6 Ethical Communities Worksheet Robert Hunter

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.
I am the training manager for a manufacturing company. The technicians that build our products
conduct dangerous statements of work that require certifications. Depending on the statement of
work, an employee may need a certificate as called for by the company to complete the statement
of work. Furthermore, government and OSHA regulations require specific procedures to be
certified. Medical certifications are also needed for certain statements of work. My organization
is the manufacturing training organization and is responsible for training the manufacturing
technicians on all certifiable requirements. My organization is responsible for scheduling,
conducting, and marking completions for certification training. In this situation, I will be
assessing an employee on one of the programs we support who found a loophole in our learning
management system and marked over 500 certification completions fraudulently, putting the
entire company and individuals at huge safety and regulatory risk.
2) Describe how the ethics of the organization influenced the situation.
The ethics of both my function and the overall organization greatly affected the situation and
how it was dealt with. In this situation, the ethical perspective is one of the most important in
analyzing a path forward. With the employee falsely marking certifications complete to cut
corners and save time, this highly unethical behavior really impacted others' potential safety and
training. This ethical misjudgment was conducted over 500 times, leading the company to
dismiss the employee as his behavior showed intentional moral neglect.
How the organization would respond to this would also have to be ethical to show the rest of the
organization that they took such breaches of ethical behavior seriously. Ensuring this matter was
dealt with and made an example of strengthened the company culture by showing that breaching
ethical boundaries can result in termination and won't be tolerated.
Three of the four ethical communities came into play with this situation. The honest utilitarian
community calls for moral decisions that reflect decisions made for the greater good.
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Certifications are a severe matter for keeping the more special interests safe. The individual
approach played little in this situation. This individual violated the protocols and procedures that
the company has in place. The moral rights perspective came into play, as this affected not only
the individual's behavior but the safety of everyone else. Therefore, he was excused from the
company based on breaching the strict ethical and moral protocols the company's culture stands
for. The justice perspective was also critical as the decision to let the employee go was made
respecting impartial fairness.
3) Recommend how you would apply one of the ethical communities for an alternative
course of action regarding your case.
Thinking about the individual approach, I can play devil's advocate with the situation and
perhaps understand where the employee's misguided intentions got him off track. The employee
was falsely recording certification completions so that his performance would be highlighted and
achieved. He was very individualist about his goals; however, they were unethical because they
did not serve good others. When an individual approach is utilized, it is self-interested; however,
it also does good for others. Luckily the company had strict protocols and regulations that
prevented this problem from becoming one that had to be ethically in a gray area. Certification
compliance laws make it a very black-and-white situation handled ethically from all
perspectives.
4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently, and give what you have learned
about ethics.
Given what I have learned about ethics, I would not have done anything differently in this
situation. Thanks to my company having a very ethical system for dealing with breaches in the
protocol, the problem was very disruptive but easy to address and rectify, given the severity of
the actions. The behavior of the employee was deemed to be unlawful and unethical. The dealing
of this situation was handled well and had a positive effect on the company's culture.
Safety is the number one priority in manufacturing environments and showing that breaches of
safety protocols are dealt with severely helps show the greater good that their safety and matters
are severe. While this was an ethically lousy situation, it allowed the organization to showcase its
ethics in dealing with unethical behavior.
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OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Ethical Communities Worksheet

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