You share an office with a long-time co-worker who is also a very close friend. One of his children is struggling with a chronic, life-threatening illness, and as a result your office mate has a hard time getting to work on time every day. At the same time, on the recommendation of an external consultant, your boss has instituted a very stringent timekeeping policy stipulating that employees who are more than five minutes late more than three times in any given month are subject to immediate termination. The consultant found that a culture of lax timekeeping was leading to significant inefficiencies, and cutting into the company’s profit margin; the root of the problem was managers at the middle level that you and your office mate occupy. Laxity at that level had spread to non-managerial personnel. Managers fill out time cards rather than punching in, so their time records are on the “honor system.” Because of a crisis with his son’s health, your colleague was nearly an hour late every day last week, but marked himself on his time card as having arrived on time. Your boss calls you into her office and tells you that several members of the staff had observed your colleague arriving late, though his time cards say otherwise. She asks you whether he did in fact arrive on time. Your office mate is the sole financial support of his family, who will be unable to pay for his son’s medical treatments if he loses his job. You too are your family’s sole financial support, and if you are found to have answered the boss’s question untruthfully, you yourself could be fired immediately. Should you tell your boss the truth, or should you lie? Begin by giving a concise but thorough explanation of utilitarianism, principle-based ethics, and virtue ethics. Then explain how you should answer your boss’s question, according to each of these three theories. Which theory do you believe gives the best answer? What is your main reason for choosing that theory over the others?
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