Frank Has an Ethical Dilemma

After studied the case, I believed Frank has an ethical dilemma. On one hand, since the lay-off decisions are based on the annual performance appraisal scores of the employees, but there are three departments where employees' evaluation scores are not given, it is not fair for Frank to judge them based just on what his CEO believed their performances would be. On the other hand, the CEO of the company, despite the concerns from some members of the family, has a confidence in Frank and offers him such great opportunity to be a CFO. Therefore, if Frank disagrees with the CEO, he will become controversial again between the Executive Committee for the "fit with the company culture" concerns. Additionally, the CEO may not be satisfied with the decisions and there will be a chance Frank could lose his job.

However, at some point, the CEO's words actually make some senses. He mentioned that the employees in those three departments have been working for the company for so many years and they were not performing as well as they used to, if so, why not just lay-off them and make more positions for the younger employees who need this job more to support their families. This point really makes sense but only in the circumstances that these employees really perform badly and no longer make profit for the company, if not, it would be just unfair to the people who worked for the company for so many years and devoted themselves in the career. Therefore, from my own perspective, for the longtime employees, the right thing to do is to go through the last three appraisals of the employees in those three departments to see how they really performed. If some of them only gained a little profit or didn't gain any profit at all for a long time, lay them off with relatively higher pension for being long-term loyal employees. If some employees' performances are not as good as they did years ago but still above or around the average level, we should keep them because they have known the operating system for a long time and it is easier to train them to be better. It has always not been about the lawsuit, it is about caring for the employees. And for the younger employees, go through the same procedure to see their performances, but pick the ones who are around or above average and lay off the rest. For the people who are safe in this downsize decision, hiring an exclusive person to train them would be a good choice to improve whole productive strength of the company.

I believe a wise CEO will always put the company's interests in the first place. So if Frank disagrees with the CEO, as long as he explains the reasons and really thinks from the company's perspective, the CEO will understand him and even think him as a strong-minded talent who does not just follow whatever his boss tells him but think wisely and independently. If Frank really handles this situation well and helps the company, he might even get a promotion