OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Polticial Frame
1) Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.

The organization that I chose to analyze for my Personal Case Analysis is Horizon Air,
the primary regional air carrier for Alaska Airlines. My role with Horizon Air is what we call
a Team Captain. As a Team Captain I oversee the day to day operations for Alaska and
Horizon flights in and out of the airport in Fresno, CA. I came across a situation about a year
ago in which I had to help my manager decide whether to demote another member of
leadership, or to terminate him entirely. This situation arose from a series of events where
he showed unprofessional conduct and disregard for the safety culture of Horizon Air. My
manager chose to use my input as part of his recommendation because I worked closely
with this individual on a daily basis. He felt that I could provide a more thorough insight on
some other aspects of his work habits. I ended up recommending that my manager simply
demote him and let him remain employed. To come to this decision I contemplated his
behavior prior to being a member of leadership, and concluded that his actions were a
result of the pressures of leadership, not of a poor work ethic or blatant neglect for safety
procedures.

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

Horizon Air is considered one of the nation’s largest regional airlines so the politics of
the industry have a large impact on the organization as a whole. However the politics of the
organization that I feel impacted this situation lie on a smaller scale. The station where I
work is rather small. In my time with Horizon we have not exceeded 30 employees. Each
station has a station manager who holds basically all of the power and passes down
information as they receive it from regional manager, and so on. A step below a station
manager is a team captain (TC). TCs are responsible for overseeing the day to day
operations, ensuring safety and security standards are met by all employees, and keeping
the station in compliance. There is a lot of responsibility on TCs because new policies or
alterations to existing policies come out all the time and we are responsible for ensuring
employees are aware of them and are following them correctly. A TC has a fair amount of
responsibility on a daily basis but actually holds very little power over situations.

I had been a TC for a while when another employee, Carl also became a TC. We ended
up working on the same shift and he had a difficult time adapting to the culture and
intensity of the AM crew. Carl is someone who seemed to think that being a TC meant that
he could make decisions and bypass rules that regular employees could not. This is one of
the factors that led him to the end of his time as a TC. Multiple occurrences of disregard for
general policies led to conflict between him and other members of the crew. The
organizational politics that influenced this situation are the fact that there were multiple
sources of power and different types of organizational clout involved that all conflicted.
Carl tried to use his position power, his title, to get himself out of sticky situations. Other
employees who were not happy with his performance used alliances and networks to form
a type of coalition that would convince our manager to take a deeper look into his actions
(Bolman & Deal, 2017).

3) Recommend how you would use organizational politics for an alternative

course of action regarding your case.

One of the interesting things I realized when considering the layout of power in my
organization is that senior employees actually have a lot of clout in situations even though
they do not hold any special titles or ranks. Carl ran into this problem when he acted as
though certain rules did not apply to him and several senior employees went immediately
to management disclose what they had seen/heard. Carl failed to realized that being a TC
meant that everything he did was on display and would be scrutinized harshly. He did not
take to this scrutiny well and ended up digging himself into a hole that even his personal
friend, our manager, could not get him out of.

After multiple infractions Carl ended up going under investigation to determine

whether or not he would remain with the company. Carl was highly unprepared for his role
as a leader within the organization and I think that was partly due to his personal
relationship with our manager. Throughout the time that I worked with Carl, it seemed to
me that he had the impression that he was “untouchable” becauce he was a TC and because
he was also a close friend of the manager. It may have been beneficial for our manager to
have had a conversation with Carl prior to taking on a leadership position to ensure that he
understood that he would be held to higher standards as a leader, and that he would need
to be an example of good conduct and practices.

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

Given what I have learned about the political frame and the morality of organizational
politics, I would not change what I did personally in the situation as far as recommending
that my boss keep Carl on the team and demote him rather than terminate him. After
deliberation I realized that Carl’s actions seemed to be a response to the pressures of
leadership that he was ill-equipped for, rather than a disregard for safety procedures and
policies.

The change that I would have made would have been to try and unite my team,
including Carl, in an attempt to reduce the conflict and political bickering that took place as
a result of Carl’s misunderstanding of the role of the TC. I would have also gone to my
manager earlier on in the situation when I first realized that Carl seemed to be abusing his
position of power.
 Reference or References
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and
leadership (6th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass