Using birth city as a query criterion, Maryann created queries that determined employees who were born in the selected cities earned, on average, $23$ percent less than those who were not. $$Well$,$ that could be because they work in lower$-$pay$-$grade jobs.$$ after giving it a bit of thought, Maryann realized that she needed to examine wages and salaries within job categories. $$Where$,$ she wondered, $$do people born in those cities fall in the ranges of their job categories?$$ So$,$ she constructed an SQL query to determine where within a job category the compensation for people born in the selected cities fell. $$Wow$!$ she said to herself, $$almost $80$ percent of the employees born in those cities fall into the bottom half of their salary range.$$ Maryann scheduled an appointment with her manager for the next day.

When answering the following questions, suppose that you are Maryann:

Given these query results, do you have an ethical responsibility to do something? Consider both the categorical imperative and the utilitarian perspectives.

What is your response if your manager says: $$Don$$t be a troublemaker; pushing this issue will hurt your career.$$

Suppose you hire a part$-$time person to help with the more accurate analysis, and that person is so outraged at the outcome that he quits and notifies local media outlets in all the affected cities of the organization$$s discrimination. He also puts the organization on blast on social media outlets. As a result, the organization starts trending.

a$.$ How should the organization respond?

b$.$ How should one respond?