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.

Starbucks coffee company has been faced with one of its most challenging issues in the
last few years, unions. Starbucks has been known for participating in union busting
methods for a while and two years ago a memo was leaking from the CEO at the time to
do whatever it takes to stop the unions. As a member of the management team in my
store I was tasked with getting a feel from my partners on what their thoughts were
regarding the union and then reporting my findings to upper management. The problem
was, I had a very close working relationship with my team at the time and did not want to
violate this trust we had built in my store, but on the other hand I did not want to upset
upper management by not reporting all that I was hearing. I was put in a very difficult
situation as I knew the company was finding reasons to fire employees who were
spreading union propaganda, I know this is illegal and Starbucks did face congress over
this, and I had some amazing parters working for me who I believed could have been
doing so.

I did everything I could to not get involved so I would not have to report findings to
upper management, even though who we were supposed to report too was unclear. This
caused a wedge between me and my partners working for me as I tried to distance myself
from the entire situation. I stood back and did nothing for a while until I saw an
opportunity to step in and give my partners needed information and asked that they would
trust me in doing what I believed was best for our store. The relationship between
partners and corporate was at an all time low during this as many agreed that Starbucks
was on a hunt for union organizers and was trying to fire anyone involved, this
relationship is still rocky to this day.

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

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 Ethics played a vital role in this situation to me and was a role in which I was very
confused by. My company takes so much pride by standing in line with doing the ethical
thing, from sourcing ethical coffee, to having many policies set in place to ensure all
partners act in an ethical manner while working. The texts mentioned how soul and ethics
are intertwined, (Bolman & Deal, 2017) which is the opposite of how my company
responded to my case study. I do not believe the company was acting in an ethical
manner by essentially asking its partners to spy on other partners and to try and pry
information out of others, this goes directly against the “partnership” that we push as a
company. I know that when faced with charges from congress of union busting certain
members of the company did feel a responsibility to speak out and say they did not agree
with how the situation was handled. This fact did help partners feel better with their
relationship with the company as we felt like ethics were still a big part of who we were
as a company. After the situation was resolved and even during many people spoke up
about the unethical decisions that were being made and some even decided to leave the
company due to the issues at hand. I believe that in leaving they took a great stance in
unethical behavior and ensured that when we looked back at this incident as a company
we could try to not make the same mistakes again.

3) 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.

During this situation if I could have applied one ethical community it would have been
excellence through the leadership contribution of authorship. Having a person take pride
in what they are doing is something that I have always felt Starbucks wanted from its
partners, I did not however feel this during the case study. If Starbucks would have put its
focus on what they partners wanted more than their fear of what may come it would have
not led to such unethical practices in the first place. Authorship is the act of trusting
someone or a group of people to solve their own issues, such as the issues that came
about during this time, and generate high level of motivation which could have led
Starbucks to better solutions (Bolman & Deal, 2017)

Since this situation I have not dealt with an unethical decision being made on behalf of
the organization so I believe it is safe to say they already have acted in a more ethical
way moving forward from this time. There are times where we see companies wanting to
have complete control over employees and this rarely works in their own benefit, usually
the opposite will happen when trying to control a large group of individuals. Starbucks
coming to this situation ready for battle was not the solution partners where expecting nor
was it acting in the ethical way they strive too.

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

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Moving forward after this weeks model I will lead with ethics as my backbone, where as
during this situation although I knew others around me where not, I was too afraid to
speak up for what was right. I see now how I let my own fear stand in my way of my
ethics and I will not allow for this to happen again. I learned a lot during this period about
what is right in terms of business and what is not, I am glad I was able to experience this
however because now I know what to do it situations such as this, that have a long impact
on both the company and its partners.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E.

(2017). Reframingorganizations. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119281856