Reflections on Four Case Studies in Ethics

Reflections on Four Case Studies in Ethics Ethics, or moral philosophy, investigates concepts of right and wrong conduct; it is not limited to the acts of a single person but seeks also reasoned, principled, positions vis-Ă -vis the practices of corporations, governments, and many other groups. Using the case method, a teaching approach that uses decisionforcing role-play, this prĂŠcis explores four dramatically different ethical dilemmas at individual, group, corporate, and global levels.

Olivier Serrat 08/04/2020

1 Ethics, or moral philosophy, investigates concepts of right and wrong conduct; it is not limited to the acts of a single person but seeks also reasoned, principled, positions vis-à-vis the practices of corporations, governments, and many other groups. Using the case method, a teaching approach that uses decision-forcing role-play, this précis explores four dramatically different ethical dilemmas at individual, group, corporate, and global levels.

The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a Humanitarian Hero The philosophy, principles, and practice of ethics, which govern a person's behavior or the conduct of activities, should never be portrayed as easy. The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a Humanitarian Hero (Johnson, 2015, pp. 108–110) is a well-wrought piece that eschews prefabricated conclusions to challenge readers with the question of what brought about in 2011– 2012 the fall of Greg Mortenson, formerly nurse, veteran, mountaineer, philanthropist, author, and public speaker, and founder of the Central Asia Institute. Was it CBS News and 60 Minutes, its award-winning news magazine? Was it Jon Krakauer's e-book, Three Cups of Deceit (2011)?

Or, should Mortenson get all the blame for his undoing?

As of 2011, Mortenson had built a global reputation as a selfless humanitarian and children's crusader, and had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. But, with the nearsimultaneous publication of Three Cups of Deceit (2011), former Central Asia Institute board member and donor Krakauer had appeared on 60 Minutes to claim Mortenson was not what he seemed to be. Specifically, Krakauer charged Mortenson with inventing substantial parts of his bestselling books, Three Cups of Tea (2007) and Stones into Schools (2009), and misusing millions of dollars donated by unsuspecting admirers including Krakauer himself. Three Cups of Tea (2007) had been immensely successful: the book told of Mortenson's accidental visit to the village of Korphe, Pakistan, in 1993, where locals had nursed him back to health after a failed attempt at scaling K2; the encounter had spurred Mortenson's school-building mission, captivating readers worldwide and flooding the Central Asia Institute with donations. (Pointedly, 100% of proceeds from the sale of Krakauer's e-book were to be donated to the "Stop Girl Trafficking" project of the American Himalayan Foundation.)

Following Three Cups of Deceit (2011) and the 60 Minutes exposé, Mortenson's character and credibility came under attack: Montana legislators filed a lawsuit and the State's Attorney General launched an investigation. No criminality was found but, in 2012, Mortenson was deemed to have misspent over $6 million of the Central Asia Institute's money and made to repay $1.2 million. The State's Attorney General accepted that Mortenson might not have intentionally deceived the board of directors of the Central Asia Institute, or its employees, but that his disregard for and attitude toward basic record-keeping including accounting for his activities had essentially had the same effect. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Mortenson was required to resign as executive director and could no longer serve as a voting member of the Central Asia Institute's board; however, he was allowed to remain as an employee. In 2014, Mortenson was interviewed on NBC's Today Show: he apologized and acknowledged that he had let a lot of people down: "I always have operated from my heart. I'm not really a head person. And I really didn't factor in the very important things of accountability, transparency … I failed in many ways, and it's an important lesson." Regarding the inaccuracies in Three Cups of Tea (2007), Mortenson regretted also that he and co-author Relin, who committed suicide in 2012, had been under great pressure to bring about a million words down to 300,000. In a sudden twist, a documentary titled 3000 Cups of Tea (Jordan & Rhoads, 2016) later launched a full-throated defense of Mortenson as a good but flawed man, who had not deserved the rough media treatment. The Central Asia Institute has since reported that it was seeing the return of donors and a rise in contributions.

2

The Spectacular Rise and Fall of a Humanitarian Hero is located in a chapter on "The Leader's Character" in Johnson (2015): that chapter addresses the inner dimension of leadership ethics, from the premise that to shed light (rather than shadow) we need to develop strong, ethical character made up of positive traits or virtues. But, my reading of this case study, notably its even-handed suggestion that Mortenson might have been overwhelmed by success and somehow "forced" to embellish his story to justify donations, has me opine that other factors probably explain more than allegations of poor character (even if Mortenson himself confessed he had failed). I reflected on Johnson's (2015) aside that "Greg Mortenson's rise and fall may have as much to say about American culture as it does about CAI's founder" and his candid recognition that "In search of heroes, we are all too willing to overlook the fact that even saints have flaws" (2015, p. 110). The subsequent showing of the 3000 Cups of Tea documentary (Jordan & Rhoads, 2016), that Johnson (2015) would not have been aware of at the time of publication, led me also to ponder that success may pose as much danger as failure (and this not exclusively from the perspective of a leader's character). Why do we often have difficulty acknowledging that our heroes have flaws? My simple take is that demanding superhuman qualities from others, especially from leaders, rather cynically serves to absolve us of responsibility for developing capabilities more broadly in (or among) ourselves. And so, when heroes fail as they surely will if perfection is the standard, we reject them with disdain precisely so we do not have to draw lessons from the flaws in ourselves. Every one of us could become a hero, however imperfect, if we accepted that flaws—and even failure—are not incompatible with heroism.1 Chaos on K2 On the face of it, Chaos on K2 (Johnson, 2015, pp. 309–312) has all the makings of a gripping case study in ethics. In the early hours of August 1, 2008, 30 climbers from eight separate international expeditions set off from Camp 4, located 7,500–8,000 meters (or 24,600–26,250 feet) above sea level, to reach the summit of K2, at 8,611 meters (or 28,251 feet) the second highest mountain in the world after Mount Everest (8,848 meters or 29,029 feet) but one of the most challenging in the world. For two months, the members of the teams had prepared themselves at three other camps below the peak, acclimatizing to thin air and practicing their planned ascent. The final ascent turned into chaos: an advance group of high-altitude porters and Sherpas—gone ahead of the bulk of the climbers to prepare and safeguard the most difficult passage—had somehow run out of rope and was facing the prospect of turning around and descending back in darkness. The advance team had planted lines immediately above Camp 4—where they were not needed—up into the Bottleneck, a narrow and at times almost vertical gulley overhung by seracs from the ice field east of the summit, and so run out of rope 1

Via Rome, the literature of Europe owes a great deal to the Greek myths and the Golden Age of Athens, which witnessed a veritable explosion in dramatic poetry (among a great many other accomplishments). That said, hubris—which refers to exaggerated pride or self-confidence—is almost always integral part of their stories. The ancient Greeks considered hubris a dangerous character flaw, which led the heroes of their tragedies (and other texts) to attempt to overstep the boundaries of human limitations and assume a godlike status; and so, the Greeks gods inevitably humbled offenders with sharp reminders of their mortality. We see this in The Iliad, The Odyssey, the heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies, etc. But, the point is—or rather was—that the flaws of heroes were inseparable from their heroism. These days, few people read ancient literature, the belief systems of the West have pretty much collapsed, and self-help books entice us to think we can achieve perfection if we try harder. Hence, perhaps, our expectations of superhuman qualities from others, especially leaders.

3 for the traverse just above the Bottleneck. (On K2, the high risk of falling ice and avalanches compels climbers to minimize the time they spend in the Bottleneck.) Shortage of rope forced the ascending team to take rope from the lower portion of the route and use it to prepare the lines above the Bottleneck, causing unplanned delay in the climb schedule. What happened next need not be repeated here, for there is much (still unclear) detail. But the gist of the story is that even though they were now behind schedule and should actually have been returning from the summit, about 20 climbers decided to carry on. A Serbian climber then fell to his death and a Pakistani porter died trying to recover the body. As the climbers were—in small groups— returning from the summit, a gigantic ice shelf came crashing down, killed one climber, swept four climbers who were tethered to ropes to their deaths, and so left others trapped just above or in the Bottleneck—desperately cold, starved of oxygen, and without the fixed ropes they needed to get down. Over the next few hours those still left on K2 battled their way to safety, fell to their deaths, or were lost as smaller icefalls and avalanches continued during the night and the next day. (At over 8,000 meters or 26,250 feet, balance, concentration, vision, and other human body functions break down under the effect of altitude.) Eleven climbers died and three others were seriously injured, making the ascent one of the worst disasters in mountaineering history.

The sources that Johnson (2015) relied on to prepare this case study were almost exclusively journalistic. They were The New York Times, National Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Men's Journal, The Guardian, and The Independent. (The exception is a book promising whiteknuckle adventure, the stuff of mountaineering legend …) At a minimum, therefore, it must be recognized that what facts and interpretations this case study presents are likely to concentrate (as they do) on action, with little space given over to reflection. For that reason, my stance is that it is rather tendentious to milk the tragedy in search of ethical dimensions. One could, arguably, ascribe the disaster to bad luck: full stop. Or, one could read all sorts of things into it, such that the tragedy owes to the inability of the climbers to work together to avert and recover from adversity. Continuing down that vein, did division among the teams doom any attempt to cooperate? Well, "division" may not be the right word because the 30 climbers belonged to separate international expeditions: the only cooperation they actually needed to plan, the failure of which lies at the back of the sad affair, consisted in the laying down of safety lines by a trailbreaking team put together for that very purpose. And so, the failure of the trail-breaking team to properly lay the ropes cannot be ascribed to the members of the expeditions (and so to division). But, would the teams have been better off climbing on their own? This question is not relevant: most (if not all) ascents of the world's highest peaks are performed by very small teams of 2–3 persons and climbing on their own must have been what the members of the separate international expeditions were attempting if one looks at the numbers. But, what steps, if any, could the team leaders have taken to foster intergroup identity? This question does not follow from my treatment of the last. So, why did climbers continued to the top even after they should have turned back? This is perhaps the hardest question to answer. In a short video the author of a book on the disaster explained the decision of the climbers to press on with the following words: "It's beautiful. It's an achievement. I think it's facing down death" (Bowley, 2011, 3:14). This is not my cup of tea but it may be that of others. If anything, and this is where improvements in management might be called for, allowing large number of teams to ascend together can incite recklessness on the part of some if they see that others have already reached the top. Why are modern climbers apparently more selfish than climbers of the past?

This case study does not present any evidence that modern climbing is indeed marked by an ethos that stresses individualism: surely, hubris and bad luck remain unchanged; but, politics and journalism—its faithful friend, may possibly now be a further spur to mountaineering ambitions. What can be done to change the culture of climbing? From the foregoing argumentation, and from general observation, I do not see that the culture of climbing

4 necessarily has to change: that said, the involvement of journalism, which this case study does much to promote by dint of the many newspaper references it draws from, may need a second look. So, what leadership and followership ethics lessons can one take from this case study?

Well, in all honesty, I find no leadership ethics lessons from this case study (nor can I find matters of followership relevant here): for that, Johnson (2012) could have found a better (but less gripping) vehicle elsewhere.2 More than anything else, as I alluded to earlier, improvements in management are assuredly called for: where ethics could be wanting may be on the side of those who pocket permit fees (e.g., the Nepal Tourism Board).3 Rooting Out Corruption at Siemens Global Rooting Out Corruption at Siemens Global (Johnson, 2015, pp. 355–357) makes better reading if the actions of new CEO Peter Loescher—appointed in 2007 to root out corruption in Siemens Global and restore the company's reputation—are cross-referenced with O'Connell and Bligh (2009), which synthesized from the literature the nine traits that ethical leaders must have if their companies are to emerge from ethical scandal. O'Connell and Bligh's (2009) ethical leader: • Uses an ethical "lens"; • Makes ethical decisions; • Considers the long-term implications of business decisions; • Considers others' well-being when making decisions and treats others fairly; • Acts ethically or role models ethical behavior; • Communicates the importance of ethics; • Understands himself/herself and those with whom he/she works; • Holds others accountable for acting ethically; and • Offers training and support for employees on how to act ethically in the workplace. (p. 219) Comparing O'Connell and Bligh's (2009) ethical leader with the 10 decisive actions of Loescher (Johnson, 2015, p. 356), what stands out—far beyond the modeling of ethical behavior that O'Connell and Bligh (2009) draw near-exclusive attention to—is the sheer comprehensiveness of the latter's zero-tolerance policy.

Regardless, Loescher's zero-tolerance policy must be—or rather would have been—seen in the context of what would soon become, in 2008, a record $1.6 billion legal settlement with German and American authorities following a string of high-profile bribery scandals from Vietnam to Venezuela and Italy to Israel that demonstrated raw organizational zeal to win contracts. (The corruption involved more than $1.4 billion in bribes to government officials in Asia, Africa, 2

Public Broadcasting Service (2008) reproduced remarks on the ethics of climbing by a panel comprising a medical doctor, an attorney, and two climbers. The medical doctor underscored— as mentioned earlier—that high-altitude climbers are under extreme duress. In consequence of addled brains, they cannot possibly have much time for armchair ethics. Public Broadcasting Service's (2008) e-mail exchange was posted three months before the disaster on K2.

3 The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation, commonly known by its French name Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme, has a code of ethics (UIAA, n.d.). I found it somewhat general, with the only advice on safety and related comportment being to "… behave in a way which preserves the safety of all, especially valley porters, HA porters, expedition members, etc. from the host country" and to "Give evidence of solidarity and mutual aid" (UIAA, n.d.). In the meantime, the number of people who try to reach (and return from) the summits of the earth's highest peaks keeps increasing with veritable "traffic jams". (Crowds of over 200 climbers have been known to await their turn to climb Mount Everest on weekends.)

5 Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.) "At Siemens, bribery was just a line item" the New York Times would report the same year (Schubert & Miller, 2008). Indeed, from 2002 to 2006, Siemens Global "managed" an annual bribery budget of $40–50 million (Schubert & Miller, 2008).

Given the company's massive size and the scale of its activities, did Siemens get off too easy?

Should it have faced additional financial penalties? These questions are worth asking. But, surely, the sum of $1.6 billion was not plucked from the air: it must have been supported by careful calculations of warranted financial penalties for harm done. Besides, on top of the $1.6 billion legal settlement in Germany and the United States, Siemens Global also spent an additional $1 billion on internal investigations and reforms as Loescher vowed to make Siemens Global state-of-the-art in anticorruption measures (Schubert & Miller, 2008). At the time of the fine, there was also the chance that additional penalties might be levied as related investigations were continuing. [Indeed, in 2013, the general counsel of Siemens Global reported that the bribery-related fallout and court proceedings were continuing (Watson, 2013)].

In any event, Loescher's response was widely praised by many independent anti-corruption and ethics experts, including the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and US Federal authorities (Dietz & Gillespie, 2012).

What should be the elements of a zero-tolerance ethics policy? Are there any of these elements missing at Siemens Global? Loescher quickly resolved not to miss the opportunities that come with a good crisis. He later confessed that "The scandal created a sense of urgency without which change would have been much more difficult to achieve" (Loescher, 2012). For sure, a zero-tolerance ethics policy—that Siemens Global had no elements of prior to the scandal—is indispensable: but, beyond scope, execution matters most. A list of the actions that Siemens Global took as the scandal unfolded, some of which are not mentioned in Johnson (2015), includes: • Loescher announced a month-long amnesty for employees to come forward, explicitly excluding former directors: about 40 whistleblowers submitted incriminating evidence, which extended the scandal's reach into the previous Board of Directors.

• Early on, Siemens Global appointed Michael Hershman, the co-founder of Transparency International, to serve as its adviser.

• Within months of Loescher taking over, Siemens Global had replaced about 80% of the top level of executives, 70% of the next level down, and 40% of the level below that.

• Siemens Global's matrix structure was streamlined into three divisions, whose managing directors would sit on the Board of Directors.

• Siemens Global rolled out strict new rules and anti-corruption/compliance processes. It hired over 500 full-time compliance officers (up from just 86 in 2006), and a former Interpol official to head its new investigation unit: millions of bank account statements, documents, and transactions were reviewed. Siemens Global took over 900 internal disciplinary actions, including dismissals. It established compliance hotlines, and an external ombudsperson based worldwide and online. And, Siemens Global created a web portal for employees to evaluate risk in their client and supplier interactions.

• Siemens Global launched a comprehensive training and education program on anticorruption practices for its employees. By 2008, Siemens Global had trained more than half its 400,000-strong global workforce on anti-corruption issues.

• Of its own accord, Siemens Global decided to suspend for two years all bidding on projects funded by the World Bank. It announced it would avoid competing in hotspots of corruption or unethical practice, such as Sudan.

6 •

Siemens Global agreed to a 15-year program to pay $100 million to nonprofit organizations fighting corruption. (Dietz & Gillespie, 2012; Johnson, 2015)

Details of Siemens Global's current antibribery rules, mentioned in Johnson (2015), are not available. One must assume that, prefaced by an integrity statement, they now stipulate that (a) all forms of bribery and corruption, including facilitation payments, and other unethical behavior are strictly prohibited in compliance with the law; (b) doubtful behavior should be challenged and rumors of improper payments or activities should be reported to management via compliance hotlines; (c) gifts or entertainment should always be proportionate and reasonable, should have a legitimate purpose, and should never create a conflict of interest or a perception thereof; (d) Siemens Global would not allow employees and third parties to make on its behalf gifts or political donations to political parties or to offer gifts or entertainment to candidates for political positions; (e) principles and practices for accurate accounting; (f) reporting mechanisms for anticorruption/compliance processes and associate confidentiality; and (g) decisions to allow (paid and unpaid) internships and secondments should be based exclusively on merit. Beyond expectations of such staples, my appreciation of this case study is that Siemens Global also acted across leadership, structure, relationships, and helpful mechanisms, although perhaps less so vis-à-vis purposes (if that was needed), rewards (e.g., for good behavior), and what more proactive participation by employees might be encouraged in relation to helpful mechanisms (Weisbord, 1976).

What lessons can one take away from Siemens' efforts to eliminate corruption? A couple of lessons were alluded to earlier: they are the need for a sense of urgency and the fact that a good crisis invites change that would have been difficult to achieve otherwise. Another, related, lesson is that driving an ethical culture requires more than just words: it demands vision, commitment, resources, expertise, an empowered compliance and ethics function, and above all, visible action. A fourth lesson is that compliance and ethics must have a voice in the CSuite. (Siemens Global's legal and compliance department falls directly under the purview of new CEO Joe Kaeser, who succeeded Loescher in 2013.) A fifth lesson is that corruption will spread like a virus without real counter-action by authorities, with companies infecting one other.

Inside Job "They were having massive private gains at public loss" is how one interviewee in Inside Job (Ferguson, 2010) sums up the greed that, with roots in deregulation, drove continued reckless risk-taking in the American financial services industry before infecting the rest of the world.

(Deregulation is the reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry, typically enacted to create more competition within it). To illustrate the scale of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–2009, the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Inside Job (1:48:39) opens up with a look at its expressions and effects in Iceland, an island country of 360,000 people living on 103,000 square kilometers (or 40,000 square miles).

Pursuant to the default of Iceland's three major privately-owned commercial banks (i.e., Glitnir, Kaupthing, and Landsbanki) in late 2008, the collapse of the country's banking system was, relative to the size of its economy, the largest experienced by any country in economic history.

What sparked the Global Financial Crisis? Inside Job notes that there had been sundry (and increasingly severe) financial crises in the wake of the deregulation that President Reagan initiated in the 1980s and that his successors—Presidents G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W.

7 Bush—continued (with much critical acclaim from the economics profession).4 With growing wealth and lobbying, the financial services industry, especially investment bankers, gradually captured the political system, an interviewee explains in Inside Job. (More and more, bankers were invited to work for the government at senior levels in finance-related functions.) Scandals, especially accounting frauds, broke out but became business as usual since—before long— everyone was doing it. In the 1990s, with advances in information and communication technology, more complex (and potentially dangerous) financial products such as derivatives emerged but pressure from the private sector (with the help of allies in government) made sure they remained unregulated. With evermore complicit legislation and government, lenders, investment bankers, and investors developed more clout throughout the 2000s; they then turned their attention to home buyers. The essence of what started as the Subprime Mortgage Crisis before it became the Global Financial Crisis is that, to earn greater fees, banks in the United States began to provide mortgages to people who—being potentially high risk for such causes as low income—were unable to afford them. Through financial engineering, over 2000–2003, fast-growing numbers (and quantities) of "toxic" mortgages were repackaged as collateralized debt obligations and sold off to outside investors, who subsequently lost out when borrowers defaulted and house prices declined in 2007–2008. But, with Armageddon staring them in the face, despite advance warning from the International Monetary Fund in particular, neither the financial services industry nor the federal government had done any planning for impending bankruptcy. Ultimately, at the cost of tens of trillions of US dollars, the Global Financial Crisis drove millions of people into bankruptcy or out of their homes, brought entire economies into recession, and triggered unemployment across the world. "At the end of the day, the poorest as always pay the most," commented an Inside Job interviewee. Closing the loop, Inside Job reveals that high-profile members of the economics profession had, against remuneration, given stamps of approval on matters regarding the health of the financial sector of Iceland, and elsewhere. Asked to comment on conflicts of interest in academia, an Inside Job interviewee chuckles that the discipline of economics has no relevance to anything and that "it is an important part of the problem". Campaigning for election on 28 September 2008, future President Obama proclaimed that "The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led us to a financial crisis as serious as any that we've faced since the Great Depression" and blamed lack of oversight.

Inside Job's signal contribution is to place the Global Financial Crisis in its historical perspective.

To note, the rising power of the financial services sector was part of a wider change in America.

From the mid-1980s, with the lifting of the Bamboo Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the economic dominance of the United States began to decline as countries such as the People's Republic of China opened their economies and released billions of new workers on the world markets. In the face of competition, its (hitherto sheltered) manufacturing base (e.g., General Motors, Chrysler, US Steel) was destroyed over the course of a few years. Other industries, such as the financial services sector and information and communication technology, rose to take up the slack but require fewer and highly-educated personnel (and tuition costs have been rising). Meanwhile, tax policy shifted to favor the wealthy (so that inequality of wealth in the United States is now higher than in any other developed country). American families 4

In truth, deregulation (and the Reaganomics behind its initial expressions) can be traced even further back, specifically to the mid-1970s (and so Presidents Ford and Carter); slow productivity growth and increasing operation and capital costs in key sectors are what sparked it. (That said, the first "meaningful" legislation—the Airline Deregulation Act—was only cleared

by Congress in 1978.) We should therefore probably also factor in the 1973–1975 recession (and of course the oil shock of 1973), which in the United States put an end to the overall Post– World War II economic expansion.

8 responded by working longer hours and going into debt: but, as the middle-class fell further and further behind, successive governments felt a political urge to make it easier for families to get credit (for homes, cars, healthcare, and education). President Obama's package of 2010 was not able to change much: with the continuing presence of bankers at senior levels in the administration, some of whom had orchestrated the deregulation, an Inside Job interviewee remarked at the time that "It's a Wall Street government". No doubt, President Obama helped alleviate the crisis by reassuring the public and downplaying the depth of the problem: but, he protected the banks rather than the mortgage holders, thereby exacerbating the gap between America's haves and have-nots; by so doing, President Obama ushered in President Trump.

Inside Job dissects the Global Financial Crisis with surgical precision and elucidates its causes.

Schoen (2017)—and no doubt many others—saw the Global Financial Crisis as an erosion of ethics. Schoen (2017) pointed the finger in turn at the compensations paid to mortgage brokers, the marketing and promotion of subprime mortgages ''designed to default'', the securitization of mortgages, rating firms, regulatory agencies, the American International Group, commercial and investment banks, and the over-the-counter derivatives market (pp. 820–827). But, beyond the flotsam and jetsam on the surface, it is the historicity of the Global Financial Crisis, beginning with President Reagan's investiture in 1981, that captured my attention. It is easy to become angry about the events in the documentary; it is easy to blame its unsavory characters; and, many leaders of Wall Street firms (and tens of thousands of their smaller fry) should probably have gone to jail. But, in the greater scheme of things, none of this would amount to very much.

We need to see the bigger picture, which is that simple assumptions about, say, conflict of interest policies, cannot be counted on in an increasingly interconnected world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. In the 21st century, the obsessive self-interest of Wall Street (and other appendages of the modern economy) obscures the lens of interconnectedness, curtails the perspective needed to explore options, and cripples agility; thence, cupidity turns a blind eye to consequences and multiplies the likelihood that extensive harm will be done. The Global Financial Crisis was caused by the failure of markets, the failure of institutions, and the failure of moral virtues.5 Beyond ethical band-aid, it follows, what is needed is a nation-wide reperceiving of corporate social responsibility with a realignment of vision, culture, and image. This is not easy, as the limited success of President Obama's reforms demonstrated: there will be winners and losers in the cold reality of international competition, with successive governments expected as always to please everybody (as if there were no such things as trade-offs). "[A]sk not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country," President Kennedy enjoined in his inaugural address of 1961, at another moment of global crisis; by so doing, he was challenging every American to contribute in some way to the public good. But, it is not often remembered that in the same address President Kennedy also asked other citizens of the world to see what all might do together. And so, even if much in the Global Financial Crisis was decidedly unethical, an examination of its historical roots beckons us to ponder whether the field of ethics might not need to develop further: too much of it seems to be, evermore, about right and wrong or us versus them across narrow horizons. Moving forward, how might ethics help individuals and communities cope with overwhelming problems where 5

Looking for systems archetypes in the Global Financial Crisis, I detect "success to the successful"; "escalation" and "tragedy of the commons"; but also "balancing process with delay", "fixes that fail", "limits to growth", "shifting the burden", and "shifting the burden to the intervenor" (Senge, 2006). In fact, referencing the most common systems archetypes, it seems that only "drifting goals" and "growth and underinvestment" do not apply, as needed goals were never achieved (beyond avoiding total meltdown) and there was nothing left to invest in.

9 binary scenarios do not exist and where the journey is as relevant as the destination, if not more so?

References Bowley, G. (2011). No way down––Graham Bowley on the K2 mountaineering disaster [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeRNf3oZLIc Dietz, G., & Gillespie, N. (2012, March 26). Rebuilding trust: How Siemens atoned for its sins.

The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/sustainablebusiness/recovering-business-trust-siemens Ferguson, C. (Producer, Director, & Writer). (2010). Inside Job. [Documentary]. United States: Sony Pictures Classics. Retrieved from http://watchdocumentaries.com/inside-job/ Krakauer, J. (2011). Three cups of deceit: How Greg Mortenson, humanitarian hero, lost his way. Byliner.

Johnson, C. (2015). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Jordan, J. (Director, Writer, & Co-Producer), & Rhoads, J. (Co-Producer). (2016). 3000 cups of tea. [Motion picture]. United States: Skyline Ventures Productions.

Loescher, P. (2012, November). The CEO of Siemens on using a scandal to drive change.

Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2012/11/the-ceo-of-siemenson-using-a-scandal-to-drive-change Mortenson, G., & Relin, D. (2007). Three cups of tea: One man's mission to promote peace …

One school at a time. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

O'Connell, W., & Bligh, M. (2009). Emerging from ethical scandal: Can corruption really have a happy ending? Leadership, 5(2), 213–235.

Public Broadcasting Service. (2008, May 13). Roundtable: The ethics of climbing. Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/everest/etc/roundtable.html Schoen, J. (2017). The 2007–2009 financial crisis: An erosion of ethics: A case study. Journal of Business Ethics, 146(4), 805–830.

Schubert, S., & Miller, C. (2008, December 20). At Siemens, bribery was just a line item. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21siemens.html Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (2nd ed.).

New York, NY: Currency/Doubleday.

UIAA. (n.d.). Ethical code for expeditions. Retrieved from https://www.theuiaa.org/declarations/ethical-code-for-expeditions/ Watson, B. (2013, September 18). Siemens and the battle against bribery and corruption. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/siemenssolmssen-bribery-corruption Weisbord, M. (1976). Organizational diagnosis: six places to look for trouble with or without a theory. Group and Organization Studies, 1(4), 430–447.