OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Ethical Communities Worksheet

Andrew Hittinger

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 this scenario I will be focusing on one of the more interesting and unique projects
that I had the pleasure of being the project manager on. We were hired to build for a
project at Camp Humphreys in South Korea to design and install 4 Operating rooms,
that could be divided and turned into 8 in the case of an emergency. This project took
tons of planning and scoping, as myself and a team of 4 others would fly over and work
for 3 weeks to complete the project after preparations. Leading up to this project we
face some challenges with planning, shipping, and a cultural barrier that we overcame
to be extremely successful in the end. This project was difficult, but one of the most well
executed projects I have ever had due to the team, our plan, and the execution of the
project team

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

Karl Storz Endoscopy is built around the ethics of patient health and safety. Our
found Karl Storz, saw a flaw in surgical instrumentation at the time and thought there
had to be a better way to treat his patients. With this idea in mind, he innovated and
created a new form of light source that would increase surgeons’ ability to perform
Endoscopic surgery, while also greatly lowering the risk of hurting a patient when inside
the body. This very idea stays true and strong in the innovative technologies we are
producing today. All our equipment must be compliant with the FDA and pass vigorous
testing before being introduced the medical field.

When it came to this project, we were asked to complete a unique project, in a short
amount of time, while balancing cultural and logistic issues. Since we were so far from
home, simple mistakes and oversights could not be corrected after our project was
delivered. It was vital that we accurately design a project plan that would take into
consideration a long list of project risk and alternatives and solutions that would react
1
quickly and correctly when risk would arise. Our founder, Karl Storz, based his life
around patient safety, and his innovation and intelligence has led to the development of
some incredible medical break throughs. As we addressed this project and started our
plan, we had to understand the ethics of our organization was to ultimately deliver a
safe and reliable project that could be utilized effectively to safely treat patients. Storz’
story motivated us, and helped up stay true to the idea of patient safety. Our leaders
understood the project and allocated us enough time and resources to effectively plan
and strategize before the execution of this project. Our company is built around saving
lives, and ultimately our ethics is the foundation for that idea.

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

When reviewing this project, the one ethical community that relates to me most is
the Structural framework. Excellence is used to described this organizational ethic and
excellence to me, means accuracy. As we began this project, we understood the overall
project plan and had a general “cookie cutter” strategy that we would use to execute.
However, excellence was more than important in this scenario. “One source of
disappointment is that excellence requires more than pious sermons from top
management; it demands commitment and autonomy at all levels of an enterprise”
(Bolman and Deal)

We as leaders understood this but emphasizing the importance of excellence to our

project team was vital to the success of this project. As a team we needed to
understand that everyone’s contributions where extremely important to our success,
and good leadership and project planning did not mean success. In this scenario we
need to stress the important of our project execution and the excellent products and
services we offer. It would be easy for most to overlook us, the project team, as a
deliverable, however reassuring this to our team would prove to be beneficial. It easy for
teams of expert level talents to overlook themselves as a project deliverable, at the end
of the day, if it works, the project is complete. However due to the location of this project
and the challenges faced, our team would need to be excellent to ensure longevity,
reliability and accuracy when executing this project.

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

It is hard to say I would do anything different on this project. As we prepared for this
project, we as a project team were given the ultimate number of resources to strategize
our plan. Our executive leadership team allocated the right team members and offered
us the resources needed to stay excellent. This project was not about the revenue, it
was more about story, and how the proper execution could lead to future success. As a
team we understood what our goal was and worked closely to make sure our patients,

2
and their friends and families, would have a perfect facility to receive surgery and
ultimately come out healthier then when they went in. I think when it comes to projects
like this, you really need leadership on your side. We were fortunate enough to have
leaders that ignored profits and stayed true to the symbolism behind our company. They
understood that our ethics took high precedents over dollars and allocated us the proper
resources, time and team to be successful.

3
 Reference or References

Bolman, Lee G., and Terrence E. Deal. “Chapter 20 Reframing Ethics and Spirit .”
Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership, John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2021.