Suppose that the employee being evaluated is a sixty-four-year-old woman who has announced her intention to retire next year. You have been her supervisor for one year, and you judge that her performance is below standard, but not bad enough at present to require termination. When you review her personnel file, you find that her previous supervisor rated her as satisfactory for each of the last three years. People who have been in the unit for a long time assure you that her performance has not changed this year. One final item of relevance is that she does not take criticism well. In fact, she tends to respond to criticism with tears and hostility.
Should you rate her as satisfactory, as your predecessor did for the last three years, or should you rate her as below standard and endure the difficult interview that is sure to follow, with very little hope that her performance will improve before she retires? Argue both for and against from a Business Ethics point of view.