114 D
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OMENTS
the minister of health, ‘‘We are relieved of the moral burden weighing
on our shoulders.’’ In other words, the moral burden rested elsewhere,
so protesters and boycotters should paint their bull’s-eyes on other
organizational targets.
Finally, how had Sakiz defined Roussel-Uclaf’s role in society?
He certainly did not take the easy way out. Sakiz could have pleased
his boss in Germany and avoided years of controversy and boycotts
by withdrawing entirely from the market for contraceptives and
other reproductive drugs, which is what virtually all American drug
companies have done. To justify this approach, he could have defined
Roussel-Uclaf’s social role in standard, familiar terms, as the property
of its shareholders. Thus, he could have argued, RU 486 had to be
shelved, because boycotts against Roussel-Uclaf and Hoechst were
likely to cost far more than the drug would earn.
Instead, Sakiz seems to have defined Roussel-Uclaf’s role in a
remarkable, perhaps even daring way. It would be a political activist
and catalyst. The company worked to stimulate and then shape
media coverage; it invited its allies to mobilize after dismaying them
by suspending distribution; it acceded to government intervention
that it may have encouraged or even arranged; and it tried to blur
responsibility for the introduction of RU 486.
Roussel-Uclaf was committed to ‘‘the service of Life’’—following
an original, complex, and daring strategy. Women seeking nonsurgi-
cal abortions and their physicians would be among the company’s
core stakeholders. Hence, Roussel-Uclaf would distribute RU 486,
first in France and then elsewhere, but neither Sakiz nor his company
had volunteered for martyrdom.
A
RISTOTLE’S
Q
UESTION
Here are Machiavelli’s lessons for managers whose decisions will
define their company’s role in society and its relations with stakehold-
ers. First, don’t be confused about success. Success means having a
strong and prosperous organization, for the weak and impecunious
can do little good. Second, watch your adversaries; don’t overesti-
mate their ethics or underestimate their power. Third, remember
that managers cannot simply define their company’s role in society;
Virtu, Virtue, and Success 115
they must negotiate it. Therefore, be fluid and seize opportunity—
sometimes play the lion; more often, the fox. And, in all cases, rely
on virtu. These are important lessons. Steve Lewis tempered his
virtuous aspirations with shrewd practicality and scored a minor
personal and professional triumph. Peter Adario exemplified virtue
without virtu and got nowhere.
But Machiavelli’s lessons are also disconcerting; many famous and
powerful scoundrels practice virtu without virtue and make the world
a worse place. Clearly, there is an urgent need to find other lessons
for managers who face choices like Sakiz’s. The writings of Aristotle,
who developed the foremost theory of human virtue, are an excellent
place to find such lessons. At the heart of Aristotle’s thinking about
sound moral decisions is an idea commonly called ‘‘the golden mean.’’
Unfortunately, this phrase, coined ages ago by the Roman poet
Horace, has become so familiar that it conceals and almost trivializes
an extraordinarily powerful and useful idea.
For Aristotle, the principle of the golden mean is the master key
to virtue. Here is how he describes the principle, in one of the most
famous and influential passages in all of moral philosophy:
it is in the nature of moral qualities that they are destroyed by deficiency
and excess, just as we can see . . . in the case of health and strength.
For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one’s strength, and both
eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right
quantity produces, increases and preserves it. So it is the same with
temperance, courage and the other virtues. The man who shuns and fears
everything and stands up to nothing becomes a coward; the man who is
afraid of nothing at all, but marches up to every danger, becomes
foolhardy.
11
At first glance, Aristotle’s view is a bit disappointing. High ideals,
undying faith, and passionate commitment all seem to have vanished
from the sphere of ethics. In their place, Aristotle advocates modera-
tion, circumspection, restraint. He offers an ethics of measured reac-
tions, calibrated moves, and judicious compromise. All this may be
practical, but it is also as dry as dust.
Why does Aristotle seem to endorse an ethics of accountants
over one of heroes and saints? His answer is simple. He believed
116 D
EFINING
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OMENTS
that excess or deficiency could literally ‘‘destroy’’ moral qualities.
Excess turns good into evil, virtue into vice. Men and women, he
believed, should avoid moral commitments that risk or ruin lives.
Antigone and Creon, for example, both faced the same ethical issue:
finding the appropriate way to treat the body of Antigone’s brother,
who had died a rebel in a bloody civil war. The question pitted
piety and family loyalty against an urgent need to restore civil order
and avoid more bloodshed. Both Antigone and Creon answered the
question with passionate commitment to opposing ethical ideals.
Neither left an inch for compromise, so they condemned themselves
and their families to an awful fate.
Were Aristotle alive today, at the close of our bloody century, he
would find an abundance of tragic evidence to support his deliberate,
judicious style of ethics. Countless episodes of cruelty, terrorism,
and mass slaughter have been perpetrated by leaders who could not
compromise their exacting political principles. Other killers have
been inflamed by religious ideals, translating the Bible, Koran, or
other sacred texts into merciless bloodshed.
Aristotle counsels moderation and caution precisely because he
is giving advice for situations in which important ethical claims stand
in opposition. He wants to discourage men and women who find
tension or conflict among their duties, commitments, responsibilities,
and virtues from veering too sharply in one direction or another
and trampling on some fundamental human values as they pursue
others. This is why Stuart Hampshire has written that, for Aristotle,
‘‘balance represents a deep moral ideal in a world of inescapable
conflicts.’’
12
The ideal of balance provides valuable guidance for managers
who must resolve right-versus-right conflicts—especially those, like
Edouard Sakiz’s, that pit so many important values and responsibili-
ties against each other. Aristotle’s question for managers would be
this: Have you done all you can to strike a balance, both morally
and practically? By Aristotle’s standard of balance, Sakiz performed
quite well. His effort illustrates four aspects of balance that matter
greatly when managers must define their firms’ role in society and
relations to their stakeholders.
First, balance is a standard for assessing the ends or aims a manager
pursues. Aristotle’s ideal of balance implicitly asks someone in Sakiz’s
Virtu, Virtue, and Success 117
position—or Lewis’s or Adario’s—to make sure that their dilemma
does indeed pit one ethical responsibility against another. The
golden mean isn’t a device for calibrating the right amount to steal,
the right number of workers to exploit, or—to borrow Aristotle’s
example—the right way to commit adultery.
In other words, the deceptive maneuvering we have attributed
to Sakiz would not have been ethically justified if his aim were to
raise his year-end bonus and buy a nice condominium. Virtu, Aristotle
would argue, must serve ethical ends. So, too, must actions that
create dirty hands. Only ethical ends can vindicate unethical means.
The defense of Sakiz’s maneuvers thus rests on the fact that he
was pursuing ethical aims and commitments. Moreover, his tactics
seemed the most practical and the least dishonest path he could
find though the labyrinth of his moral responsibilities.
Balance is also a standard, for assessing means or tactics. Sakiz
also fares well by this standard because his steps were moderate and
cautious. He carefully avoided extremes and points of no return.
Sakiz was clear about his personal support for RU 486, but he didn’t
try to lead a public crusade on its behalf. Doing so might have
escalated the boycott and raised costs to shareholders; it also might
have cost him his job, and with it the opportunity to pursue the
ethical aims to which RU 486 was essential. At the same time, Sakiz
did not put on his shareholder’s agent hat, run the numbers, and
return RU 486 to the laboratory shelf because of its financial risks.
Veering too sharply in the direction of his boss’s and shareholders’
concerns would have violated other important ideals. In short, Sakiz
chose tactics that let him follow a middle path.
He was also moderate in his departure from the full truth.
Faced with the prospect of dirty hands, he kept his hands as
clean as possible. Sakiz did not conceal his support for RU 486,
the suspension did turn out to be temporary, and the reasons he
gave for the suspension—the antiabortion campaign, especially
in the United States—were accurate, if incomplete. What Sakiz
did not do was disclose his entire plan, nor did he call attention
to the nuances of timing and phrasing that helped mobilize
support for RU 486. Sakiz followed the old Venetian maxim ‘‘The
truth but not to everyone.’’ He avoided outright lying and instead
maneuvered and dissembled.
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OMENTS
The third aspect of balance involves looking beyond the present
moment and pursuing balance, not just for the present, but over
time. Because the future is unpredictable, a balanced plan of action
must be robust across a range of possible scenarios and altered
circumstances. Sakiz made only one decision: on introducing RU
486 in France. Decisions about China, the United States, and the
rest of Europe were postponed. And the decision on France was
only a ‘‘temporary suspension.’’ In short, Sakiz made just one move
on a very complicated chessboard and waited to see how others
would react and what would happen next.
Finally, Sakiz was modest about his and Roussel-Uclaf’s roles in
the extremely complex decision process for RU 486. He did not
try to make final, binding, ethically sound decisions for the many
stakeholders—countries, government agencies, medical groups,
women’s organizations, and churches—that would be affected by
the drug. Indeed, he didn’t even try to make the entire decision
himself. By voting for a temporary suspension, Sakiz simply put the
issue in play. Then he worked as a shrewd activist, one among many,
and let his country’s political authorities make the final decision.
This was not only tactically shrewd, it was also morally sound. Final
decisions on a product like RU 486—with its extraordinary ethical,
political, social, and medical implications—did not belong solely in
the hands of a single, relatively small, for-profit organization.
V
IRTUE AND
V
IRTU
What do we get by juxtaposing Machiavelli’s views on success and
virtu with Aristotle’s views on balance and virtue? At first glance,
we have responsible, practical-minded advice for managers facing
difficult problems. Aristotle seems to offer a way of domesticating
Machiavelli’s menacing view of the ethics of public life. The practice
of virtu is just fine, it seems, so long as it remains within the boundaries
of virtue.
But this is far too neat. It ignores Machiavelli’s challenge to
conventional morality and defines away a central concern of this
book: right-versus-right situations. At times, a person in a position
of responsibility must do one right thing and leave another undone.
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