Pressure Temptation Parable Sadhu2 Background Ethics Set Skills Evaluating Ethical Issues Q29564621

Pressure and Temptation: The Parable of the Sadhu2

Now that you have background on ethics and a set of skills forevaluating ethical issues, the application to real-life dilemmasseems fairly straightforward. However, there is one additionalaspect of ethical decision making that causes complexities in thesimple tests and application of questions presented in the models.That aspect is pressure. We may know that human life is a paramountvalue and we do honor it, but what if human life got in the way ofone of our personal, critical, and lifetime goals? The followingreading provides a Wall Street investment banker’s view ofpressure, the value of human life, and ethical dilemmas. Bowen H.McCoy [In 1982], as the first participant in the new six-monthsabbatical program that Morgan Stanley has adopted, I enjoyed arare opportunity to collect my thoughts as well as do sometraveling. I spent the first three months in Nepal, walking 600miles through 200 villages in the Himalayas and climbing some120,000 vertical feet. On the trip my sole Western companion was ananthropologist who shed light on the cultural patterns of thevillages we passed through. During the Nepal hike, somethingoccurred that has had a powerful impact on my thinking aboutcorporate ethics. Although some might argue that the experience hasno relevance to business, it was a situation in which a basicethical dilemma suddenly intruded into the lives of a group ofindividuals. How the group responded I think holds a lesson for allorganizations no matter how defined. The Sadhu The Nepal experiencewas more rugged and adventuresome than I had anticipated. Mostcommercial treks last two or three weeks and cover a quarter of thedistance we traveled. My friend Stephen, the anthropologist, and Iwere halfway through the 60-day Himalayan part of the trip when wereached the high point, an 18,000-foot pass over a crest that we’dhave to traverse to reach the village of Muklinath, an ancient holyplace for pilgrims. Six years earlier I had suffered pulmonaryedema, an acute form of altitude sickness, at 16,500 feet in thevicinity of Everest base camp, so we were understandably concernedabout what would happen at 18,000 feet. Moreover, the Himalayaswere having their wettest spring in 20 years; hip-deep powder andice had already driven us off one ridge. If we failed to cross thepass, I feared that the last half of our “once in a lifetime” tripwould be ruined. The night before we would try the pass, we campedat a hut at 14,500 feet. In the photos taken at that camp, my faceappears wan. The last village we’d passed through was a sturdytwo-day walk below us, and I was tired. During the late afternoon,four backpackers from New Zealand joined us, and we spent most ofthe night awake, anticipating the climb. Below we could see thefires of two other parties, which turned out to be two Swisscouples and a Japanese hiking club. To get over the steep part ofthe climb before the sun melted the steps cut in the ice, wedeparted at 3:30 A.M. The New Zealanders left first, followed byStephen and myself, our porters and Sherpas, and then the Swiss.The Japanese lingered in their camp. The sky was clear, and we wereconfident that no spring storm would erupt that day to close thepass. At 15,500 feet, it looked to me as if Stephen were shufflingand staggering a bit, which are symptoms of altitude sickness. (Theinitial stage of altitude sickness brings a headache and nausea. Asthe condition worsens, a climber may encounter difficult breathing,disorientation, aphasia, and paralysis.) I felt strong, myadrenaline was flowing, but I was very concerned about my ultimateability to get across. A couple of our porters were also sufferingfrom the height, and Pasang, our Sherpa sirdar (leader), wasworried. Just after daybreak, while we rested at 15,500 feet, oneof the New Zealanders, who had gone ahead, came staggering downtoward us with a body slung across his shoulders. He dumped thealmost naked, barefoot body of an Indian holy man—a sadhu—at myfeet. He had found the pilgrim lying on the ice, shivering andsuffering from hypothermia. I cradled the sadhu’s head and laid himout on the rocks. The New Zealander was angry. He wanted to getacross the pass before the bright sun melted the snow. He said,“Look, I’ve done what I can. You have porters and Sherpa guides.You care for him. We’re going on!” He turned and went back up themountain to join his friends. I took a carotid pulse and found thatthe sadhu was still alive. We figured he had probably visited theholy shrines at Muklinath and was on his way home. It was fruitlessto question why he had chosen this desperately high route insteadof the safe, heavily traveled caravan route through the KaliGandaki Gorge. Or why he was almost naked and with no shoes, or howlong he had been lying in the pass. The answers weren’t going tosolve our problem. Stephen and the four Swiss began stripping offouter clothing and opening their packs. The sadhu was soon clothedfrom head to foot. He was not able to walk, but he was very muchalive. I looked down the mountain and spotted below the Japaneseclimbers marching up with a horse. Without a great deal of thought,I told Stephen and Pasang that I was concerned about withstandingthe heights to come and wanted to get over the pass. I took offafter several of our porters who had gone ahead. On the steep partof the ascent where, if the ice steps had given way, I would haveslid down about 3,000 feet, I felt vertigo. I stopped for abreather, allowing the Swiss to catch up with me. I inquired aboutthe sadhu and Stephen. They said that the sadhu was fine and thatStephen was just behind. I set off again for the summit. Stephenarrived at the summit an hour after I did. Still exhilarated byvictory, I ran down the snow slope to congratulate him. He wassuffering from altitude sickness, walking fifteen steps, thenstopping, walking fifteen steps, then stopping, walking fifteensteps, then stopping. When I reached them, Stephen glared at me andsaid: “How do you feel about contributing to the death of a fellowman?” I did not fully comprehend what he meant. “Is the sadhudead?” I inquired. “No,” replied Stephen, “but he surely will be!”After I had gone, and the Swiss had departed not long after,Stephen had remained with the sadhu. When the Japanese had arrived,Stephen had asked to use their horse to transport the sadhu down tothe hut. They had refused. He had then asked Pasang to have a groupof our porters carry the sadhu. Pasang had resisted the idea,saying that the porters would have to exert all their energy to getthemselves over the pass. He had thought they could not carry a mandown 1,000 feet to the hut, reclimb the slope, and get acrosssafely before the snow melted. Pasang had pressed Stephen not todelay any longer. The Sherpas had carried the sadhu down to a rockin the sun at about 15,000 feet and had pointed out the hut another500 feet below. The Japanese had given him food and drink. Whenthey had last seen him he was listlessly throwing rocks at theJapanese party’s dog, which had frightened him. We do not know ifthe sadhu lived or died. For many of the following days andevenings Stephen and I discussed and debated our behavior towardthe sadhu. Stephen is a committed Quaker with deep moral vision. Hesaid, “I feel that what happened with the sadhu is a good exampleof the breakdown between the individual ethic and the corporateethic. No one person was willing to assume ultimate responsibilityfor the sadhu. Each was willing to do his bit just so long as itwas not too inconvenient. When it got to be a bother, everyone justpassed the buck to someone else and took off. Jesus was relevant toa more individualist stage of society, and how do we interpret histeaching today in a world filled with large, impersonalorganizations and groups?” I defended the larger group, saying,“Look, we all cared. We all stopped and gave aid and comfort.Everyone did his bit. The New Zealander carried him down below thesnow line. I took his pulse and suggested we treat him forhypothermia. You and the Swiss gave him clothing and got him warmedup. The Japanese gave him food and water. The Sherpas carried himdown to the sun and pointed out the easy trail toward the hut. Hewas well enough to throw rocks at a dog. What more could we do?”“You have just described the typical affluent Westerner’s responseto a problem. Throwing money—in this case food and sweaters—at it,but not solving the fundamentals!” Stephen retorted. “What wouldsatisfy you?” I said. “Here we are, a group of New Zealanders,Swiss, Americans, and Japanese who have never met before and whoare at the apex of one of the most powerful experiences of ourlives. Some years the pass is so bad no one gets over it. Whatright does an almost naked pilgrim who chooses the wrong trail haveto disrupt our lives? Even the Sherpas had no interest in riskingthe trip to help him beyond a certain point.” Stephen calmlyrebutted, “I wonder what the Sherpas would have done if the sadhuhad been a well-dressed Nepali, or what the Japanese would havedone if the sadhu had been a well-dressed Asian, or what you wouldhave done, Buzz, if the sadhu had been a well-dressed Westernwoman?” “Where, in your opinion,” I asked instead, “is the limit ofour responsibility in a situation like this? We had our ownwell-being to worry about. Our Sherpa guides were unwilling tojeopardize us or the porters for the sadhu. No one else on themountain was willing to commit himself beyond certain self-imposedlimits.” Stephen said, “As individual Christians or people with aWestern ethical tradition, we can fulfill our obligations in such asituation only if (1) the sadhu dies in our care, (2) the sadhudemonstrates to us that he could undertake the two-day walk down tothe village, or (3) we carry the sadhu for two days down to thevillage and convince someone there to take care of him.” “Leavingthe sadhu in the sun with food and clothing, while he demonstratedhandeye coordination by throwing a rock at a dog, comes close tofulfilling items one and two,” I answered. “And it wouldn’t havemade sense to take him to the village where the people appeared tobe far less caring than the Sherpas, so the third condition isimpractical. Are you really saying that, no matter what theimplications, we should, at the drop of a hat, have changed ourentire plan?” The Individual vs. the Group Ethic Despite myarguments, I felt and continue to feel guilt about the sadhu. I hadliterally walked through a classic moral dilemma without fullythinking through the consequences. My excuses for my actionsinclude a high adrenaline flow, a superordinate goal, and aonce-in-a-lifetime opportunity—factors in the usual corporatesituation, especially when one is under stress. Real moral dilemmasare ambiguous, and many of us hike right through them, unaware thatthey exist. When, usually after the fact, someone makes an issue ofthem, we tend to resent his or her bringing it up. Often, when thefull import of what we have done (or not done) falls on us, we diginto a defensive position from which it is very dif- ficult toemerge. In rare circumstances we may contemplate what we have donefrom inside a prison. Had we mountaineers been free of physical andmental stress caused by the effort and the high altitude, we mighthave treated the sadhu differently. Yet isn’t stress the real testof personal and corporate values? The instant decisions executivesmake under pressure reveal the most about personal and corporatecharacter. Among the many questions that occur to me when ponderingmy experience are: What are the practical limits of moralimagination and vision? Is there a collective or institutionalethic beyond the ethics of the individual? At what level of effortor commitment can one discharge one’s ethical responsibilities? Notevery ethical dilemma has a right solution. Reasonable people oftendisagree; otherwise there would be no dilemma. In a businesscontext, however, it is essential that managers agree on a processfor dealing with dilemmas. The sadhu experience offers aninteresting parallel to business situations. An immediate responsewas mandatory. Failure to act was a decision in itself. Up on themountain we could not resign and submit our résumé to a headhunter.In contrast to philosophy, business involves action andimplementation—getting things done. Managers must come up withanswers to problems based on what they see and what they allow toinfluence their decision-making processes. On the mountain, none ofus but Stephen realized the true dimensions of the situation wewere facing. One of our problems was that as a group we had noprocess for developing a consensus. We had no sense of purpose orplan. The difficulties of dealing with the sadhu were so complexthat no one person could handle it. Because it did not have a setof preconditions that could guide its action to an acceptableresolution, the group reacted instinctively as individuals. Thecross-cultural nature of the group added a further layer ofcomplexity. We had no leader with whom we could all identify and inwhose purpose we believed. Only Stephen was willing to take charge,but he could not gain adequate support to care for the sadhu. Someorganizations do have a value system that transcends the personalvalues of the managers. Such values, which go beyond profitability,are usually revealed when the organization is under stress. Peoplethroughout the organization generally accept its values, which,because they are not presented as a rigid list of commandments, maybe somewhat ambiguous. The stories people tell, rather than printedmaterials, transmit these conceptions of what is proper behavior.For twenty years I have been exposed at senior levels to a varietyof corporations and organizations. It is amazing how quickly anoutsider can sense the tone and style of an organization and thedegree of tolerated openness and freedom to challenge management.Organizations that do not have a heritage of mutually accepted,shared values tend to become unhinged during stress, with eachindividual bailing out for himself. In the great takeover battleswe have witnessed during past years, companies that had strongcultures drew the wagons around them and fought it out, while othercompanies saw executives, supported by their golden parachutes,bail out of the struggles. Because corporations and their membersare interdependent, for the corporation to be strong the membersneed to share a preconceived notion of what is correct behavior, a“business ethic,” and think of it as a positive force, not aconstraint. As an investment banker I am continually warned bywell-meaning lawyers, clients, and associates to be wary ofconflicts of interest. Yet if I were to run away from every dif-ficult situation, I wouldn’t be an effective investment banker. Ihave to feel my way through conflicts. An effective manager can’trun from risk either; he or she has to confront and deal with risk.To feel “safe” in doing this, managers need the guidelines of anagreed-on process and set of values within the organization. Aftermy three months in Nepal, I spent three months as anexecutive-in-residence at both Stanford Business School and theCenter for Ethics and Social Policy at the Graduate TheologicalUnion at Berkeley. These six months away from my job gave me timeto assimilate twenty years of business experience. My thoughtsturned often to the meaning of the leadership role in any largeorganization. Students at the seminary thought of themselves asantibusiness. But when I questioned them they agreed that theydistrusted all large organizations, including the church. Theyperceived all large organizations as impersonal and opposed toindividual values and needs. Yet we all know of organizations wherepeople’s values and beliefs are respected and their expressionsencouraged. What makes the difference? Can we identify thedifference and, as a result, manage more effectively? The word“ethics” turns off many and confuses more. Yet the notions ofshared values and an agreed-on process for dealing with adversityand change—what many people mean when they talk about corporateculture—seem to be at the heart of the ethical issue. People whoare in touch with their own core beliefs and the beliefs of othersand are sustained by them can be more comfortable living on thecutting edge. At times, taking a tough line or a decisive stand ina muddle of ambiguity is the only ethical thing to do. If a manageris indecisive and spends time trying to figure out the “good” thingto do, the enterprise may be lost. Business ethics, then, has to dowith the authenticity and integrity of the enterprise. To beethical is to follow the business as well as the cultural goals ofthe corporation, its owners, its employees, and its customers.Those who cannot serve the corporate vision are not authenticbusiness people and, therefore, are not ethical in the businesssense. At this stage of my own business experience I have a stronginterest in organizational behavior. Sociologists are keenlystudying what they call corporate stories, legends, and heroes as away organizations have of transmitting the value system.Corporations such as Arco have even hired consultants to perform anaudit of their corporate culture. In a company, the leader is theperson who understands, interprets, and manages the corporate valuesystem. Effective managers are then action-oriented people whoresolve conflict, are tolerant of ambiguity, stress, and change,and have a strong sense of purpose for themselves and theirorganizations. If all this is true, I wonder about the role of theprofessional manager who moves from company to company. How can heor she quickly absorb the values and culture of differentorganizations? Or is there, indeed, an art of management that istotally transportable? Assuming such fungible managers do exist, isit proper for them to manipulate the values of others? What wouldhave happened had Stephen and I carried the sadhu for two days backto the village and become involved with the villagers in his care?In four trips to Nepal my most interesting experiences occurred in1975 when I lived in a Sherpa home in the Khumbu for five daysrecovering from altitude sickness. The high point of Stephen’s tripwas an invitation to participate in a family funeral ceremony inManang. Neither experience had to do with climbing the high passesof the Himalayas. Why were we so reluctant to try the lower path,the ambiguous trail? Perhaps because we did not have a leader whocould reveal the greater purpose of the trip to us. Why didn’tStephen with his moral vision opt to take the sadhu under hispersonal care? The answer is because, in part, Stephen washard-stressed physically himself, and because, in part, withoutsome support system that involved our involuntary and episodiccommunity on the mountain, it was beyond his individual capacity todo so. I see the current interest in corporate culture andcorporate value systems as a positive response to Stephen’spessimism about the decline of the role of the individual in largeorganizations. Individuals who operate from a thoughtful set ofpersonal values provide the foundation of a corporate culture. Acorporate tradition that encourages freedom of inquiry, supportspersonal values, and reinforces a focused sense of direction canfulfill the need for individuality along with the prosperity andsuccess of the group. Without such corporate support, theindividual is lost. That is the lesson of the sadhu. In a complexcorporate situation, the individual requires or deserves thesupport of the group. If people cannot find such support from theirorganization, they don’t know how to act. If such support isforthcoming, a person has a stake in the success of the group, andcan add much to the process of establishing and maintaining acorporate culture. It is management’s challenge to be sensitive toindividual needs, to shape them, and to direct and focus them forthe benefit of the group as a whole. For each of us the sadhulives. Should we stop what we are doing and comfort him; or shouldwe keep trudging up toward the high pass? Should I pause to helpthe derelict I pass on the street each night as I walk by the YaleClub en route to Grand Central Station? Am I his brother? What isthe nature of our responsibility if we consider ourselves to beethical persons? Perhaps it is to change the values of the group sothat it can, with all its resources, take the other road. In 2006,the Bowen McCoy phenomenon repeated itself. Forty climbers passedby Briton David Sharp as he lay by the side of the path in anEverest trek. David Sharp died on the mountain. However, thefollowing week, American guide Dan Mazur stayed with AustralianLincoln Hall until help could arrive. Mr. Hall survived, but Mr.Mazur had to forego his climb and the resulting financial lossesfrom not being able to lead his group to the summit. What questionsand analysis might affect the decision processes in these twosituations? Some information that is gripping as you consider theissues: since Sir Edmund Hilary’s initial conquest of Everest in1953, 3,000 climbers have made it to the top and 200 have diedtrying; and the cost of a climb is $60,000. Do you have somethoughts on your credo based on Mr. McCoy’s and Mr. Mazur’sexperiences and actions?

Question

1.Consider the closing questions Mr. McCoy poses. How do theyapply to you personally and to businesses?

2. Why do you think no one made sure the sadhu was going to befine? What would they have had to do to be sure that the sadhuwould live?

3. Are the rules of the mountain different from the rules of ourday-to-day lives? Is it survival of the fittest on themountain?

4. Why do you think Mr. McCoy wrote about his experience?