Reference no: EM132870157

You are the CEO and sole shareholder of a 50-employee consumer electronics manufacturer based in Reseda, California. You have just lost your largest customer, WalMart, to another competitor. Beginning next month, you anticipate that your company will start losing over $100,000 a month, which is a sizeable amount for a company of your size. You can start to cut some expenses like travel and entertainment, but most of your costs are fixed like insurance and your long-term office lease. The one area you can cut quickly is by reducing payroll; in other words by terminating some of your employees. You have calculated that if you terminate 10 of your bottom performing employees, you can save $60,000 a month which still doesn't eliminate your overall losses but stems it considerably. You are prepared to make that decision but among the 10 people you looking to fire, several are long-term employees with significant family obligations with limited prospect for finding other comparable employment. In one instance, one of the employees you are looking to terminate has a spouse who is dying of cancer and with a special needs son who has Down's Syndrome. Using both the Utilitarian and Categorical Imperative ethical theories, please analyze the situation and come to a decision, as the CEO.