ABSTRACT
As we continue our review of selected managerial functions and their ethical implications, we turn now to the issue of terminating employees. There are various categories of terminations: termination for cause, layoffs, downsizing, right-sizing, performance-related terminations, and others. To the employee who is told that they can no longer work for the company, there is a certain sameness regardless of the name given to the termination. One day the employee has a job, a steady income, benefits, a place to go on a regular basis to work with familiar people, an identity as an accountant, or sales manager, or vice president, and a source of stability. The next day, the employee has none of these. Further, there is the stigma that, whatever the company called it, the employee was actually fired.1
