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.

The situation that I chose was one where our organization went through a revamp of our
CRM (customer relationship management) system. While this seemed at first like any
normal project that was taken on by a department, it quickly became a situation because
of the lack of clarity surrounding the projects outcome and the lack of communication or
transparency amongst leadership in our organization which caused uncertainty for many
departments. At the time, I was the Operations Manager with our organization but this
project was not something that was assigned to me to lead or to even oversee. Rather, it
was a project given to our Director of Recruitment to spearhead because the revamp was
also adding a new application that would affect how him and his recruiters were able to
track people in the system. As stated above, this became a situation not only for the fact
of clarity because our Director of Recruitment only knew one part of the system and
relied heavily on outside vendors rather than our internal team to assist him with moving
the project forward. This then led into the other situation of transparency and
communication. Because he was the only one leading this project at first, he didn’t
understand or know to involve other departments which this revamp would affect. Soon
after the project was underway, I realized that I needed to be included to help move the
project along and ensure that the revamp of the system wouldn’t cause data loss missing
information for any of our departments.

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

As mentioned above, the ethics of the organization influenced the situation through not
being transparent with team members about projects that were in the pipeline. It was our
COO who initiated this project but didn’t work with other departments to identify any
risks or questions they may have prior to moving the project forward. While I am not
blaming one specific person, I believe that those in leadership should have understood the

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 vision and values of the company enough to know that a project of this magnitude should
be thoroughly vetted prior to moving forward.

Additionally, I think the ethics of the organization influenced the situation through those
in leadership wanting to be the “heroes” by getting this project across the finish line and
having our main system finally be effective for all. Prior to the revamp of our system, the
old system we were using had contacts and accounts in the wrong places, and while this
revamp was supposed to remedy these issues once and for all, it was the ethical decisions
of leadership to not communicate but rather move forward that hurt this project from the
start.

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

I think the best ethical community for this situation would be the structural frame.
Through the structural frame, processes and procedures are put in place. I think by having
processes and procedures put together, it would have eliminated the ability for leadership
to move forward with a project this large without consulting other departments first.
Through this frame, expectations would be defined of what warrants follow up and what
departments need to be involved.

As the name implies, the structural frame in my opinion always brings structure to the
organization. In this project I could see that there was no structure to how we were
wanting to move forward with such a large task. Rather than utilizing the team members
we had who were experts in our system, we relied heavily on outside vendors to help
build out the system based on what information we gave them. I felt that this hurt the
project and has still caused issues within our new system today because they weren’t the
ones who knew what we did day in and day out. If we had a better structure and norms in
place, I think this could have helped not only this project but others moving forward.

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

Throughout this semester I have learned a great deal about ethics and the ethical
communities I wasn’t previously aware of. Moving forward not only with this and other
projects, I want to build our company to what is used to be when we were smaller.
Through the structural frame I want to ensure that departments have processes, policies,
and procedures needed to make the best decisions possible. Through the human resource
frame I want to bring back that sense of support in our organization. When we were
smaller, we were more agile but also communicated more with each other about what

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 was going on. I feel that we have lost that sense of communication and support from each
other to help build up our systems and organization.

For the political frame, I have learned that we need to look past what just the stakeholders
of our organization want but get a sense of what is needed from everybody to make us
high functioning. With the addition of new leadership in our organization, I feel that this
frame has become disjointed and it is about what leaders want rather than getting
different perspectives and listening to those who deal with the day-to-day. Lastly, through
the symbolic frame I think not only with this project but again with future projects and
enhancements to our company we need to not forget the culture or values we have. One
of our values of our organization is inclusion and with this project I felt that this was not
upheld. We need to know how to best use the team we have and the minds of our
organization to make it better and stronger.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
(7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass