OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Ethical Communities Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the four ethical communities
2. Apply the ethical communities to your personal case situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.

Smash Fitness and StayStrong Nutrition are interconnected start-up organizations,

with the same CEO, whose mission is to help clients obtain their health and fitness goals.
The goal is to get clients to make healthy lifestyle changes. Smash provides all the
necessary amenities for clients to feel motivated to make physical changes like a 360-
degree body scanner to track progress, new gym equipment, hydrotherapy, fitness
classes, and more. StayStrong was created to cover the gaps Smash was missing with
supplementation and nutrition. StayStrong provides clients with a healthy smoothie bar,
education on nutrition, supplements, and meal prep. My role at the organization was as
the regional operations manager. I ensured all four open locations were operating
properly, and, if something was wrong, I would make adjustments to fix things.
I worked closely with the COOs to create and implement change initiatives.
Although many things were my responsibility, I was mainly in charge of anything related
to managing and maintaining the team and its members, inventory, creating policies and
procedures, training and development, and any other related managerial tasks. This
organization was able to grow so quickly because of its ability to create a close-knit
atmosphere for team members and clients. Leadership would work alongside entry-level
team members, and every client knew the team members. Developing long-term
relationships with clients was key for organizational vitality. Team members would be
encouraged to be role models of the organizational values, to commit to the
organization’s long-term vision, and it worked because the team was meant to feel like
family.
However, despite maintaining positive relationships with clients, there is an issue
of high turnover rates. This is due to a multitude of factors discussed throughout my
various case studies, but leadership plays a large role.

1
 2) Describe how the ethics of the organization influenced the situation.

This organization did not understand that soul has a place in business, and ethics
come down to the morals of the marketplace; ethics reside in the soul (Bolman & Deal,
2017, p. 386). Leadership promoted sacrificing ethics to profit. For instance, this was
made evident when COOs decided to begin selling Selective Androgen Receptor
Modulators (SARMs) under the table to help clients, especially body builders, meet their
goals more quickly. These SARMs can put clients in danger in terms of their health, but
everyone wants this product because it garners impressive and noticeable results. This
product goes directly against our mission and values as an organization. Team members
at the organization felt as if they were going against their own ethical convictions by not
stopping it from being sold, but many fell victim to being a social being and became
attuned to doing what was expected from corrupt leadership (Bolman & Deal, 2017, p.
389). The soul of the organization was becoming lost in pursuit of growth, and an
organization that loses track of its moral purpose cannot provide credible ethical
guidelines for its team.

A solid foundation of values and identity is crucial to long-term organizational

success because it provides the organization a sense of character. Once soul is lost, it is
hard for organizations to find it again, and Smash and StayStrong’s high turnover rates
reflects this loss. The organization lost its commitment to acting in accordance with its
values and beliefs. No one in the organization expects leaders to make every right
decision. Leaders at the organization try to fulfill their responsibilities like maintaining
the budgets and responding to any political pressures. However, leaders are not aware
that if they served as models for organizational values, there impact in their role would be
much deeper and more enduring (Bolman & Deal, 2017, p. 397). Values should include
caring, faith, justice, and excellence, which all align with various frames and their
associated ethical communities. An understanding of ethical communities leads to the
ability to revive moral virtues that have been lost.

3) Recommend how you would apply one of the ethical communities for an alternative
course of action regarding your case.

The Human Resources frame and its ethical community of family could be
applied to Smash and StayStrong to prevent turnover raters from continuing to increase.
Each frame has a value that serves as its ethical glue. Caring, having compassion and
concern for others, is a value lost on this organization and leadership, so this ethical
community would be most effective for reviving this moral virtue of leadership. The
organization prides itself on feeling like family, so it requires servant-leaders who are
concerned with the needs of others (Bolman & Deal, 2017, p. 392). Leaders at this
organization need to understand the importance of collective well-being, and more team

2
 members would remain committed to the organization. Instead of shying away from love,
the organization should begin embracing it because of its power.
Allowing for love to be prominent throughout the organization will increase
vulnerability, which generates a deeper sense of unity throughout team members. Caring
requires listening, accepting, and understanding that creates a feeling of mutual
appreciation that eventually guides teams to love. This organization already tries to create
a family-feel for their culture, but they are missing the most integral components to being
authentic in their pursuit of this culture. Caring would have prevented the organization
from crossing ethical lines for profit. If this was prevented, turnover would not be as
high. Team members would feel appreciated, care after, and loved rather than being
pushed away by leadership.

4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned
about ethics.

As a part of the management team, I could have done more to ensure the
organization was operating for more than profits. Leadership should have offered more
inspiration for team members by relying on ethics and soul in organizations, and I could
have been a source of that inspiration. There was a clear ethical void in leadership
throughout the organization. One thing I could have done differently to fill this void and
revive moral virtues is emphasize ethics when I trained all new team members. Every
team member interacted with me, so I could have made a difference. Another solution
could have been to incorporate ethics statements.
Also, due to the seriousness of putting clients at risk, I could have relied on more
legal and regulatory measures, like the United Nation Convention Against Corruption
that mandated that measures be taken to increase organizational transparency (Bolman &
Deal, 2017, p. 390). Ideally, I would have utilized each frame’s perspective on ethical
responsibilities for organizations to research and come up with a plan to incorporate each
value back into the organization. The structural frame has an ethical community that
resembles factories in that the ethical imperative of this frame is excellence, and
leadership is an authorship. The political frame has an ethical community that resembles
a jungle where the ethical imperative is justice, and leaders share power in pursuit of
justice. The symbolic frame’s ethical community resembles the temple, where faith is the
ethic imperative and leaders build significance through symbolic forms. All these ethical
communities strengthen one another, so it would be beneficial to characterize the
organization by these values.

3
 Reference

Bolman, L.G., & Deal, T.E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
(6th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.