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.

After almost a year of working at my current Starbucks location and struggling through
inconsistent and unfair management, our manager was removed and replaced with a manager
from another location. We went from an extremely toxic environment rife with cliques, gossip,
and disdain for the job to a united group that was inspired to utilize standards to create the best
financial and customer experience results the store had ever seen. This period of transition was a
great example of pushing through changing an organization’s culture to create a better
environment and improve the business. The previous manager was more concerned with being
friends with employees than actually upholding standards or holding people accountable, so
there was a huge amount of tension and resistance when the new manager came in. However, the
new manager took the time to work shoulder to shoulder with her employees for two months,
getting to know them as people first, and seeing what they were used to in their routines. She
began giving people warnings that she would soon be starting to hold everyone accountable to
standards, and gave them sufficient time to get accustomed to the idea and start transitioning to a
new way of doing things. By the time she was writing people up and cracking down on the rules,
everyone liked (or at least respected) her and she turned our store statistics around to be the top
drive through in the area in less than six months.

I was a shift supervisor during this time and I was responsible for running individual
shifts and breaks, coaching and training baristas, and inventory management, as well as more
managerial tasks related to my development like training and coaching other supervisors and
managing team communications.

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

Historically, Starbucks as a whole has always been concerned with transparency between
higher ups and regular employees, as well as being a company that does good in the world. As
well as just being a positive presence in the respective communities where they have retail

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locations, Starbucks over the years has developed more and more ways to create a positive
impact in an ethical and moral way. For example, they created the global month of good
initiative that takes place each spring, in which partners can submit local organizations to receive
donations and financial support from Starbucks. There are also many donation programs in
which schools and churches can request donations of coffee or merchandise for fundraisers and
auctions, which Starbucks almost always approves. On a larger scale, Starbucks is constantly
developing better ways to grow, harvest, and produce coffee with their various farms around the
world. They ensure that farm employees are paid fair wages and don’t work with any farms that
do not meet their ethical standards. They teach farmers how to improve their systems not only to
be more efficient but also to make a lower impact on the environment, and they make all this
information open-source and available for any coffee farmer around the world to utilize at any
time.

This focus on ethics is one of the major values at Starbucks, and I think it influenced my
manager to always try to be fair and equitable with her partners. This is why everyone was given
so many chances to change, and she took each incident/employee on a case-by-case basis, first
understanding where they were coming from and always giving them grace in difficult parts of
their lives. For example, one employee in particular was really struggling with making changes
and getting on the same page as our new manager. Most people might have written that off as
problems with authority or just not being the right fit for the job, but my manager was able to see
past the attitude and took the time to get to the root of the problem: this employee’s father was
experiencing homelessness and drug abuse and she was struggling to be the caretaker of her
entire family with great expectations on her that kept her mind off work and caused her to be
extremely stressed. She gave this partner the time off she needed to get her life in order, and then
gave her more work hours when she returned so she could continue to pay the bills at home. I
think prioritizing the needs of the partners as people and then pushing for improvement to the
store is what makes my new manager such a good leader. She puts her people first and they in
turn do their best to support her.

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

When my new manager came in, she utilized the symbolic and structural frames to
reconfigure our store dynamic and reemphasize the values and goals of the company. Another
approach could have been entirely human resource based. As mentioned in chapter 20 of
Reframing Organizations, “Caring beings with knowing; it requires listening, understanding, and
accepting… Confronting vulnerability allows us to drop our mask, meet heart to heart, and be
present for one another” (Bolman & Deal, 2021). While she did take the time to meet with each
partner individually when she started and work on their development, I think another approach
that could have changed the environment would have been to prioritize social interaction and
getting to know one another as a team, not just everyone getting to know the manager. I think

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this is actually our next step of improvement to the store environment - to create a sense of unity
and community between each member of our team.

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

I think that my manager was extremely ethical, moral and fair in her decision-making
process. She remained very open and honest with everyone, did not keep secrets, and followed
through on her claims. She gave everyone ample opportunity to improve and/or to explain
themselves and their positions, and didn’t surprise anyone with write-ups or separation. Anyone
who received a consequence from her knew it was coming and couldn’t really argue with her
when it came up because she had been so open and fair about the whole process. If I were in her
position, I would hope that I would have done the exact same thing.

This has inspired me to do the same when I am leading - I have always thought
transparency is the best approach to leadership because even something small seems much
bigger once followers find out you have been hiding it from them. “The frames offer spiritual
guidelines for the quest… [leaders] serve a deeper and more enduring role if they are models and
catalysts for values like excellence, caring, justice, and faith” (Chapter 20, Bolman & Deal,
2021). It is important to stand for something and have a set of values, and even more important
that you stick to those values and do what you say you will do.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. “Chapter 12 Reframing Ethics and Spirit.” Reframing

Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ,

2021.