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

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

The situation that I will be analyzing in my PCA is that of a tough decision that had to be
made regarding the employment of two people. A new District Manager was hired and after the
hiring decision had been made it was found out that one of the locations that this new DM would
be covering had employed his niece as a barista. The difficulty was that we were unsure if this
would be a conflict of interest, or what our next steps would be if it were a conflict.

The relationship was determined to be a conflict and the barista was separated to eliminate
the conflict. My role in the organization is that of an internal District Manager and I was charged
with supporting the decision and communicating that to the barista and new District Manager.

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

The structure of Starbucks is similar to that of other retail environments with both a Machine
bureaucracy as well a somewhat simple leadership hierarchy. The Machine bureaucracy means
that there are standardized procedures for almost everything in the day-to-day; there is consistent
uniformity. This type of of structure is more commonly seen at the store, level and outside of
that, and moves to a traditional leadership hierarchy within the corporation. This means that a
solution from the top may not always match the needs of the individual units. ( Bolman & Deal,
2021)

Policies and decisions are made at the top level and based on data and generic information.
These decisions are one size fits all, and leave little room for bargaining based on the specifics of
the situation. Because of that, there are tensions between middle managers and top executives as
the situations aren’t always consistent and the decisions made don’t meet the needs of the lower
level. In these situations, the middle managers are left to share the bad news with front-line
employees which demonizes the executives. In addition to that, there is the division of labor
within any organizational structure. The situation could not be resolved based on the general
policies, thoughts, and opinions of the leaders involved. We also had to include the HR
department as another level of structure within the leadership arena.

1
 3) Recommend how you would apply one of the ethical communities for an alternative
course of action regarding your case.

Both the HR department and the traditional hierarchy are more variable than the machine.
Bureaucracy, I would have utilized them to determine a different course of action. The
decision was made based on the interpretation of the standardized procedures laid out in the
policies. However, rather than just sticking to them as written, we could have utilized the
leadership structure, and the HR department to interpret them differently.

The top-down leader could challenge the decision, but they did not. Using this structure, I
could have collected the data and challenged the decision myself. While this is an option
structure of a machine, bureaucracy creates a rigid environment, and I know that if I had
decided to challenge the decision, the result would have been unchanged.

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

I would not do anything differently based on this frame. As the organization is so

large, the frame was chosen intentionally to keep each unit aligned and eliminate
opportunities for inconsistencies. This frame considers all things such as employee
policies, product quality, hiring strategies, and even store design. Without the amount
of structure brought by the Machine Bureaucracy Frame, the individual stores would
be inconsistent, and a lot of work would be tied up in dealing with the same type of
problems.

I have personally worked with four separate situations that were around the same
concerns. Employees with personal relationships directly or indirectly supervise each
other. If I’ve experienced this while working with only 20 stores, then, not an
organizational level, the fiscal and resource impact of individually dealing with each
situation would be significant. Well, this frame isn’t always the best, I feel as if the
decisions made in the situation were the most appropriate.

2
 Reference:

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and
Leadership (7th ed.). Wiley.