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 organization that I will be sharing about is the Bluegrass Army Depot in Richmond,
KY. This organization as a whole is a storage depot for both conventional and chemical
weapons. My role in this was an explosives inspector and the struggle involved to destroy
the chemical weapons in the time frame given.
2) Describe how the ethics of the organization influenced the situation.
Ethics ultimately must be rooted in the soul (Bolman, 2021). I believe that my
organization lacked ethics in most cases. Although I worked with great people and had a
lot of great relationships there, I don’t think the organization as a whole had soul or very
good leadership. In turn, this caused issues for us to be able to complete our mission both
effectively and efficiently.
I think in regards to my direct leadership, they didn’t have much of a choice in being able
to develop a healthy enviorment that showed soul and ultimately created a good working
enviorment. Since the US Government was the driving force, what they wanted and how
they wanted it was the way it was going to go.
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.
I think of these metaphors the best one my situation could have used is the human
resource frame and the metaphor of extended family. Although there is no way to change
what the government expects in a job, having a sense of connection to those around you
especially in a high stress enviorment is important.
1
I don’t think that our leadership expressed love very much at all but I think due to the
complexity and seriousness of our day to day tasking, that would be pretty hard.
Additionally, our teams and leadership were all pretty much made up of veterans and
sometimes we use a tough love tactic more than we probably should.
3) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned
about ethics.
After learning more about ethics and essentially the soul of an organization, I think the
only thing I would do different is try to express myself more and trying to create a better
culture at least with those that were around me day to day. I think from my perspective it
is hard to think about really making an impact on the overall organization from an ethics
standpoint.
I think at times I did not display the best attitude in certain situations because I was
frustrated or because I was falling into line with the others around me. If I could go back
I would have tried to control what I could and focus on being the best I could be within
the organization.
2
Reference or References
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
.San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
