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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.
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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
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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
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28 J. McCracken et al.
"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
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Virtue Ethics and The Parable of the Jadhu 29
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
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30 J. McCracken et al.
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
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Virtue Ethics and The Parable of the Jadhu 31
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'
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32 J. McCracken et al.
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
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Virtue Ethics and The Parable of the Jadhu 33
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
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34 J. McCracken et al.
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
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Virtue Ethics and The Parable of the Jadhu 35
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.
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36 J. McCracken et al.
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
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Virtue Ethics and The Parable of the Jadhu 37
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
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38 J. McCracken et al.
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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