OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Ethical Communities Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Understand the four ethical communities
2. Apply an ethical community 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.

SD Electrical is an electrical contracting company founded five years ago by my

husband. I started working for the company a year after its inception, in 2020. We focus
on commercial projects comprising 80% of our business. We prioritize quality
craftsmanship and customer satisfaction, relying heavily on word-of-mouth referrals. My
role within the organization encompasses both human resources and finance
management, overseeing employee onboarding, account management, and strategic
planning. Challenges arose due to my husband's disconnection from the team and
clientele, stemming from his need to still work another full-time job as the business was
in its infant stage. This led to employee dissatisfaction, misconduct, and a lack of
accountability both from employees and staff. While he worked part-time for SD
Electrical, his attention was scattered because he still needed to work his other full-time
job while the business was growing. This specific situation I'll be analyzing pertains to an
absentee boss and how it affected the beginning stages of the business, as well as put the
long-term success of the business in jeopardy.

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

The ethics of our organization greatly impacted how decisions were being made in the
infant stage of our company. With my husband unable to be completely present in the
early days of building the company, accountability was also absent. We relied heavily on
our employees to uphold our ethical standards, without a lot of guidance. We talked about
transparency, integrity, and fairness, but we lacked the follow-through in providing a
visual framework through behavioral examples coming from the top. Our actions didn’t
match our communication. Employee morale and engagement started to break down
because of the limited access they had to their leader. While our organization valued
ethical behavior in theory, it was lacking within our culture because our employees didn’t
feel prioritized. Their spiritual leader wasn’t around to support the building of the culture,
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 “spiritual leaders offer the gift of significance, rooted in confidence that the work is
precious, that devotion and loyalty to a beloved institution can offer hard-to-emulate
intangible rewards” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, pg. 419). What our employees needed was a
present boss who set an example of what ethical behavior looked like.

In the early days, we had a lot of hope built around what a family-oriented business
structure would look and feel like. We communicated our vision to our employees, who
originally aligned with our goals and mission. With an absent boss, hopes and dreams
started to grow dim because we weren’t involving our employees in the evolving vision
for the company. The belief in what we were building together was dwindling, “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 and
Deal, 2021, pg. 419). Our employees were disconnected from belief and the culture
suffered. As leaders we fell short of delivering hope and belief in what the company was
growing into. Instead, we left our employees to assume we meant what we said, instead
of allowing them to be part of the conversation. In the end, we suffered the loss of two
great employees for lack of present leadership.

3) Recommend how you would apply one of the ethical community metaphors (see
Exhibit 20.1 in Bolman and Deal) for an alternative course of action regarding your
case.

The ethical community metaphor I would apply to our situation as an alternative course
of action would be the temple. We lacked symbolism in our organization that clearly
defined our culture and its leader, “temples need spiritual leaders” (Bolman and Deal,
2021, pg. 419), our physical presence was needed to reassure our employees that they
were aligned with a growing company who cared about their well-being. With an absent
leader, our temple lacked the symbolism needed to “help our employees find meaning
and faith in work and to help them answer the fundamental questions that have
confronted humans of every time and space: Who am I as an individual? Who are we as a
people? What is the purpose of my life, of our collective existence? What ethical
principles should we follow? What legacy will we leave?” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, pg.
419). These questions were not answered for our employees, they were left wondering
without a defined direction and much-needed encouragement from their leader.

If my husband had been able to be a present leader from the inception of our company,
faith, and significance around our mission would not have waned. Instead, as the
company grew, our employee's faith and belief in our future trajectory would have been
encouraged and their role in that growth would have been better defined. Our company
lacked the symbolism needed to sustain the belief of our dedicated employees. We saw
the beginning of this decline but didn’t address it in time. We had enthusiastic employees
in the early days, “Many adults embark on their careers with enthusiasm, confidence, and

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 a desire to contribute” (Bolmand & Deal, 2021, pg. 420), but unfortunately without a
well-structured temple and a spiritual leader to follow, our employees lost enthusiasm,
doubt crept in and they could no longer picture a future with us. This led to them leaving
and finding purpose within their profession with another company. If we had paid better
attention to our temple and the need for a present spiritual leader, we could have
preserved those relationships and would possibly still be employing them today.

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

I would shift our approach, paying better attention to the need for a sound structure, with
solid leadership guiding and directing from the beginning. Our company lacked soul and
“ultimately ethics is rooted in soul: an organization’s commitment to deeply rooted
identity, beliefs, and values” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, pg. 420). Our company would have
seen more growth with less turnover had we implemented a more ethical structure from
the start. Stories were told about the direction of the company, but it lacked the
appearance of a spiritual leader to guide and create community, “it’s more than just
gathering the troops, telling stories, and remembering things past. Community must also
be rooted in values that do not fail” (Bolmand & Deal, 2021, pg. 420). Our community
needed more than stories, it needed an active leader to shed light on the path before them,
to guide, direct, and instill hope.

I have learned through the ethical frame the importance of a leader to contribute
authorship, love, power, and significance. All are important to leading a successful team.
A good leader balances these contributions in their leadership approach and helps their
committed team members find their individual significance to the success of the
organization. I have learned about the importance of recognizing how soul plays a part in
an organization's relationship with its key stakeholders, “many would scoff at the notion
that organizations possess soul, but there is growing evidence that a bedrock sense of
values and identity is a critical element in long-term success” (Bolman & Deal, 2021, pg.
412). Our employees would have felt safe to invest their careers in our organization if
their spiritual leader, my husband, was present to remind them of the value they brought
and the part they played in the success of SD Electrical. Morale was lacking because our
culture was suffering. With what I know now about the ethical frame, we should have
restructured earlier allowing my husband the freedom to be present from the beginning. If
our employees were more connected to the soul of the company, they would have felt a
deeper connection to the success of the organization.

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 Reference

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