> "Do it or I'll find someone who will." is both true and powerful. If you quit you lose your livelihood and potentially could be blacklisted from the industry,

> "Do it or I'll find someone who will." is both true and powerful. If you quit you lose your livelihood and potentially could be blacklisted from the industry, and yet the bad thing still happens anyway. That's merely a rationalization to remain a member of group 1. The truth is that 2 and 3 are not mutually exclusive, and together, they can and do occasionally prevent "bad thing" from happening. In some cases, it's because group 1 is small enough that the company cannot hire a toady to do "bad thing" in time to retain their contract for doing so. It may also be because the combination of external publicity coupled with a high-profile resignation is enough of a PR hit that the company reconsiders. There's another element to consider: other, unrelated teams within the company who catch wind of "bad thing" can also opt for 2 and/or 3, further disincentivizing the company and perhaps even its competitors from proceeding, as losing a leading team in a highly-contested market segment could mean ceding significant ground to a competitor. Granted, such moral stands don't affect change as often as one might like, but parroting "bad thing will always happen regardless what you try" everywhere certainly doesn't help things.