Reference no: EM132860078

What are the principal differences between deontological and utilitarian ethics?

What are the principal differences between Rawls's and Nozick's ethical theories?

"When Eureka! Isn't" (Read this case and use the answer box, below, write solution or solutions, bringing to bear the theories and principles you have studied so far)

It's late afternoon on an early spring Sunday. You are the Executive Vice President for Engineering and Facilities Planning for your company, Zeno Industries, and you and your team (which includes architects, engineers, lawyers, and sustainability experts) are in the final stage of the planning process for a major new plant that will be built in Eureka, Montana, just south of the Canadian border. The plant will employ between 390 and 425 people, most of whom will be residents of the area and those commuting in from places as far away as Kalispell and Whitefish, about a sixty to ninety-minute drive, one way. This is an area that has an unemployment rate that is more than 12 percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate. The mean non-executive and non-professional salary will be $43,000, and employees will receive health insurance and participate in the company's defined contribution plan. The plant will also have day care facilities, a medical clinic, a gym, and will employ three social workers and three psychologists to assist employees with personal issues and crises, and will purchase a fleet of five electric buses to provide commuter services for employees living more than twenty miles south of Eureka. It is expected that the plant will lead to the creation of at least a dozen new local businesses, including restaurants, dry cleaners, and other service providers. Once in full operation and utilization, but not yet fully staffed, in about three years the projected EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization expenses) contribution will be $140,000,000, or sixteen percent of projected total revenue for the company that year. In five years, once fully staffed, that number should increase to $210,000,000. Tax revenues paid into Eureka and surrounding towns would be in the millions and would transform it from a sleepy historical hamlet, with a history of fur trapping and logging, into an economically strong town that would likely contribute significantly to building the north-west Montana economy. Groundbreaking could be as early as July.

While going through the final blueprints, zoning waivers, and environmental impact assessments, and just before the meeting was scheduled to wind-up, your twenty-year-old daughter enters the room, out of breath and clearly anxious. She's a student at a local university. She is carrying copies of a paper that, just the day before, was published by three professors in the Anthropology Department. The paper makes it clear that a corridor that runs from south-western Canada, through Eureka, and southward about ten miles, likely contains the burial sites of thousands of native peoples, the excavation of which could change our understanding of migration patterns and cultural practices in North America over the past 30,000 years. The corridor runs right through the forty-two-acre site where the plant would be built, and the paper indicates that the area of the proposed plant site is where the excavation would be most fruitful, given recent finds. Your team spends the next half-hour reading the paper. Then they turn and look at each other, clearly upset. If the proposed site is abandoned, it will likely take five years to find a new site and obtain all of the approvals needed, as well as to redraw the plans and specs.

What should you do?