Question

A business owner makes a decision to reduce a plant's workforce by 10% to cut costs and save jobs for the remaining 90% of employees. This decision could be justified as ethical by using the ________ approach to moral reasoning.

a) Utilitarian

b) Rights-based

c) Justice

d) Virtue ethics

Answer 1

The business owner's decision to reduce the workforce to cut costs and save jobs can be ethically justified by the utilitarian approach, which seeks the greatest good for the greatest number.

Step-by-step explanation:

The decision by a business owner to reduce a plant's workforce by 10% to cut costs and save jobs for the remaining 90% of employees could be justified using the utilitarian approach to moral reasoning. This approach, associated with philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, is a form of consequentialism that evaluates the morality of actions based on their consequences. Specifically, an action is deemed right if it leads to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In this scenario, reducing the workforce slightly to save the jobs of a much larger number of employees could be seen as producing a net positive effect on happiness and welfare, thereby aligning with the utilitarian principle of maximizing overall happiness.