As a responsible firm owner, I would choose option A and install the necessary equipment. Halbert and Ingulli (2014) state that ethical preferences are enforced not by law but by individual’s consciousness. Not only would it allow me to resolve the matter with EPA, but it would also be an investment into the reputation of my firm. Today, environmental issues are concerning the whole society and not only related activists, so it would be only logical to prevent any damage to the company’s image. Moreover, the damage to the environment also should not be ignored, thus, I believe that the installment of necessary equipment will benefit everybody.
Under utilitarianism, it is customary to mean the most influential and earlier-formed version of consequentialism – normative ethics, in which the moral correctness of an action is determined by the nature of its consequences. According to Lazari-Radek and Singer (2017), “the key feature of utilitarianism is the need to bring changes that promote happiness and relieve suffering” (p. 18). Utilitarianism opposes non-consequentialist normative programs such as deontological ethics and ethics of virtue, as well as other versions of consequentialism. Thus, utilitarian logic would demand from me to install equipment not because it would benefit my company by reducing the costs of dealing with EPA but because it is the right thing to do. The damage to the reputation of my firm or the problems with EPA would not really matter in utilitarianism, as they would be secondary to the main cause of the rightful action. In choosing between alternative actions available for performance or systems of norms that claim to be recognized, the moral agent must proceed from which of them provide the greatest increase in the summed utility. Overall, the utility of my actions would be determined by their adherence to moral norms.
References
Halbert, T., & Ingulli, E. (2014). Law and Ethics in the Business Environment (8th Edition). Cengage Learning.
Lazari-Radek, K. de, & Singer, P. (2017). Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.