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.

In module one I shared my situation which was being on a team of 3 district managers
(sometimes referred to as pillar) to lead a portion (pillar) of an engagement strategy
outlined by my director at Starbucks. In addition to my pillar work, as a district manager
my primary function is leading a team of 10-15 managers and approx. 300 partners
(employees) who operate our retail Starbucks stores. The district manager team I was on
was working to lead one pillar of the engagement strategy and there were two other teams
of district managers who were also tasked with leading their respective portion of the
engagement strategy. This engagement strategy focused on 3 key priorities (pillars as we
call them): 1. Having the right leader in every role 2. All employees believe they have a
future with our company 3. Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity. Our teams did not have
visibility to the work going on in the other pillars or a clear pool of resources to support
our work. Soon, work started to enter the workflow for each of us from the other pillars
causing the district managers to feel frustrated and overwhelmed.

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

As I shared when discussing the symbolic frame, I believe it is relevant to again share
that just last year Starbucks reached an agreement with the Equal Employment
Opportunities Commission which was largely centered around alleged discrimination and
bias pertaining to store-level promotions. As a result of this settlement, Starbucks
recognized the need for a more consistent, fair and equitable process for posting and
hiring for open positions, and we saw renewed focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion
initiatives within the organization. Part of the reason we were working through this
engagement strategy was to atone for our ethical failures as an organization.

Atoning for these ethical failures would put us back in a spot where we could say that our
actions aligned with our mission at Starbucks, which is “to inspire and nurture the human

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 spirit- one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time” (Starbucks, 2022). Even
though Starbucks may not have been found to have broken any laws, it was not hard to
see that the complaints brought forward through the EEOC, undoubtedly shined a light on
a gap between our mission and our actions. The organization was out of alignment,
leaders were scrambling to close that gap and get back to alignment.

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

I would recommend applying the Symbolic Frame for the ethical community represented
as a temple and whose ethics and leadership are based in faith and significance. “In work
organizations, faith is strengthened if individuals feel the organization is characterized by
excellence, caring, and justice. Above all, people must believe that the organization is
doing something worth doing- a calling that adds something of value to the world,
making a positive difference” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p.420). If we could ground
everyone working on the engagement strategy within this community, then we could
truly build a coalition that was bought-in and committed at a very high level which would
help us better navigate the challenges being faced.
I do not intend to skip over the other ethical communities entirely because they all work
better together in my opinion. Just as stated before, excellence, caring, and justice are
needed as well, which represent the Structural, Human resource, and Political Frames and
ethical communities. All of these could have been used to improve our situation in any
given facet, but I believe that tying them all together under the Symbolic Frame would
provide the most powerful outcome.

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

Having spent some time in reflection, after our readings on ethics, I would take the
opportunity to do some values exercises on our leadership team. The purpose of this
would be to prompt reflection on your most important values and beliefs and understand
why. We could share as a team to strengthen our bond and understanding of one another.
We could reflect on how these values show up for us in our day to day, at home, and at
work.

Getting close to our values would help us bring forth our organizational soul to help
guide us. “For an organization, group, or family, soul can also be viewed as a resolute
sense of character, a deep confidence about who we are, what we care about, and what
we believe in” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, p.413). I believe that we are one person, all the
time, and we must always act and behave in a manner that aligns with our values and our
soul. This shows up collectively at work, we don’t stop being who we are the moment we
walk through the doors at our job. I believe this kind of alignment, coupled with our

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 company mission would keep us on the path we need to be on and fuel our commitments
toward making things right.

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 Reference or References
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and
leadership (7th  ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Starbucks Coffee Company. (2022). Our company. Starbucks.

https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/