not present us with quandaries into which the individual may fall, and which he

must puzzle and pry his way out of, this may be

just because Aristotle does not value the qualities that allow or require a man to become bogged

down in a marsh of indecision.4

We claim, then, that preventative medicine -

a prescriptive regimen for a healthy moral life

rather than a cure for moral quandaries ? is what

Aristotle had in mind. We believe that preven tion is the appropriate prescription for business

ethics courses, and, further, that the virtue ethics

model holds the greatest potential for the devel

opment of healthy business practices. At the very

least, it is deserving of treatment equal to that

of rule-based ethical theory.

III. Excellence: the mark of virtue ethics

"Excellence" may be the most popular business

buzzword of the last decade. However overused

the word may be, there is substance to the

concept. Steven Jobs did not rocket out of his

garage-lab to the top of his industry by producing a "merely adequate" computer, nor did Bill Gates

create "merely adequate" windows. From the



Virtue Ethics and The Parable of the Jadhu 27

mailroom to the boardroom, the express goal is

not adequacy, but excellence.

Students sense the irreconcilability of the

performative excellence that is demanded and

rewarded in the business world and the morally minimal proscriptions

- the "thou shalt nots"

-

that characterize many business ethics courses.3

Such courses seem to foster mediocrity by a focus

on conduct that is expected of moral morons, or that which is mandated or minimally permis sible. Ethics, in the eyes of the student, seems to

be 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 abstract

that it comes closer to a debating match for

philosophers than it does to a guide for action

in one's daily life.

If, however, the first requirement of our ethic

is that it strive for excellence, the student is

immediately able to understand to appreciate the

goal of this novel activity. Our task, then, is to

provide the student with some notion of what

this "ethical" excellence involves, how it con

tributes to the set of excellences which support and even constitute a thriving business, and why a successful businessperson will also be a "good" or "ethical" person.6

In an effort to capture the spirit of our thesis

in a single sentence, we want to claim that "The

virtues of business are virtuous." By this we mean

that the excellences or "virtues"7 of good business practices are a consistent and harmo

nious component of those virtues that are

identified with the good of the whole, or the

good for mankind. The argument is simple, and

as it has been articulated in detail by others.8 We

will sketch only the essentials, and we will start

with the first and still the most important

exponent of the virtues, Aristotle.

At the opening of his Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle claims that:

Every art and every enquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been

declared to be that at which all things aim.9

In any organism, the good of the members is

defined 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" is

essential to the proper functioning of the house

hold, the good citizen fosters the activity of the

polis, the political community. Aristotle goes on

in 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 most

authoritative art . . . and politics appears to be of

this nature.

[F] or even if the end is the same for a single man

and a state, that of the state seems at all events

greater and more complete

. . . though it is worth

while to attain the end merely for one man, it is

finer 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 the

community,12 the continued practice of such

behavior displays, on Aristotle's view, that that

member of the community misunderstands what

will really make him or her happy. The various

types of self-interest are all to be understood as

desires for the merely "apparent" good. His or

her true good, on the other hand, the "good for

man," which Aristotle calls "eudaimonia" (trans lated happiness, flourishing, or doing well), is

achievable only in a good community, one with

good laws and citizens of good character.

Aristotle believes that without a character to be

proud of, a person cannot genuinely be happy. It follows, then, that a person's natural efforts

ought to be directed toward perfecting his or her

character and toward perfecting the community in which character is defined and on which it

depends.13

Similarly, then, the good of the organism

depends on, and may even be said to be consti

tuted by, the good of its parts. If the foot is

broken, the body cannot walk. This is particu

larly true of those parts which are fundamental

to the organism. The good of the heart is utterly crucial to the good of the body; we simply cannot talk about the good of any part of the

body unless we presuppose a beating heart. The




"heart" of the state or community is its good citizens, and these citizens are nurtured and

shaped by the state or community with a good constitution. We want to claim that the "heart"

of the business firm is its good employees, and

that these employees are nurtured and shaped by the firm with a morally sound corporate policy.

Business activity is an integral part of a func

tioning, productive society. Every person who

participates in business activity is both a business

practitioner (a member of a firm or other cor

porate or cooperative endeavor) and a member

of society. Business, if it is to seek and to

maintain its own good, must also seek and

maintain the good of society.14 Since business

provides many if not most of the goods that are

necessary for the good of society's members,15 this is a natural and obvious role for business.16

Further, each business person will necessarily seek the good of the business in which he or she

is engaged, and the good of the larger society which encompasses both the individual business

person and the business enterprise. This good will not be the only good which that person

seeks, but it will and must be one of the goods. The identity we seek to establish is that of a

good business person as a good person. Insofar

as business is an integral and indispensable part of society, any individual who, as a good business

person, helps business along also helps society

along in the process.17 First of all, business is "activity."18 Organized

activities of the members of a whole (whether

they be businesses within society or business

persons within a business) are "practices."19 Business is a practice, and it is composed of

various practices. That is, within the larger

practice 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 not

with the variety of practices within business, but

with 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 such

generally 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 the

fact that business operates according to a system of merit.23 On the small scale, the employee who

is hard-working, who seeks and produces the

good of the company, will get the raise or the

promotion, while the lazy employee, who cares

only for his own paycheck and tries to get by with the bare minimum, will be left further and

further behind with every review.24 There are also

more 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 On

the larger scale, we have the old, persistent and

persuasive capitalist idea that quality goods will

be rewarded by the market. Build a better

computer, market it with a sense of honesty, deal

fairly and reasonably with your customers, live

up to your contractual promises, and you will

flourish, your company will flourish, and society will flourish.

This brings us back to Aristotle's idea that the

good life can exist only in a good society. For

Aristotle, as for us today, virtue, and its all

important objective, happiness, can only be

achieved in a healthy political community pre

cisely because that community encourages and

reinforces the virtues which constitute it.

Ultimately, all of these good behaviors are

nurtured by and tend toward a vision of the good which the society as a whole shares ?

liberty,

justice, and the pursuit of happiness. As this goal or telos of the society is shared by each member, and since all of the particular virtues seek some

aspect of this goal, the virtues, like the people who develop them, are brought together in the

harmonious pursuit of that telos. As a society works best when its members are unified, so the

virtue ethics model, ideally construed, depends on a unity of the virtues.26 An activity whose

successful practice is inconsistent with this

highest good, then, is not a good activity, however successfully its practitioners may engage in it. A bad activity done well - for example, a

flawless set of financial statements prepared for a

drug lord - is still a bad activity, a vice, and

should be abandoned.27

The question then becomes how can a

business ethics class help business students enrich

their notion of the good and reinforce their




inclinations to advance the good? That is, in a

single course, how can we best convey the

message that the main concern of ethics is the

development of good character rather than a set

of rules to get us out of moral jams? One way is

to 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 set

of rules, reading Aristotle won't help much. If

we are to impact the way business students

understand goodness and virtue, we must change our approach to the cases and issues we examine

in class. We need to examine these materials in

terms of crises of character ? not what's mini

mally right for everybody, but what's right for a

person of character, for "you." We need to ask

questions about these cases that focus on issues

of character and how strengths and weaknesses of

character play themselves out in a business

context.

We have already suggested in our footnotes

some assignments that might direct students'

attention to questions of moral excellence in

business. To really revise the conventional frame

work of moral inquiry, however, a different way to read and apply moral theory must be offered

to students. What follows is an extended example of one such application. We believe that you will

find it to be illustrative of the way in which cases

that you are already familiar with can be given a

new, and challenging, perspective.

IV. The story of the Sadhu

In his widely acclaimed article, "The Parable of

the Sahdu,"28 Bowen McCoy presents a case

study of a classic moral dilemma. In the text that

follows, we will explain why we believe that

quandary-ethical models fail to adequately

analyze even this obvious case. In a contrasting

mode, we explain how an analysis of the case on

a virtue-ethical model shows the meaningful and

positive didactic effect which the article can have

in the classroom.

The story goes as follows. McCoy's group and

a party of Swiss were hiking in the Himalayas. The weather conditions that day were very

hazardous, and finishing the hike required that

the party forge ahead and avail themselves of

every slight break in the weather. A party of New

Zealanders was hiking ahead of them, and a party of Japanese behind.

At one point, the New Zealanders brought down to McCoy's party the half-dead body of an

Indian Sadhu, a holy man. Barefoot, under

dressed and malnourished, the man was very ill

indeed, and needed immediate attention in order

to survive. McCoy's group and the Japanese revived the Sadhu and gave him food, water,

warm clothing, and directions to safety below,

but no one was willing to abandon the trip to

accompany him down the mountain. Finally, no

one ever learned the fate of the Sahdu. Did he

survive or perish ?

that question was never far

from McCoy's thoughts. The article is McCoy's reflections upon his and

the others' handling of the incident, and these

reflection were provoked in part by the admoni

tions of Stephen, a fellow hiker. McCoy leads

one to the view that the hikers' actions were

morally suspect, but there is no argument that

these actions were not in accord with the pre dominant moral principles of our day. By passing the buck, by investing the very least of them

selves that was necessary and by blinding them

selves, in their individual actions, to the final

outcome of the group effort, claims McCoy, the

hikers all behaved like typical corporate bureau

crats.

McCoy suggests that the moral of the story of the Sahdu is that the corporate culture should

offer more support and direction for the goals and values of the individuals working within the

firm. Management should "be sensitive to indi

vidual needs . . . shape them and . . . direct and

focus them for the benefit of the group as a

whole."29 He cites the cause of the hikers'

blameworthiness in the lack of group support for

individual conscientiousness. "[W]ithout . . .

such support," he claims, "... the individual is

lost".30

What is the best way to teach this article, or

any case or article, that involves real people in

real jams? We believe that these materials should

be discussed coextensively with a moral theory or a set of moral theories which (1) justify




McCoy's conclusion that the hikers' actions were

blameworthy, (2) explain the relevance of the

story to the corporate world, and (3) offer sound

alternatives to the moral failures that the story cites. We do not believe that business ethics

classes that focus exclusively on "rule-based" or

"quandary-ethical" moral theories - deontology,

utilitarianism, and contractarianism (particularly in its Rawlsian form)

- can do this. Those

models cannot account for the "values of the

individual" that are necessary to an adequate

theory of business ethics.

We understand the "values of the individual"

as those moral values having to do with character

and community - with living a life that one can

be proud of. And we understand these values to

be defined for an agent within the political and

social context in which he or she lives. By use

of a virtue-ethical model then - a model which

evaluates actions in terms of their place in the

life of a particular person, with a particular character, in a particular community

? we will

be able to analyze the story in terms of the

individual values which McCoy claims are focal

to it. This will enable us to meet the three

criteria that we have offered above for a moral

theory.

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 these

theories come necessarily to agree with McCoy's conclusion that the actions of the hikers were

wrong. In fact, the Tightness of their actions can

easily be justified by any one of the rule-based

theories.

Let us first consider Kantianism. Its applica tion to the Sadhu story elicits two classic

problems with Kantian moral theory: one, that

Kantianism provides no grounds for resolving conflicts between two duties of the same order;

and, two, that sufficiently narrow maxims of

action may be universalized even when the

actions they characterize are ones that we are

inclined to call impermissible. For instance, as regards the first problem, we

find in the Groundwork that while beneficence is

a duty (an imperfect duty to others), so is the

development of one's talents and interests (an

imperfect one to oneself).31 The case could be

made that members of the hiking party had a

duty to themselves to try to finish the expedition

(after all, it was an educational and cultural

experience, as well as a recreational one). Parents, for instance, often use similar reasoning to

encourage their children to be competitive in

school, even when their classmates suffer for lack

of tutoring and reinforcement by these faster

learners. Some of our business ethics students

take something like this as their model when

trying to apply Kant. If one takes the hikers to

have such a duty, that duty conflicts irresolvably with their duty to assure the safety of the Sadhu.

The point can be made stronger still. Granting that we can universalize a maxim expressing the

will to help the Sadhu to safety, we can equally well universalize the maxim for what the hikers

actually did. Suppose the tables were turned -

say, the Sadhu was visiting the Grand Canyon and

found one of the hikers seriously ill - wouldn't

we want for the Sadhu to see the magnificence of North America? It is perfectly reasonable to

put ourselves in the Sadhu's position and still

justify continuing the Hike. After all, no one is

being left for dead. In reality, the Sadhu was left

with much better prospects than those in which

he was found. It is virtually certain that he would

have died in the absence of the assistance that was

rendered to him.

As regards the second problem ?

the univer

salizability of sufficiently narrow maxims ? we

could quite reasonably attribute to the hikers a

maxim which would pass the strict universaliz

ability test. It might go something like this:

"Whenever I am hiking in a difficult terrain

which is exotic for me, under brutal weather

conditions, and believe that I will not have an

opportunity to repeat this rare and wonderful

experience, I will aid a stranger in need to the

extent that I may also finish the hike while it is

possible for me to do so". Such a maxim is

universalizable. It would be rational for anyone in this situation so to act. It respects equally the

ends 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 a

narrow maxim like this as they would be one

which obliges the hikers to escort the Sadhu

down the mountain and see him through his

recovery. In fact, anyone who has taught one of

the classic moral "quandaries" in an applied ethics class knows that students do tend to

come up with narrow maxims. It becomes some

thing of a challenge to do this, and it allows

for questionable behavior. Like many scenarios

with extenuating circumstances, there are several

courses of action which are all equally rational

and universalizable, and the Kantian test gives little help to the troubled individual deciding

what to do.32

Let us next consider contractarianism. We will

have to begin with a clearly contrived "social

contract" among the principal parties: the New

Zealanders, the Americans and Swiss, the

Japanese, and the Sadhu. Together in the

Himalayas, we must suppose, they form a proto

community in the state of nature. This is, in

itself, a questionable move, but one which any teacher of applied ethics who wants to use a

contractarian theory must make. In addition, we

will have to choose a particular contractarian

theorist because not all contractarian theories

agree about even the most fundamental moral

principles, and some cannot be readily bent to fit

the situation. It would appear, for example, that

Hobbesianism would not be applicable here.

Since the Sadhu is not able to kill the hikers as

easily as they are able to kill him, the group would not appear to be in a Hobbesian State of

Nature. Similarly, the duty of beneficence which

is at stake here is not equally important to all

contractarian theories. Judging from the available

texts, the contractarian theory most commonly used in business ethics classes today is that of John

Rawls, and so let us try applying Rawls to the

Sadhu.

Suppose that the members of the three hiking

parties and the Sadhu all meet before being given their identities or going to Nepal. In this state,

they all ware the "veil of ignorance" about their

respective roles in the upcoming difficulty. Next

they will choose some set of duties which

preserve the two rules of Justice as Fairness: (1)

they guarantee to themselves the most freedom

possible for each consistent with an equal freedom for all, and (2) they guarantee everyone's benefit under anyone's leadership.33

A case may be easily made that none of the

hiker's violated the contract. Not knowing beforehand who would be in need and who

would be able to offer help, no one can be held

responsible for the condition in which the Sadhu

was found. All have an equal freedom - no one

is forced to help anyone else, nor has anyone been allowed to hurt anyone else.

Given the social inequality in this parable, it

is important to note that Rawls' difference

principle is upheld as well. The Sadhu is indeed

better off with the inequality. If the hikers were

in the same state of poverty and debility as he, if they had no extra strength or provisions for

themselves, then the Sadhu's death would have

been both more certain and more agonizing than

under the present unequal circumstances.

Thus, the hiker's actions are consonant with at

least the Rawlsian version of contractarianism,

and, again, the conscientious moral decision

maker has no less a sinking feeling and no more

help in his or her decision after a Rawlsian

analysis than before. Here, as in the Kantian

analysis, students will be able to demonstrate that

the "letter of the law" has been observed. This

is not the lesson we are interested in conveying, however.

Lastly, and most obviously of all the rule-based

theories, the hikers' action can be justified on

utilitarian grounds. The hikers' combined enjoy ment of this once-in-each-of-their-lifetimes

experience, plus their combined absence of pain in not risking their own safety, plus the assuage

ment of guilt which each was allowed by doing the little each one did for the Sadhu, may, despite the continued danger to the Sadhu involved in

this choice, easily sum to a larger utility than

would helping the Sadhu minus the expense of

the hike and risk to the hikers. Even a rule

utilitarian would have to admit that justice and

beneficence were preserved. No one was wrongly

punished, and, in fact, the Sadhu's situation was

improved. Once more, then, the rule-governed

theory allows a justification for the hikers'




actions, McCoy's judgment is overruled, and

readers are left without help in making right decisions in similar cases.

VI. The failure of rule-based theories

Regarding our first criterion for an adequate moral theory

- that it be able to justify McCoy's conclusion that the hikers' actions were blame

worthy - we find that none of these standard

analyses are supportive of that view. Nor, conse

quently, can these analyses support a reader who

is sympathetic with McCoy and believes the

hikers' to have been morally blameworthy. Worse

still, each of these rule-based treatments give the

more sophisticated students practice in justifying

questionable behavior, a common and debili

tating problem in business ethics classes.

Rule-based theories fail to meet our second

criterion as well. None of them explain the

relevance of the story to the corporate world. By

contriving the story into a "quandary" which can

be solved by the application of a rule, these

theories divorce the dilemma from the context.

Consequently the analogy which McCoy draws

between that context and the corporate/bureau cratic one is warped. As the story is colored by a rule-based analysis, each hiker has only an

abstract moral obligation toward the Sadhu, but

in McCoy's version the hikers have individual

values based on a set of shared goals. On

McCoy's retrospective view, the hikers want to

take care of the Sadhu; they want to finish and

enjoy the hike; and most importantly, they each

want to go on, after the hike is over, to live a

life worthy of the admiration of others, including the friends they hiked with that fateful day.

McCoy's friend Stephen, you recall, was

ashamed of the behavior of everyone, but espe

cially ashamed his own and McCoy's behavior.

The fact that McCoy included this in his telling of the story, and that readers can well understand

his friend's viewpoint, demonstrates McCoy's

point that we do indeed share goals and define

our individual values in group or community terms. You can draw your own conclusion, but

we claim that McCoy's narration of how those

few moments were actually lived on that icy

mountain path, of how that monumental choice

was made, and of its deeply troubling conse

quences, stands in stark rebuttal of rule-based

arguments that justify the minimal actions of the

hikers.

The rule-based theories tend inherently to

exacerbate the problems McCoy cites. Their very

understanding of moral obligation fosters neglect for cooperative efforts and for intersubjective

relationships. Thus, by applying only the rule

based theories, we distort the reality of the

business decision-making process. Rule-based

analysis conceptualizes a moral question as arising for a generic agent in total isolation - one who

is totally context-free, character-free and who

gets his or her moral clues only from his or her

innate faculty of reason.

In keeping with our third criterion, the

virtue-ethical model offers sound alternatives to

the moral failures that the story cites. It con

ceptualizes a moral question as arising for a

particular agent, of particular moral character, who lives and works in association with others

who share a set of goals, duties, traditions, and

a stake in the success of the company. We believe

the virtue-ethical model, then, captures the way we do think about moral problems and about

ourselves. "Quandary-ethical" models screen

these very personal and contextual realities out

of the decision process. They supply a minimal

baseline that guards against our worse behaviors, and they respond to the question of what is

minimally required or permissible. A more

adequate moral theory accounts, as virtue ethics

accounts, for the conduct of a real human being with a real history situated in a community of

shared values.

So long as we limit business ethics to these

rule-based theories, it will remain out-of-touch.

Rule-based theories overlook the very principle of corporate business practice, namely that it

incorporates the various individual efforts, talents

and goals of its members into a unity.

Unfortunately, the inadequate and unrealistic

picture of business decision-making which we

derive from the rule-based theories is not an

innocuous mistake. It does and has affected the

way business people think about ethics. Many have come to think of ethical reasoning as an




alien and inept practice, in opposition to the

goals of business. Mastering the application of

ethical theory becomes, for some, just one more

hypocrisy necessary to winning the corporate

game. For others, it becomes just a pale and

overly long version of their own pangs of

conscience.

Students who are confronted with these modes

of analysis are left in an awkward position. They find that the theories they are offered in their

ethics class (1) can be used to justify several

different courses of action, some of which jibe with their moral intuitions and some of which

do not; and (2) seem unrelated to the world to

which their business classes have introduced

them. In response, they may dismiss ethical

theory entirely as inadequate, arbitrary, and alien

to their own intuitive pangs of conscience. Or,

they may embrace ethical theory at the expense of many of their own moral intuitions. They may even embrace ethical theory as a magician's

technique and embark eagerly upon the prospect of justifying questionable behavior. In any of

these events, both the moral theories and the

students' moral hunches are done an injustice, and the class is more or less a failure in its effort

to educate students for their role as managers.

VII. How better to understand the

Sadhu story

As we mentioned above, an adequate treatment

of the Sadhu case would require validation of

McCoy's view that the hikers' actions were

blameworthy, and support for his analogy to

corporate decision-making. It also calls for a

theoretical framework within which both the

moral failure of the hikers and its correction can

be understood. The rule-governed theories used

in the standard business ethics class fail on the

first two counts in that they justify minimalist,

less-than-conscientious behavior, and they overlook the shared goals and traditions of

business. These theories fail also on the third

count - they cannot adequately explain what was

wrong with the hikers' actions nor help us

envision what they should have done instead.

Rule-governed or "quandry" theories fail on

the third count because -

modelled as they are

on notions of law and penology -

they can

distinguish only between actions that are morally

permissible 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 relevant

to the Sadhu story or others like it. These

theories, like the law in the modern state, take

agents to be equals or alike, not because they share a set of values or a sense of what makes

life worth living, but because they each personify an abstract "lowest common denominator".

Again, this is not the vision of agency relevant

to the story.

Surely the actions of the hikers were permis sible. No moral theory would have forbade them

from helping the Sadhu to the meager extent

they did so.34 The relevant distinction in cases

such as the Sadhu is not between actions that

are right and those that are wrong, but between

actions that are merely okay and those that are

excellent - between those that are merely justi fiable and those that are actually praiseworthy. The Sadhu parable brings into relief our notions

about the different moral characters of persons, rather than our justifications of the moral worth

of actions. The least we expect from others,

McCoy implies, is that they act justifiably. But

as moral persons we have an obligation to expect the most from ourselves and from others, and

that is that we and they behave well.

McCoy regrets, not that he and other group members acted impermissibly, but that they acted

merely permissibly ? that they acted only as

anyone would be expected to act, and not as a

good person would be expected to act. McCoy and his fellow hikers were given one of life's rare

opportunities to be heroes, and they let it pass unmet. The hikers' actions, then, were blame

worthy, because they were merely justifiable in a

situation which actually called for heroism and

sacrifice.

This vision of moral success as having a

character to be proud of is fundamental to

Aristotelian ethics. But the distinction is par

ticularly well drawn in Book One of the Ethics2**

as the distinction between praiseworthiness and prizeworthiness. Praise, Aristotle claims, is




properly due to virtue insofar as it produces good or right actions. But, he insists, that is not what

we think of as the good, or happiness - a suc

cessful, happy, fulfilling life. Having a model

character is, according to Aristotle, something we

ought to prize. It is good for its own sake, and

it 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 we

prize such a life that we are actually eager to

"trouble ourselves" to do more than what is

merely justifiable. In this way, because we want

to be rightly proud of ourselves, better behavior

also becomes easier.

We suggest that a virtue-ethical model could

enlighten an analysis of the Sadhu story and

others like it. This is because only in a notion

of virtue, and not in the notions of duty, con

tractual obligation, or utility, is a distinction made

between mere moral adequacy on the one hand

and moral excellence on the other - only in the

notion of virtue, and not in these other notions, is the inter-subjectivity inherent to business

practices taken into account in ethical reasoning. This is because only a virtue-ethical model

suggests that communities of people (or maybe even the community of mankind) share a vision

of the good life. Thus, only a virtue-ethical

model offers a framework in which we can strive

successfully to lead such a life by learning good habits of practice at the various roles we play in

our community, and by learning how these roles

relate to each other in a successful community. These good habits, the virtues, are the "preven tative medicine" that keeps us from finding ourselves in moral "quandaries."

Only by use of the notion of virtue can we

make sense of the sort of existential disappoint ment experienced by an agent when he or she

has cut corners, skimped on the proper thing to

do, or passed the buck, as did the hikers in

McCoy's story. This is because only the notion

of virtue supports a moral theory in which

excellence, rather than mediocrity, is demanded

of us.

VIL Conclusion

What follows from our discussion is that to

understand a case study as a dilemma or quandary to be solved with a set of rules is a distinct signal that our prescriptive regimen for a healthy moral

life - our preventative medicine - has failed. For

a student to understand a business person who

is privy to corporate inside information as a

person posed with a dilemma whether "to trade

or not to trade," rather than as a person who has

been awarded the rare honor of the trust of

corporate stockholders, indicates that he or she

identifies with mediocrity of character, calcula

tion, greed, and moral puzzlement. For a student

to understand a business person whose supervi sors are demanding the completion of 24 hours

of work in 8 hours as someone faced with the

dilemma of whether to do bad work or lose his

or her job, rather than as a person with laudably

high standards, indicates that the student identi

fies with cowardliness, carelessness, and economic

despair. That with which we identify ourselves

indicates our evaluation of our own character.

To pose questions for our students in terms

of moral quandaries is actually to facilitate bad

habits of moral thinking by inviting them to

identify with the vices ? mediocrity, greed,

cowardliness, carelessness - and to justify those

choices on some minimal, at least permissible, moral standard. To encourage them, on the other

hand, to think of themselves in a business career

as extended moral examples, as contributions to a

tradition of the virtues and of the good for man, by

posing questions to them in terms of excellences

of character, is actually to facilitate good habits

of moral thinking. We see these good moral

habits as the "dose of prevention" that will help

keep business persons out of moral jams in the

first place, and will help them sail heroically

through those situations in which they might otherwise be tempted by the vices.

Without recounting the now-familiar story of

Johnson and Johnson's decision to recall and to

destroy 31 million bottles of contaminated Extra

Strength Tylenol, we want to close with the

observation that, in our view, this remarkable

decision 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 that

J&J had always placed first in its corporate credo:

"We believe our first responsibility is to the

doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and to

all others who use our services and products." In view ofthat credo and of the way in which

it has characterized the moral culture at J&J since

the 1940's, one could scarcely imagine that it

could do otherwise. To have done otherwise

would have been as out-of-character as a physi cian doing intentional harm or as some other

dedicated professional deliberately betraying a

trust. Kantians at the helm would have noted that

the credo made no promises,36 utilitarians would

have debated "the greatest good for the greatest number" interminably, while Rawlsians would

have no guidance on the "least advantaged" -

the

innocent victims who were equally vulnerable

to the possibility of contaminated Bufferin,

Excedrin, Anacin, or Bayer or the innocent

stakeholders of J&J who had to contend with a

$100 million loss.37 This is not to suggest for a

moment that the decision to withdraw Tylenol from the market was a snap decision, or that it

was not made reflectively. We do claim, however, that a virtue ethics understanding of the Johnson

& Johnson story is the most likely, the most

plausible, and the most satisfying explanation. Like Buzz McCoy and his band of climbers,

a victim - in fact, several victims and innocent

ones at that ? had fallen into Johnson & Johnson's hands. Unlike Buzz, J&J did recognize the

problem. It did not "hike" through the dilemma

or pretend it was not there. One big difference, of course, was that J&J had already articulated

its values, it had already developed a cohesive

corporate culture. For decades, Johnson &

Johnson lived with the culture, abided by it and

instilled it into the fabric of the firm. We believe

that Johnson & Johnson -

the Board, the CEO, the officers and employees

- genuinely identified

itself with an ideal, namely, the well-being of its

community-of-customers. This took it beyond short term concerns about profit and loss, and it

did so because J&J could not see itself acting in

any other way. It had developed a culture of

care and healing, and with that culture, it had

developed the virtues, the excellences, the

strength of character to "do the good," to "do

the right thing." Did J&J serve its self-interest in

the process? Yes, and we take pleasure in

extolling that kind of self-interest. Self-interest

like that is so closely tied to the good of the

community, so closely woven into the body of

the community, that there is no division of

interest, no hostility or antagonism between self

and community. Self-interest becomes one and

the same with the interest of the community. On that icy mountain path, the Sadhu was not

welcomed by a community. He was attended to

by people who were at least as nice as Buzz was,

people who met the minimum, but by people who wanted to be on their way and back on

track. We are not deprecating their efforts - they

may have saved a life. But we do not envy them

their special hell - did the Sadhu live or did he die?

We believe that the study of virtue ethics is

especially relevant to business students and to

business managers. It will not make heros of us

all, nor is it destined to give us wealth, but when

we reflect on a life well lived - a happy life - it

will be a life in a community that made us strong when we were weak, and a community made

stronger still by our identity with its ideals.

Notes

1 Robbin Derry and Ronald M. Green: 1988, 'Ethical Theory in Business Ethics: A Critical

Assessment,' 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 Business

Ethics: Why Don't the Philosophers Give Business

Students What They Need?', Business Ethics Quarterly 1(4), 385-394. 4

See supra n. 2, 'Quandary Ethics', at 554. D

Of course all of us who have taught business ethics

remember the student who raises his hand to protest: "Well, this is fine for a university professor, but we

all know that no successful businessman worries about

these things." Before dismissing this student from our

minds, we do well to recall that for every one student

brave enough to raise his voice, fifty have shared the

thought but remained silent.




6 The idea being precisely the opposite of that

argued by Alfred Carr in his "Is Business Bluffing Ethical?" Harvard Business Review, Jan.-Feb. 1968.

That is, not only are the excellences of a busi

nessperson not opposed to the excellences of any

good citizen or community member, but the virtues of the good citizen are required before we can rightly call a

businessperson "excellent." 7

Arete, Aristotle's general term for human activity

best pursued, is varyingly translated as "virtue" and

(today, more

commonly) "excellence". Virtue has

taken decidedly Christian overtones since Aristotle's

time resulting in ideas of virtue which Aristotle would neither have appreciated nor understood. It is

important to note, however, that the "cardinal

virtues" of Christianity (prudence, justice, temper ance, and fortitude) are all perfectly reconcilable with

Aristotle's notion of arete. In his Ethics, the contem

porary moral philosopher William Frankena provides us with a helpful definition of virtue: "virtues are

dispositions or traits that are not wholly innate; they must all be acquired, at least in part, by teaching and

practice, or, perhaps, by grace. They are also traits of

'character,' rather than 'personality' like charm or

shyness, and they all involve a tendency to do certain

kinds of action in certain kinds of situations, not just to think or feel certain ways. They are not just abilities or skills, like intelligence or carpentry, which one may have without using." (2ed. 1963, 63). 8

Perhaps the most interesting and compelling of recent versions is offered by Robert Solomon in Ethics and Excellence (1992). The argument which we draw here does not depend upon any particular argument

of the many available. It is intended to present what we take to be Aristotelean arguments. 9

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1094al. 10

As Aristotle affirms when he insists that the good life can truly be found only in a good city. The

metaphor of the living organism is also Aristotle's. 11

Nicomachean Ethics 1049al8-b8 12

Our reference is to the "freerider" problem which

has yet to see a satisfactory resolution in any ethical

or social theory. There are, of course, any number of

illustrations of this problem, but the mere fact that we

have such rough-and-ready examples of abuse, as in,

say, the infamous Pinto case, should perhaps serve to

encourage us that these transgressions do come to

light and are recognized as mistakes by their perpe trators. 13

Nicomachean Ethics 1095al2-1101b7. 14

We do not immediately move from this to the

"social responsibility" argument, because the good of

society to which business contributes has yet to be

defined. What we establish here is that business, if it is indeed an activity which seeks its own good, must

also seek the good of the context in which its own

good is possible. 15 Food and clothing, to provide only the two most

immediate and obvious examples. 16 As even Aristotle, notorious for his criticism of

business, would agree. For Aristotle, remember,

business had two aspects: oecinomicus and chrematisike.

The first involves matters from the running of one's

household 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 for

society? Clearly not, for the reason that they flaunted the business rules that society endorsed. They became "free riders" on the system

- riders who did not pay

their dues. 18

A moment's reflection upon the etymology of the word confirms this rather obvious truism [busy-ness]. 19

Perhaps the best and certainly the most popular definition of a practice is offered by Alasdair

Maclntyre in his now-famous After Virtue: a practice provides "the arena in which the virtues are exhib

ited ... [a practice is] any coherent and complex form of human activity through which goods internal to

that form of activity are realized in the course of

trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers

to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the

ends and goods involved, are systematically extended

... In the ancient and medieval worlds the creation

and sustaining of human communities of households,

cities, nations is generally taken to be a practice in the

sense 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 and

business ethics construed on an Aristotelean or "virtue

ethic" account is to ask them to produce a definition

of business. Thus the process of close analysis of

business 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 and

examined by the class. Ingenuity, industriousness and

commitment are three that often come up in our

classes. Solomon, whose list has also proven fruitful

for class discussions, suggests honesty, fairness, trust

and toughness as the "basic" business virtues, and




follows these up with a detailed discussion of different

kinds of virtues exemplified in different areas of

business (Solomon, 1992, 207-251). We see such lists

as pedagogical exercises rather than ends-in-them

selves. Ultimately, the virtues which any person adopts will be defined by her community and her percep

tion of her own role within that community. For

business students to engage in informed discussions of

this topic, it is of course important that the class spend some time on

"corporate culture" and the different

roles which do in fact exist within business. For an

expanded list of virtues, see Pincoff's pioneering

Quandaries and Virtues, supra n. 2. 22

An interesting and valuable component of the class

will be the process of arriving at a list of behavioral

"excellences." We as teachers are not there to tell our

students what good business behavior is. On the

contrary, the method which we adopt presupposes a

community which will determine those behaviors.

What is excellence for an engineer may not, and very

likely will not, be excellence for a public relations

person. Although they will have many things in

common, the differences in their communities will

preserve and even require certain differences of

behavior. Nevertheless, we find that the lists of virtues

which different classes arrive at are by-and-large the

same. We take this to be one more piece of evidence

that our society, if we look at it carefully, does inform

us about the good. Our primary role as teachers is to

call the student's attention to this happy fact. 23

this notion of business as a "meritocracy", while

commonly accepted, is far from unproblematic. See

for example Norman Daniels "Merit and

Meritocracy" in Philosophy and Public Affairs 7 (1978):

206-223, or Robert Jackall's Moral Mazes. It is

however clear that the "merit" system is at the heart

of business as we understand it, and that "good" com

panies and good managers will seek to reward those

who merit reward. 24

This, at least, is the popular ideology. For a critical

view of "meritocracy" inside the bureaucracy of

leading firms within oligopolistic industries, see

Robert Jackall, Moral Mazes 41-74 (1988) (especially

"hitting your numbers," at 62). 2d

This last might fall within Maclntyre's rather

elusive 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 a

practice - that is, a good which is not some external

reward, like a promotion or a pat on the back - it is

true that most of us have a general idea of what

Maclntyre means by this notion, and that it has

something to do with the old idea that "anything

worth doing is worth doing well." That is to say, there

are some benefits which are accrued through having done something well which are entirely independent of 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. The

phenomenon of the passionate artist who is not

recognized by her age might well be discussed in this

connection. 26

Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue (2ed. 1984). 27

The problem of whether one can "do a bad job well" is a common question for virtue-ethical theory

in general, and obviously an important one for its

application to business ethics. An accounting student

who contemplates the possibility that he or she may

someday be balancing the books for a clever embez

zler will ask this very question. Both Plato and

Aristotle, as well as, among the Medievals, Anselm

and Aquinas, believed that a morally bad activity could not be done well. 28

Harvard Business Review 103-108 (Sept.-Oct.

1983). A partial re-enactment of this widely-used

essay is available in video from the Harvard Business

School film series. It includes the observations of a

panel of lay-people, business executives, and acade

mics moderated by Harvard law professor Arthur

Miller, with concluding remarks by the author, Bowen McCoy. 29

Supra, pp. 107-108. 30

Supra, p. 107. 31

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals II, 423.

32 Suppose, for classroom illustration, a student had

the means to save the Sadhu and the means to attend

a cultural event, and further suppose that this student

had to make a choice. One of these choices is clearly

an imperfect duty to someone else and the other an

imperfect duty to oneself. Kant gives the student no

guidance in this situation. While Kant would probably want the student to save the Sadhu, there is nothing

in his theory that would obligate or compel the

student to do so. 33

The Rawlsian version of these criteria may be

rendered as follows: 1. Each person has an equal right to the most extensive fundamental liberties consis

tent with similar liberties for all and 2. Social and

economic 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 of

Justice 61, 75-90, 108-114, 274-284, 342-350. 34

This paragraph and the following, as well as

our thesis in general, take their cue from Edmund




Pincoffs' work, supra note 2, p. 563. Observe

Professor Pincoffs' distinction between the Tightness of an act and the praiseworthiness of an agent. See also

Aristotle's distinction, noted below, between "praise

worthiness" and "prizeworthiness". 35 Nicomachean Ethics 1101bl0-1102a5.

36 Kantians would likely argue that the corporation

as an oral actor would, in this situation, have only

imperfect duties to those who were harmed by the contaminated capsules. Immanuel Kant, The

Metaphysical Principles of Virtues 48 (Ellington trans.

1964).

37 James Burke: 1989, A Career in American

Business (B), Harvard Business School #9-390-030

(the figure of $100 million is a James Burke estimate at p. 3).

The University of Texas at Austins,

Department of Management Science

and Information Systems CBA5.202,

Austin, Texas 78712-1175, U.S.A.



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