OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Political Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the political frame
2. Apply the political frame 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.

My role is a Store Manager. As a store manager I oversee a team that responsibility is

provide a great customer experience to all. As a manager I participate in conflict
management, ensuring team is following standards and procedure, and many other tasks. The
situation that I am completing this case analysis on is the incident in New Jersey where two
African American were discriminated against by the store manager who is Caucasian. In the
incident the two men where falsely accused resulting in their arrest. Cell phone footage from
witness allowed the truth to be told and the men were freed but still had to endure the trauma
of the experience (Errin Haines Whack, North Jersey Media Group, 2018). When that
incident took place Starbucks issued an apology on behalf of the company to the men. A
couple weeks later Starbucks closed over 8000 company stores in the US for a bias training
(Starbucks Corporation, 2019).

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

The politics of the organization influenced this situation because the Store Manager
racially profiled these men and because he had more power in the establishment. She was the
store manager of the location, and she abused her power and position to fuel her racial
perspective. She knew when she called the authorities, they would favor her side because
they are in her establishment. Thankfully everything was caught on camera and the real story
was able to be seen.

Another way politics influenced this is because of the racial profiling done by the store
manager and the video going viral on the internet it received a lot of backlashes from the
bottom and consumers. The “cancel culture” as they are called began trying to boycott
against Starbucks because of this frustrating act of discrimination towards these innocent
black men (Lenthang & Zoellner, 2018). Starbucks came out with an apology and to
counteract their boycott they decided to close over 8000 stores for a racial-bias training.

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 Recommend how you would use organizational politics for an alternative course of
action regarding your case.

As a store manager in this situation, I would use organizational politics by

standing on morals. The store manager in this situation racially profiled these men. She
then called the police on these men for absolutely no reason at all. Now, if I was in the
situation, I would ask myself the question “Would I want this done to me or a family
member?”. Would I want to go inside a Starbucks, get denied the ability to use the
restroom because I didn’t purchase anything, so I go have a seat and now the police are
being called. After answering that the question the obvious answer would be no.
If I wanted to address the men, I would have approached the men and used my
communication skills to ask them any questions I may have. Afterwards I would have
tried to just connect with them and build some form of relationship with them. Doing this
would have given her better results and would have showed her that she was being bias.

Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned
about this frame.

I would do everything different when it came to how the store manager carried the
entire situation with the men. I would not have called the police on these men for no
reason just because I have the power to do so. I would not abuse my power and then
deceive everyone to justify why I did what I did.
Regarding Starbucks being canceled by the cancel culture (boycotted) I would
handle it the same way. They gave an apology for the situation and chose to hold
themselves accountable and provide the training they feel like the partners of the
company needed developing in. Their agenda was to prove to the mass that this behavior
did not define the company but acknowledge that they needed their partners to be more
knowledgeable on behaviors so that it doesn’t happen again.

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 References

Errin Haines Whack, North Jersey Media Group. (2018, April 19). Men arrested at Philadelphia

Starbucks say they feared for their lives. North Jersey. Retrieved September 19, 2022,

from https://eu.northjersey.com/story/news/2018/04/19/black-men-arrested-starbucks-

say-they-feared-their-lives/531471002/

Starbucks Corporation. (2019, January 20). Starbucks Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Timeline.

Starbucks Stories. Retrieved September 19, 2022, from

https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2018/starbucks-to-close-stores-nationwide-for-racial-

bias-education-may-29/

Lenthang, M., & Zoellner, D. (2018, April 15). Outraged social media users call for boycott of

Starbucks after two black men were arrested. Mail Online. Retrieved September 19,

2022, from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5616937/Outraged-social-media-

users-call-boycott-Starbucks-two-black-men-arrested.html