Ethics In Business: Annotated Bibliography: Business Analysis

Ethics in Business: Annotated Bibliography

Band, David C., and Charles M. Tustin. "Strategic downsizing." Management Decision Dec. 1995: 36+. Academic OneFile. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.

This article discusses how corporations should aim to be responsible for more than just profit maximization. The author goes into the discussion of how downsizing a company violates the psychological and social contracts in the employer-employee relationship. The author seems to support the idea that employees should have a since of security in their job as long as he or she is productively advancing the goals of the organization. Downsizing productive employees harms the moral of the company and violates the trust that hard work makes an employee valuable.
Following his analysis, Professor Gilbert makes a deduction that, in cases where downsizing is being used by a corporation or an organization to help it remain in business, otherwise, it goes under, and then it can be considered morally right and consequently ethical corporate behavior. Subsequently, in his use of utilitarian approach which argues that the determination of whether an action is morally right or wrong is entirely dependent on its consequences, downsizing can be considered moral and thus ethical because they result in greatest utility for a large number of people. Further, the rights and duties approach contents that it is moral to downsize since employees lack absolute rights to their jobs. Nevertheless, the counter argument to ethicality to this is that these same employees still command a right of fair and just treatment. In conclusion, the justice and fairness approach finds downsizing to be immoral. This is because of lack of proportionality an employee`s behavior and the action of termination their duty.
2014.
Whilst reviewing Louis Uchitelle’s book, “The Disposable American: Layoffs and
Their Consequences,” columnist Bob Herbert claims that in as much as the better educated and those that are well or better trained do get better jobs, the reality is that there is inadequacy of available good jobs that is enough to meet the demand for these individuals. Many jobs cannot support the employees anymore. Many people that are laid off from a job is because the company cannot afford to have them; not because of their work quality. This article was useful because while some companies get back-lash for huge layoffs, a lot of the times it was the companies last resort. (113)

In an article “Downsizing: Are Employers Reneging on Their Social Promise" by Larry Gross published in 2001 by CPCU Journal claims that terminating an employee that has been hardworking and valuable to a company breaks the contract between the employee and employer. This agrees with the article “Laid Off and Left Out” by Bob Herbert published by The New York Times in 2006 because both articles agree that breaking the employee-employer contract does damage to the company’s reputation and repels high-value employees. In contrast to the article from Larry Gross, Bob Herbert says in his article that there are many qualified people that would be hired by company if the company could afford to hire them. Bob Herbert’s article was less bias because he made the point in the company’s defense in some cases both