OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Ethical Communities Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Understand the four ethical communities
2. Apply an ethical community 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 I was involved in occurred while I worked for Quiktrip, a gas
station/convenience store based out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Because of advancements and
progress made with electric vehicles, newer generations want to be less reliant on oil, so a
decision was made to focus on food to stay competitive if demand for gas becomes less
and less. The move into the food industry required remodeling all existing stores to
include a full-service kitchen/barista. My position was a store manager, but I was used as
a team leader for special projects assigned by our corporate office. On this project, I
supervised a team of 6-10 employees, depending on the project phase, as well as the
outside contractors who worked with us.

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

Quiktrip emphasizes its five core values in everything they do, and its core values are
directly tied to its ethics, number two is simply “Do the Right Thing”. Not only do they
expect employees to do the right when taking care of customers, but they in turn do the
right thing when making decisions that affect the team members. When deciding to go
ahead with this huge project of retrofitting every store profits were a factor, but so was
staying competitive long-term in a changing market space.

Recommend how you would apply one of the ethical community metaphors (see
Exhibit 20.1 in Bolman and Deal) for an alternative course of action regarding your
case.

Applying the temple metaphor to the Quiktrips situation could have prevented so
many long-time employees from walking away and prevented qualified applicants from
comping aboard. The organization had to come up with a plan after seeing the probability

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 of declining gasoline sales in the future. Installing kitchens with high-margin products
was the solution they chose. I do not believe they considered the “gift of significance” in
their thought process. Ten, twenty, and even thirty-year employees, the ones on the front
lines running stores that do a half million dollars a week in sales, the ones training and
developing every newly hired employee, were now required to make burritos and sub
sandwiches. It’s no surprise that many saw this as meaningless work and not what they
signed up for.

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

Reading this section highlights the idea that organizations have just as much, if
not more, obligation to their employees as the employees do to them. I believe in
this process Quiktrip overlooked that idea and thought in terms of profit. Good
employees felt misled, after investing so much of their lives in a business they
believed in was now changing to something completely different. When concerns
were expressed they were met with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, which is unfair to
those who were loyal team members. As I mentioned before, I would have treated
the new business just as that, a new and separate business. Employees who
wanted to work in the new kitchen could and the ones who didn’t would continue
running the rest of the store. This would have helped with training new hires as
well, who were expected to be trained in both overwhelming areas.

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 Reference or References
(Choose appropriate Title if Applicable and Delete the Rest)