THE PARABLE OF THE SADHU AND THE USTA’S ETHICAL DILEMMA By Javier Palenque

(Text below is adapted and copied from Beyer, J. M., and Nino, D. (1999), ‘Ethics and cultures in international business, Journal of Management Inquiry, vol.8, no.3, pp. 287–297. And from HBR’s original article from 1982, the parable of the Sadhu written by McCoy. Bowen Mcoy retired from Morgan Stanley in 1990 after 28 years of service, he is now a real estate and business counselor a teacher and a philanthropist.

When I have time, I volunteer to teach a business class to undergraduates at the local university. One of the lessons that I teach is a two-hour course on ethics. This is a class that attendance is required for a grade. For this class, I use a well-known Harvard article that suits many ethical and moral questions for individuals, and corporations in such a simple way that if you attended my class, you would certainly understand the value of “servant and purposeful leadership”. In the next few lines is my adaptation of the same class for the board of the USTA, now that it is about to choose a CEO in the most important and defining decade in its 141-year history, some of the lessons described in these few lines are exactly what the organization needs. I hope you read it and share it if you find value in it. Remember knowledge not shared is poor leadership and leadership without a personal value system is…