Organisational Group Think

Isn't it interesting how large firms get so caught up in their own rhetoric some times that they totally fail to appreciate how they look to the outside world. Recently we had the BA cross matryr, but the one that interests me most is the case of the Goldman Sachs cleaners. The point is not whether Goldman should pay its cleaners more as some abstract ethical or industrial relations debating point: the point is that it seems the negative publicity cannot be justified by the cost of fixing the problem. Isn't the rational move in this game simply to make the bad news go away?