The Parable of Sadhu
The parable explores personal ethics challenges under the application in a group context. In some scenarios, individuals may show a willingness to reach decisions that they would never make as individuals. In the story about the Sadhu, no individual portrayed desire to assume the ultimate responsibility of the healthy, beaten Sadhu (Harvard Business Review, 1997). However, every group member had the willingness to do their bit as long as it never inconvenienced their most anticipated and lifelong dream to climb the Himalayas. Everybody showed care and ethics on the individual capacity, but as a team or group, nobody felt the need to take care of the Sadhu. As a group, they made various donations and charity works, such as offering a coat or carrying him to a safer place, possible.
In the professional work, away from the practical Himalayas dilemma, a similar danger – group ethic – remains less desirable than the individual approach, which remains possible and probable. Individuals must work to transform from viewing issues as other people’s problems. Workers at the workplace must work together in turbulence times to achieve a desirable effect despite the cause of the problem. This is because; choosing to overlook an essential issue when it appears not to affect our immediate responsibilities or life weakens the company’s fabric.
The same reason affected the decision of the participants of “From Jerusalem to Jericho” study by Darley & Batson (1973), where a majority of them never stopped to help the “good Samaritan.” As a result, the act of thinking about norms never implies that they will put some practice into them. The study concluded that either ethics becomes a luxury influenced by the ever-changing life’s speed or the need to fulfill personal responsibilities rather than solving issues caused by others crowded the people’s cognition to other people’s problems.
References
Darley, J. M., & Batson, C. D. (1973). “From Jerusalem to Jericho”: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(1), 100-108. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034449
Harvard Business Review. (1997). Harvard Business Publishing education. Harvard Business Publishing Education. https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/97307-PDF-ENG?E=60513&R=97307-PDF-ENG&conversationId=806381