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.

My situation is one where three factors led to my decision to leave an organization after 22
years. At the time of my departure, I was in a leadership position overseeing approximately
400 employees. Two factors that led to my decision were internal to the organization: 8
leadership changes in 2 years and organizational top-down communication changes. One
was an external factor of an outside organization putting pressure on the company, leading to
a response that misaligned with my personal values.

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

The ethics of the organization influenced my situation as the external pressures were calling
into question the organization’s operations and treatment of employees. Additionally, there
were many employees throughout the company that were claiming mistreatment internally.
The way the organization chose to respond to those allegations showed an interpretation of
the organizational ethics that did not align with my interpretation.

The response included a campaign of sending top level leaders from across the country to
markets where employees have expressed unhappiness and the external organization was
applying pressure. These organizational leaders hosted many ‘listening’ sessions in attempts
to make the employees feel like they were heard, but they were followed by organizational
propaganda designed to convince individuals they were working for a great company. The
attempts to connect employees with valid concerns to the heart of the company was not
successful, and looked like an attempt to convince them their experiences were not valid.

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

I feel as though the organization attempted to leverage the ethical community within the
symbolic frame and the organizational ethic of faith and belief (Bolman & Deal, 2021). This

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 approach was not successful because the organization overestimated it’s symbolic
significance in the lives of employees. The organization repeatedly attempted to expose their
heritage and founding principles as righteous and just, but failed to understand that their
previous heroes were not valid to current employees.

I recommend that the organization instead take the human resource frame approach with the
organizational ethic of caring (Bolman & Deal, 2021). The employees that wanted a change
in their experience did care about their jobs and their livelihood. If not, they would have
simply left the organization. They saw value in the work they did and the connection with
their communities, but felt under supported, underpaid, and failed to see any improvements
in their employee experiences. If the organization employed caring and listening, their
response to the pressures and impact on their reputation would have been handled more
effectively.

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

Based on what I’ve learned about ethics through the lens of organizational frames, I’m not
certain I would have done anything differently with my situation. As the employee
dissatisfaction and external pressures were not present in my markets, I had no direct
involvement with the response. Rather, I was an observer from a distance to the strategies
the company employed in their frantic and scrambled response.

Admittedly, I did feel alarmed very early on in this situation and the company’s response to
the situation, but I was so surprised I assumed I was misinformed or misinterpreting the
information I had around their activities. This component of my situation began about a year
prior to my departure. Knowing what I know now, I perhaps would have made the decision
to leave sooner. Once they started on their convincing campaign, it came along with it a
level of micromanagement across the entire organization that was intense. That pressure and
intensity were not necessary, and I operated too long in that environment that it impacted my
mindset and mental health.

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 Reference

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