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.

View, a dynamic glass company, ran into legal with the SEC after it was discovered that
warranty accurals were misstated. This was discovered during a merger and as a result led to
fines and even criminal presecution against the Chief Financial Officer. The warranty
accurals were misstated as a result of defective product being released into the field and the
costs associated were not documented properly. As a project engineer for View, my only
responsibility was to identify, document, and manage the replacement of the defective
products. I had no direct involvement in the warranty accrual misstatement, but wanted to
investigate how this issue may have arised throught the different frames.

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

View has a short, but albeit lengthy history. I know that may be confusing, but there has
been a lot of scandal before leading up to this situation. I believe the ethics at View were
clearly skewed during this time. According to the text, ethics must be rooted in soul
(Bolman and Deal, 2021) of which, View sincerely lacked. View always had a strong
message to send to both its employees and customers, “We create delightful human
environments”. Although catchy and patirally real on the external side of things, the
messaging here was clearly missing in our internal affairs.

The four frames are defined by metaphors emphasizing the ethical communities they
belong to. Structural represents a factory, showcasing excellence and a motivation for
quality and effective work. Human resource represents an extended family, showcasing
caring and acts as a glue for keeping people together (Bolman and Deal, 2021). View, in
its hastiness for going public and in its irony as an actual factory, ignored the quality
work required for effective operations by producing defective glass products. The glue
which holds the personnel together and symbolizes unity was weakened and fell apart
through the hiding of warranty accurals.

1
 While working at View, a constant state of worst case scenario always seemed to be
about. Fires were constantly in need of being put out, and the company’s day to day work
felt incredibly stressful. There was no soul. No happiness, no solid comraderie between
teams (My team had it, but I feel like it was a relationship built on trials and tribulations,
therefore we grew close) was present. Constant infighting between departments for
precious resources and a flux of investments that were dwindling by the minute placed a
lot of pressure on the CFO to show the CEO that things were on track and there was
nothing to worry about. Clearly, it was doomed.

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

As mention in the reading over the course, Southwest Airlines does it right via one emotion:
love. There is clearly a lot of love missing at View and with the impkementation of love I
believe a lot can be changed. In order for love to be effective, it has to start from the top
down. I am talking about tough love of course. Before the situation could have occurred,
there should have been a hard conversation between the CEO and the rest of the company.
The CEO should have been more open and transparent with what tis issue with the product
was, how it was going to affect our financial future, and what we would do to fix this issue at
hand.

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

As mentioned earlier, there was not a lot I could do as I was only a project engineer. I really
wanted to understand this situation from the 4 frames. Perhaps I could have implemented
love a little more, like the CEO should have. I mentioned there was infighting for resources
above, but when we fight for resources, its often because we feel the stresses of deadlines and
extended working hours in our future. Instead, we need to find compromise and
understanding that we are all in this together.

2
 Reference

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