deemed as ethical. Virtue ethics ask only that the intent of any act be for the good of all things living. In both cases, Tom's act can be said to be ethical.The best decision may be for Jones to inform his superior of the current situation that may deem harmful to the company if the request by the manager is taken. Jones could explain that the time to implement that strategy may not be now, but could be a plan of action at a more beneficial time. Perhaps, at a time when this sort of strategy is not under the public's scrutiny. If the superiors are unwilling to hear his pleads then, Jones, would have no choice but to comply with the request made by his superiors and do as told or face the consequences. It is Jones' obligation to his superiors to do as he is told for the best interest of the company. If they are willing to take the ethical risk, Jones would have to comply with their decision. Since it is not an illegal action, Jones would have no obligation to report the unethical act to a regulatory agency; unless an illegal act has been committed. In this scenario, Office Depot has maintained its high ethical standards. We will now take a closer look at articles comparing Office Depot's competition in some areas.Evaluation of Articles Concerning CompetitorsIn order to evaluate the competition, we carefully reviewed numerous articles provided for the case study. We came to the conclusion that the article which was most unbiased was, "Discount Captures Lion's Share of Back-To-School Sales in '98" by Mike Troy for Discount Store news. This particular article discusses the strong sales increase at discount stores over the months of August and September. This increase was primarily due to the large number of parents and students shopping for back to school supplies. This time of year is second only to Christmas in sales for stores like Wal-Mart, KMart and Target. Dollar stores also tend to do well at this time of the year, accor...
