This paper considers two sets ethical obligations owed by a firm and its management to stockholders and employees with respect to layoffs. Literature and research from ethics and agency are used to frame ethical issues that pertain to age discrimination in layoffs. An actual court case provides an example for focus, analysis, and discussion. Points of discussion include management's obligations to employees and factors of injustice related to prejudice against age.

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This case provides an opportunity to study budgets, budget variances, and performance evaluation at several levels. As a purely mechanical problem, the case asks for calculations of various price, efficiency, spending, and volume variances from a set of budgets and actual results. The case is also an interpretive exercise. After the variances have been computed, the next step is to develop plausible conjectures about their likely causes. Finally, it is a case about performance evaluation and responsibility accounting. The company has an incentive plan, based on the budget variances, that needs to be analyzed and critiqued.

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