Business Ethics Case Study: Deontological Perspective

However, if Frank decides to do what the CEO asks and let those employees go, then he would have a negative impact on the employees and their families. Deontological Perspective. This perspective deals with decisions from a moral perspective. If Frank were a deontologist, he would make the decision of whether to go along with the CEO, based on his moral code. He would need to weigh both sides of the issue. Does his loyalty to the company, CEO and his family outweigh the process of doing the full due diligence of the employees performance of the past several years?
Step Three: Identify the Affected Parties This step includes identifying the stakeholders and discuss how they are affected by the decision this Frank has to make. The stakeholders,

The company will be affected immediately and for years to come. How will the company be affected in the long term and short term? Also, it is important to look at the message the company is sending. How do employees perceive Frank’s decision? Long-Term Versus Short-Term Consequences. The Executive Committee believes that the business there in is changing. They feel that in order to be successful in the long term they need to downsize the staff. In the short-term, the negative affects what would be that there will be some employees that lose their jobs. However, in the long-term the positive impact would be more employees keep their jobs increasing the chances of the company remaining successful. Symbolic Consequences. From the employee, perspective layoffs can be viewed in a negative way. This is often seen as the executive committee placing profits over employees. Frank represents the executive committee. If he chooses tonight investigate their performances of the employees without evaluations this could send a message to employees that the company is not really interested is the employee’s performance. If he does investigate those employees performances come that could send a signal to the employees that the company did the best they could to make a fair

Frank’s options are either to follow the direction of the CEO and not look into the employees that have not received performance evaluations or risk his job and investigate those employees performances over the past few years. The CEO did mention that the employees that would be laid off would receive a severance package. If the CEO really did not want to keep the older employees around, who have not received the employee evaluations, he along with the executive committee could decide that they would offer in early retirement package for those employees. They could approach those employees giving them the option of early retirement or risk being laid off based on any findings of their performance evaluation. Because those employees are described as being close to retirement, this could persuade those employees to retire early and also avoid any negative consequences of Frank letting go of the wrong