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Questions
1. According to the Ethical Dissonance Model, the ethical person-organization fit helps to define
the ethical culture of an organization and one’s role in it. The ethics of an individual influences
the values one brings to the workplace and decision-making, while the ethics (through culture)
of the organization influences that behavior. Throughout The Parable of the Sadhu, Bowen
McCoy refers to the breakdown between the individual and corporate ethic. Explain what he
meant by that and how, if we view the hikers on the trek up the mountain in Nepal as an
organization, the ethical person-organization fit applied to the decisions made on the climb.
The corporate ethic of Nepal and the mountain climbing group would have to be classified low
organizational ethics because the climbers are mainly interested in accomplishing their goal – to reach the
peak. It is a pursuit of self-interests mentality. The individuals adopt the group ethic of meeting the goal
and not letting anything get in their way including the well-being of the sadhu. They rationalize what they
have done to make him more comfortable, but never deal with the overriding issue of whether it is ethically
more important to assure the health and safety of a fellow human being (i.e., welfare of shareholders,
2. Evaluate the actions of McCoy and Stephen from the perspective of Kohlberg’s model of moral
development. At what stage did each reason throughout the trek? Do you think there was a
“bystander effect” in how McCoy and the others acted?
McCoy reasoned at stage 3, fairness to the sadhu. At stage 2 reasoning, the individual is focused on
satisfying one’s interest but moves into considering the interests of others (i.e., sadhu, group) in stage 3.
Stephen reasoned at stage 5, social contract, but could not solve the sadhu’s problem completely. He was
suffering from altitude sickness. After McCoy left the sadhu for the summit, Stephen tried to get the
Japanese group to lend their horse to carry the sadhu down to the hut. He then asked Pasang to have group
of porters carry the sadhu down. Pasang could not allow the porters to use their energy in that way when it
The bystander effect seemed to have affected all the climbers. All the climbers that the sadhu encountered
3. What role did “ethical fading” have on the decision-making of Bowen and other members of
the group? How is utilitarian thinking involved in ethical fading?
The way people frame a decision plays a key role in how that decision is viewed. Ethical fading occurs
when people are so focused on other aspects of a pending decision that its ethical aspects fade from view.
Some think that it is the erosion of ethical standards. In the parable, the goal of the climbers to scale the
summit was dependent on the weather, the condition of the steps, energy, and time of day. It became easy
for each climber to rationalize that he had helped and that later climbers would also help so that the sadhu
would be okay. Utilitarianism thinking looks for the greatest good for the greatest number. The climbers,
4. McCoy concludes that the lesson of the sadhu is that “in a complex corporate situation, the
individual requires and deserves the support of the group. When people cannot find such
support in their organizations, they don’t know how to act.” What support in organizations do
you think McCoy is referring to? If such support is not found, what should individuals do
when they have an ethical dilemma such as that in the sadhu case?
If the organization does not provide the support to evaluate and resolve an ethical dilemma, then the
individual must rely on his own values and decision making models. Below is McCoy’s reflection on the
5. What is the moral of the story of the sadhu from your perspective?
When Do We Take a Stand?
By Bowen McCoy
I wrote about my experiences purposely to present an ambiguous situation. I never found out if the
sadhu lived or died. I can attest, though, that the sadhu lives on in his story. He lives in ethics classes I
teach each year at business schools and churches. He lives in the classrooms of numerous business schools,
where professors have taught the case to tens of thousands of students. He lives in several casebooks on
ethics and on an educational video. And he lives in organizations such as the American Red Cross and
AT&T, which use his story in their ethics training.
As I reflect on the sadhu now, 15 years after the fact, I first have to wonder, what actually
happened on that Himalayan slope? When I first wrote about the event, I reported the experience in as
much detail as I could remember, but I shaped it to the needs of a good classroom discussion. After years of
reading my story, viewing it on video, and hearing others discuss it, I’m not sure I myself know what
actually occurred on the mountainside that day!
I’ve also heard a wide variety of responses to the story. The sadhu, for example, may not have
wanted our help at all – he may have been intentionally bringing on his own death as a way to holiness.
Why had he taken the dangerous way over the pass instead of the caravan route through the gorge? Hindu
businesspeople have told me that in trying to assist the sadhu, we were being typically arrogant Westerners
imposing our cultural values on the world.
I’ve learned that each year along the pass, a few Nepali porters are left to freeze to death outside
the tents of the unthinking tourists who hired them. A few years ago, a French group even left one of their
own, a young French woman, to die there. The difficult pass seems to demonstrate a perverse version of
Gresham’s law of currency: The bad practices of previous travelers have driven out the values that new
travelers might have followed if they were at home. Perhaps that helps to explain why it was so difficult for
Stephen or anyone else to establish a different approach on the spot.
Our Sherpa sirdar, Pasang, was focused on his responsibility for bringing us up the mountain safe
and sound. (His livelihood and status in the Sherpa ethnic group depended on our safe return.) We were
weak, our party was split, the porters were well on their way to the top with all our gear and food, and a
storm would have separated us irrevocably from our logistical base.
The fact was, we had no plan for dealing with the contingency of the sadhu. There was nothing we
could do to unite our multicultural group in the little time we had. An ethical dilemma had come upon us
unexpectedly, an element of dram that may explain why the sadhu’s story has continued to attract students.
I am often asked for help in teaching the story. I usually advise keeping the details as ambiguous
as possible. A true ethical dilemma requires a decision between two hard choices. In the case of the sadhu,
we had to decide how much to sacrifice ourselves to take care of a stranger. And given the constraints of
our trek, we had to make a group decision, not an individual one. If a large majority of students in a class
ends up thinking I’m a bad person because of my decision on the mountain, the instructor may not have
given the case its due. The same is true if the majority sees no problem with the choices we made.
Any class’s response depends on its setting, whether it’s a business school, a church, or a
corporation. I’ve found that younger students are more likely to see the issue as black-and-white, whereas
older ones tend to see shade of gray. Some have seen a conflict between the different ethical approaches
that we followed at the time. Stephen felt he had to do everything he could to save the sadhu’s life, in
accordance with his Christian ethic of compassion. I had a utilitarian response: do the greatest good for the
greatest number. Give a burst of aid to minimize the sadhu’s exposure, then continue on our way.
The basic question of the case remains, when do we take a stand? When do we allow a “sadhu” to
intrude into our daily lives? Few of us can afford the time or effort to take care of every needy person we
encounter. How much must we give of ourselves? And how do we prepare our organizations and
institutions so they will respond appropriately in a crisis? How do we influence them if we do not agree
with their points of view?
We cannot quit our jobs over every ethical dilemma, but if we continually ignore our sense of
values, who do we become? As a journalist asked at a recent conference on ethics, “Which ditch are we
willing to die in?” For each of us, the answer is a bit different. How we act in response to that question
defines better than anything else who we are, just as, in a collective sense, our acts define our institutions.
In effect, the sadhu is always there, ready to remind us of the tensions between our own goals and the
claims of strangers.
