Parable of the Sadhu Bowen H. McCoy's 1983 Harvard Business Review article "The Parable of the Sadhu" describes the author's own experience of how he "literally walked through a classic moral dilemma without fully thinking through the consequences" (p.106). During a sightseeing junket to the peak of Everest, McCoy and his moralistic Quaker buddy Stephen have their travel interrupted by the discovery of a religious pilgrim -- a "sadhu" -- found basically naked and half-frozen on one of the high mountain passes. The weather is good and this high mountain pass is not invariably passable for tourists like McCoy, so the fact of the good weather means that all the parties present -- which include various tourists from Japan, Switzerland, and New Zealand -- are more concerned with getting over the pass than with a two-day trek back down the mountain to get the sadhu to a hospital or the like. Stephen feels like his death will be their fault in this case, and so he then orders his paid porters -- the local Nepalese Sherpa laborers hired to carry his bags up the side of Everest -- to carry the Sadhu down to a safer distance, where Japanese had given him food and drink, and he seemed to be alert and lively enough. But McCoy and Stephen would continue the trip, and McCoy frankly admits that "we do not know if the sadhu lived or died." His real point, though, does not require that ultimate knowledge, because McCoy's concerns turn toward the ethical dilemma presented by the situation, and so what concerns him most is the sense of process or communal endeavor breaking down, ethically. This is how Stephen will angrily describe it, stating that "I feel that what happened with the sadhu is a good example of the breakdown between the individual ethic and the corporate ethic. No one person was willing to assume ultimate responsibility for the sadhu. Each was willing to do his bit just so long as it was not too inconvenient....
When it got to be a bother, everyone just passed the buck to someone else and took off. Jesus was relevant to a more individualistic stage of society, but how do we interpret his teaching today in a world filled with large, impersonal organizations and groups?" (McCoy 1983, pp. 104-6).
Parable of the Sadhu In the story "The Parable of Sadhu," author Bowen H. McCoy explores the question of ethics while his narrator hikes in Nepal. McCoy himself was the managing director of Morgan Stanley. He was also president of Morgan Stanley Realty, Inc. Bowen McCoy then is a figure who embodies the idea of business and financial gain. What then could he gain from a trek in the Himalayas
It was if he had left his ethical principles behind when he entered a context where fulfilling his ethical responsibilities to others meant less than the competitive drive to reach his goal. The fact that he had tried and failed to make the climb before, as a result of altitude sickness, was a further motivator for his callousness. The other climber's similar lack of care and concern for the
Parable of the Sadhu" is a legendary text in business ethics -- it won the Harvard Business Review's Ethics Prize in the year of its publication. McCoy, a managing director at Morgan Stanley, writes autobiographically about a real experience during his leisure hours, but the lesson of McCoy's piece is one about the fundamental ethics of the business community. Bowen McCoy describes how he and a colleague "literally walked
Parable of the sadhu teaches us the importance of a group's commitment to the welfare of an individual. In corporate ethics, this would mean the support of the entire organization for the welfare and career/personal growth of an employee. In the sense of individual ethics, it means instead of doing our bit and throwing the rest of others, we must pool our resources and offer complete commitment to the welfare
Accounting and Ethics The stakeholder model should be implemented in combination with Friedman's shareholder model In his article, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" published in 1970's reputed "The New York Times" Magazine, Friedman debates in favor of precisely what the article's title states. He alleged that corporate social responsibility (CSR) was a diversion from the economic rudiments of business that helps in capitalization of profits and yields
Corporate Accountability The corporate scandals of the last fifteen years have brought the issue of corporate accountability to new light, adopting at times a center-stage discussion. When the Bernie Madoff scandal broke, many professionals turned to the accounting department at Madoff Securities along with the auditors who had audited the firm before. Madoff was the one who admitted to stealing $50 billion dollars during the decades that his firm was
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