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.

The subject in question with this Personal Case Analysis is a close acquaintance
of mine who I decided to interview. For the sake of privacy reasons, my applicant will be
known as Lara. In the early 1990s, Lara was a well-respected employee for two different
Sam’s Club locations. Lara’s role was the floor’s team leader, where her responsibilities
consisted of employee scheduling, maintaining the organization’s policies and standards,
product displays, and encouraging the team members.

Lara was presented with the opportunity to become an assistant manager for a
new location if she complied with the upper management’s plan to have her work at a
different Sam’s Club location, which was originally PaceClub, to promote their values
and express the partnership that they have with their employees. At this location, the
workers were actively trying to create a union, as they were concerned with their job
security, given the new ownership. Sam’s Club did not want any of their locations
unionized, as it could have negatively affected the organization’s profit shares. It was
Lara’s job to encourage the employees to stay with Sam’s Club and vote against the
union. Unbeknownst to Lara, the company was using her to get information about the
employees to see who was for or against the union, so that they could have them
reprimanded, and eventually, fired. “An administrative judge for the NLRB ruled in the
spring of 1995 that the Sam’s Club store at Landover Crossing had violated the National
Labor Relations Act by the way in which it encouraged employees to vote against
unionization in 1994” (Fercho, 2016). In other words, Lara was used as a corporate spy to
inform upper management of the employee’s behaviors, intent, and beliefs about the
union.

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

The culture of the Club went from valuing its employees and praising their
contributions, to only acknowledging and prioritizing the organization’s profits, even to
the point of sacrificing their team morale and the established leader-follower
relationships. When Lara was offered the chance to become an assistant manager at a
newly built store, she was being bribed into taking the temporary position in Landover in
exchange for her intellect and reports. Lara’s upper management was aware of her work
ethic and manipulated the situation into making her believe that they were helping her
and the employees at the newly acquired Sam’s Club in Landover. However, this was the
furthest thing from the truth, as the corporation was solely concerned with their profit
shares.

The members of upper management were concerned with the repercussions of a

unionized store and how it would affect, not only their profits, but their reputation as an
organization. Resulting in them hiring Lara as a corporate scout to look out for any union
discussion or allegiance from the employees. Even though the employees had their
reasonings for wanting the union, upper management was unable to see the bigger picture
of the scenario and fix the problem at its source. Instead, they took a last-minute
preventative act, which ended up backfiring in the end. On top of the addressed situation,
Sam’s Club was also incredibly ageist towards their employees, as they would higher
younger employees for their energy, strength, and work ethic, but would pay them
considerably less than their older employees. This reinforces the notion of how the
employees, including Lara, were mistreated by management.

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

Although the original ethical environment of Sam’s Club was that of the extended
family ethical community, the environment at the Landover Crossing location (where
Lara was temporarily stationed) was entirely political and that of a jungle. According to
Bolman & Deal (2021), the jungle is a politically charged environment of conflict and
pursuit of self-interest. This was exceptionally accurate to the policies and unethical
business practices conducted at the Landover club. According to Bolman & Deal (2021),
effective leaders know how to maximize the value for customers and employees to give
the company an organizational soul. Therefore, it would’ve been ideal if the members of
upper management had tapped into each employee’s energy and strengths to produce
higher levels of productivity and team morale. At the core of every organization is the
team producing the work needed to be done to achieve the company’s goals, thus,
emphasizing the importance of focusing on increasing elements of quality/value and
compassion towards the team.

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 Upper management could have been more compliant with the needs of the
employees, as this would have “liberated energy for more productive use” (Bolman &
Deal, 2021). Since Sam’s Club had bought out PaceClub, it was a fair trade-off for the
company to work towards ensuring that the employees maintained the original positions,
or at the very least, reassured them that they would have those roles (and salary) back.
This would’ve been a justified act to take that not only satisfied a smooth transition
between PaceClub and Sam’s Club, but it would have helped upper management solidify
the relationships they had with the newly acquired employees that strengthened their
professional opportunities of growth. Had they taken this approach, it is unlikely that the
employees would have felt as though they were not contributing and were worried about
losing their job. However, because the employees felt like they had been stripped of their
power and authority, they retaliated and fought for unionization.

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

According to Lara, had she known about the unethical standards that upper
management was expecting from her, she would not have gone to work at the Landover
Crossing location. Knowing that she was going to be severely harassed and mistreated
when she went to work as an assistant manager in the newly built Club (after the events
of the Landover situation), resulting in her quitting, she would not have gone. By
working in Landover, Lara had put herself in an extremely dangerous position, not only
from a professional standpoint, but physically as well. The Landover club was in a crime-
ridden part of the city, where Lara stood out as a minority. Therefore, knowing the risks
that she had faced, she would have turned down the opportunity and either stayed at her
club or gone to work in a different facility.

Given what I have learned about ethical communities, I would have done the
same as Lara and not gone. If I was aware of the repercussions and uncertainties of
working for Landover, I would not have put myself at risk. However, if I had stayed on, I
would have tried to encourage upper management to work directly with the employees so
that there was more of the original Sam’s Club culture/soul embedded into the work
environment. I would have tried to implement more of the values that organizations like
Zappos embraces in their team, such as creativity, humor/fun, and random acts of
kindness towards the employees. “Leading is giving. Leadership is an ethic, a gift of
oneself” (Bolman & Deal, 2021). The employees needed the reassurance that they would
be able to financially support themselves, given the new positions they held with Sam’s
Club. Therefore, upper management should have reframed their ideologies and priorities
from a political perspective to a more energetic approach which optimized the workers.

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 References

Bolman, L. G. & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and

Leadership (7thed.). Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass

Fercho, T. L. (2016, October 7). Appeals Court sides with Sam's Club Store in union dispute.
CNS Maryland. Retrieved September 3, 2022, from
https://cnsmaryland.org/1998/11/18/appeals-court-sides-with-sams-club-store-in-union-
dispute/