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.

I work for the company Spalding a sports manufacturing company as a project manager. I
have been assigned a project to devlop a plan to make our basketball line more
environmentally friendly, while also maintaing cost effective measures and keeping
quality as a priority. Spalding has used a leather mixture for our basketballs and our
stakholders have taken notice that customers are more environmentally concious.
Maintaing the level of profitability and quality is key.

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

Ethics have influenced my organization in a very obvious sense, Spalding has decided to
lower its’ environmental impact by initiating this project. One could argue this is purely
for optics but personally I view this as a massive overall of our most profitibale product.
This is a risk which Spalding does not usually expose themselves to. It is important to
understand that Spalding would remain the top producer of sports equipment regardless
of this overall of basketballs. I believe Spalding has shown its ethical chops in more ways
than one.

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

From my multiple meetings with Jim and Suzy regarding the product progress I feel my
countless requests to expand my team in order to deliver this product on time has fallen
on deaf ears. Although Spalding as a whole is an ethical organization I cannot help but
feel ignored by Jim and Suzy. They seem to only be concerned with the bottom line.
Unwilling to accomadate my request or even give it serious thought.

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

1
 I would adjust initial expectations of Jim and Suzy. I believe doing this would eliminate
this perdiciment I am running into. I knew that the team I currently have would not be
enough to complete this but proceeded due to wanting to provide the deliverable with the
given resources.