OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Identify an organization and situation you want to study over the remainder of the course.
2. Describe the organization and the 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) Name and describe your organization.

Starbucks Coffee Company. The worlds largest coffee chain and the largest at the time in
the food industry, ahead of Mcdonalds for the first time ever. Starbucks has many
avenues of revenue, home coffee, its stores, merchandise, and even its products being
sold in other retailers stores. To nurture the limitless possibilities of human connection is
the companys moto and they do this with customer connections each day in all of its
30,000+ stores around the world. The leader in its industry the coffee conglomerate also
has an intense focus on its partners(employees) and their shareholders. Each partner that
works at the company owns a stake in the company to help everyone feel they play a
crucial role in the overall success of the company. Starbucks is also known for its
innovative nature in creating sustatinability in all its products and even being implanted
in newer stores across the world today. (About Us: Starbucks Coffee Company, 2024.)

2) Describe your role in the organization (it can be an internal or external role).

My role within Starbucks Coffee Company is that I am currently a Shift Supervisor, I

handle day to day running of the floor during any given shift. I am responsible for ensure
we are meeting our customer counts for each hour, breaks are being ran, customers are
satisfied, and that all employees are trained and ready for each shift. Communication is
the biggest part of my job as I am managing a lot of moving parts, I have to be able to
clearly communicate my goals with my team that I am given and ensure everyone is up to
date with all information needed to succeed. On top of the day to day operations I have to
anticipate the business needs for each week in order to keep the proper inventory on
hand, this is my favorite part of my job other than the partners I get to work with each
day.

3) Describe the situation, including information you think the will help the reader
understand the most important elements of the situation. (This will require

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 selectivity: part of the art of case writing is separating the essential facts from the
mass of information that might be included).

Starbucks coffee company has been faced with one of its most challenging issues in the
last few years, unions. Starbucks has been known for participating in union busting
methods for a while and two years ago a memo was leaking from the CEO at the time to
do whatever it takes to stop the unions. As a member of the management team in my
store I was tasked with getting a feel from my partners on what their thoughts were
regarding the union and then reporting my findings to upper management. The problem
was, I had a very close working relationship with my team at the time and did not want to
violate this trust we had built in my store, but on the other hand I did not want to upset
upper management by not reporting all that I was hearing. I was put in a very difficult
situation as I knew the company was finding reasons to fire employees who were
spreading union propaganda, I know this is illegal and Starbucks did face congress over
this, and I had some amazing parters working for me who I believed could have been
doing so.

I did everything I could to not get involved so I would not have to report findings to
upper management, even though who we were supposed to report too was unclear. This
caused a wedge between me and my partners working for me as I tried to distance myself
from the entire situation. I stood back and did nothing for a while until I saw an
opportunity to step in and give my partners needed information and asked that they would
trust me in doing what I believed was best for our store.

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 Reference

About us: Starbucks coffee company. (2024.). Starbucks. https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/

Zakarin, J. (2022, June 15). EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Starbucks memo instructs managers to lie

about pay, benefits. More Perfect Union. https://perfectunion.us/exclusive-leaked-

starbucks-memo-instructs-managers-to-lie-about-pay-benefits/