Running head: ETHICAL FRAME 1

PCA: Ethics

Amy Harris

Arizona State University

OGL 481

October 5, 2020
ETHICAL FRAME 2

PCA: Ethics

While working for Schue Products, I was a customer service representative.

There were three of us in customer service (CSR): Sandy who had been with the company

for 20 years and head of CSR, myself who had only been there for about 6 months, Sherry

who had only been there about 2 months, and we all shared the same responsibilities. We

put our phones on a loop, which means that when a call came in it would go to one of us,

the next call to the next girl and so on, that way we shared the call volume evenly. One

day I realized that my phone was constantly ringing, I would hang up with one customer

and right away I would be getting another call. When I looked around I would see Sandy

on the phone and Sherry was playing games on her computer. I later realized that Sherry

wasn’t getting calls because she kept her phone off the hook, so the loop would skip her. I

brought this up to Sandy, so of course she and her supervisor Pete talked to Sherry about it

and she started putting her phone back on the loop. Eventually the same situation

happened again.

I became extremely frustrated that Sandy and I were taking on the high volume of

calls while Sherry just played games and read websites. One day I had enough, so I e-

mailed Pete and informed him about my frustrations about the ongoing situation, how

Sherry kept making mistakes on rush orders, not processing payments and even forgot to

place an extremely important order for a trade show, and told him that he needed to either

fire her or I would put in my two weeks’ notice. About 20 minutes later Pete came to my

desk and asked me when my last day would be. I gave him the date and that was that.

Sandy told me later that Pete did not deal well with ultimatums, so as much as he agreed

with me, he let me put in my two weeks’ notice.

ETHICAL FRAME 3

The management team at Schue took a structural frame of ethics. They cared

more about getting orders in and product shipped quickly, “the ethical imperative of the

factory is excellence: ensuring that work is done as effectively and efficiently as

possible”[CITATION Bol174 \p 392 \l 1033 ]. We were looked at as a factory, which part

of us were. Downstairs was the production line, manufacturing and shipping the heaters.

With the company about to close it’s doors, upper management wanted to get as many

orders in and shipped as they could. Because of that we were overworked, they didn’t

care if we were tired or missed family events.

Scheu taking more of the structural frame of ethics made us feel unappreciated for

the work that we were doing. Management seemed to not care about our frustrations,

especially when my concerns were brought up about Sherry not doing her job properly,

they seemed to not have the time to retrain so I feel that was why they accepted my

resignation.

I feel that if management at Scheu took more of a human resource frame of ethics, they

would have taken more time to train Sherry so that she would feel more comfortable in

her role. If this approach was taken, Sherry would have felt more supported, not only

from management, but from all of us on CSR. I was pretty young when I had this job, so I

didn’t feel comfortable approaching the situation myself. I saw that management had

talked to Sherry the first time concerns were brought up, so I assumed things would

change.

Management should have recognized that there needed to be improvement in

meeting Sherry’s needs and understanding her roles and responsibilities. Management

should have also understood that commitment and motivation was vital to their success,
ETHICAL FRAME 4

“human resource and symbolic approaches need to be considered whenever issues of

individual dedication, energy, and skill are vital to success” [CITATION Bol174 \p 304 \l

1033 ].

Knowing the different frames of ethics, I think I would have been a little more

patient. I would have been less frustrated with Sherry, but all of that frustration would

have been toward management, so in the end, I probably would have had the same

outcome. At the time of this situation, I was not aware that the company was eventually

going to close their doors, if I had known that, I probably would have understood a little

more about why they we were overworked, and maybe would have had some sympathy

for what the management team was going through.

References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing Organizations. Hoboken: Jossey-Bass.