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When considering downsize in the face of economic difficulty using an ethical lens, each case might be considered alike unless certain aspects differentiate them ((Shaw, 2011, slide 3-5). If, for example, a company of 500 persons was pondering a fifty per cent reduction in size and that required a disproportionate number of layoffs among the laborers, this would perhaps demonstrate why this is unethical. After all, it would require the employed laborers to assume the duties and responsibilities of their laid off counterparts without benefit. It would increase the physical and emotional levels of stress for them and confer a greater amount of stress on their families and society, by extension. This, in turn, delimits autonomy and illustrates how the company simply uses them as a means to an end. It, therefore, violates Kantian ethics because it suggests that it is always ethical to eliminate workers and reward managers for the sake of profit. If, the company also investigated downsizing the monetary benefits instead of employees, this could be immoral dependent upon situation. If the company enacted a ten percent decrease across the board, this would be immoral through the lens of Rawls’ distributive justice theory (Shaw, 2011, p. 110). After all, it would disparately arrange society and circumstance to the disadvantage of those most challenged (p. 110). After all, those who are not management often struggle with rising transportation and living costs more than their middle and upper management counterparts do. Moreover, those employees that are not managers also fill in the gaps on a daily basis and therefore contribute more knowledge, physical and emotional labor than their supervisors do. Therefore, a company considering this option should enact a tier-based monetary compensation decrease. Non-management employees would realize a 5% decrease while middle management and upper management would realize steeper percentage based decreases. This would not only demonstrate management’s commitment to the company, its mission and goals but also extend a more fair solution to the current problem. Inevitably, some could argue that steeper cuts for the management incur significant losses in many more sectors. However, management earns much more than their nonsupervisory counterparts do and generally have much more disposable income. Because of this, they exert less energy to perform their tasks or to get through daily life tasks than their worker counterparts do. Since the company needs all of these employees but needs the persons who perform the manufacturing or service based tasks in order to deliver products and services to the customers, the nonsupervisory workers should be considered more valuable. Therefore, downsizing or decreasing wages within this employee sector warrants careful economic and moral consideration, especially since society will pay the price for such action. Through healthcare, social services, and/or the criminal justice system, disparately downsizing the laborers benefits few and unfairly burdens society. For all of these reasons then, downsizing for the sake of profits is immoral. It limits autonomy, uses people as means to an end, disparately effects the most vulnerable and arranges society so that it benefits a select few. Therefore, downsizing for profit motives violates Aristotelian, Kantian, Utilitarian and Rawls’ ethical standards. Shaw, W. H. (2011). Business ethics. Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. (2011). Chapter three: Justice and economic distribution. Retrieved from http://www.wadsworth.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid= M20b&product_isbn_issn=9780495604693&discipline_number=0