AWARD WINNER - Responsible Leadership Category at European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition
In early 2021, McKinsey & Company (McKinsey) agreed to pay US$573 million to end US state-level investigations into claims that it had helped exacerbate the global opioid crisis. Tom Peters, an influential and highly respected management guru, was upset by how far his former employer had been willing to go in helping US drug maker Purdue Pharma LP increase sales of OxyContin, a narcotic-based painkiller that helped drive an opioid epidemic responsible for hundreds of thousands of tragic deaths. As far as Peters was concerned, there was no question as to whether what McKinsey did was wrong: it had ignored the “moral responsibility of business” by helping an unethical client maximize profit by aggressively promoting the wide-scale use of a highly addictive drug. In addition to asking why McKinsey was still open for business, Peters posed a previously unimaginable question: “At this moment in time, why would anyone want to go to work for McKinsey?”