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.

Re-creating an entire file system that had been neglected for several years. We were now
being audited for our personnel records and these were found to be missing information,
misplaced, inaccurate, and / or out of date documents among other issues. A team had to
be assembled of myself as team lead and various administrative staff.

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

The best example probably closer to “the factory” as described by Bolman (2017).
Although open minded thinking was encouraged, discipline was considered very
important and rule following is a large part of the organizations culture. Breaking rules
was punished with a discipline system that all had access to and was applied. Most
employees had personal and professional ethics but were also compelled due to the harsh
discipline of the organization.

In this situation the ethics of the employees involved that caused the initial issue had poor
professional ethics. They were not closely monitored by a supervisor and used this as an
opportunity to not uphold ethical work standards and instead performed substandard
work.

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

I do not believe I would change the ethical community in this case. Excellence was a part
of the mission of the organization and there is not really another way to approach it in the
line of work that was responsible. In this ethical situation the dilemma were employees
not being supervised and then abusing that circumstance to perform poorly.

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

Ethics has to be a reminder in training at least annually with employees and with all new
employees. It might not be that any employees are acting unethically, it is just reacting
and working with the weaknesses that unethical circumstances can create. We have read
in previous OGL courses about great employees who made one or two wrong turns and
found themselves in a situation where they let their ethics slip.

It is part of people reminding and checking on each other. We used to say we know you
know how to do the work, but we all just want to make sure you are successful by
checking to see if you are ok. Ethics are a similar situation. We want to set a standard of
ethics in the organization. Then we want to remind those in the organization that we
should be reminded of our ethics so we can avoid making a poor decision.

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 Reference or References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing  organizations: Artistry, choice, and

leadership (6th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass