OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Structural Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the structural frame
2. Apply the structural frame 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.

As a service advisor at a Dodge dealership I had about 10-20 cars a day that I was in
charge of making sure they got the service they asked for and tried to sell any other
services they were due for. My pay plan was based off the dollar amount of how much I
sold and if we didn’t receive any bad reviews we were able to reach the max pay amount.
The goal was to receive no customer bad reviews but if we received one there was a
grace period. If you got more than one you did not meet the top pay amount. When I
switched to being a service advisor I vowed to be different and not ignore customers,
greet everyone, and be better than the guys that I seen before me. Trying to
overcompensate for the other service advisors led me to become overwhelmed and I was
not executing like I wanted to for every customer. Also, being the middle man between
the customer and the technicians led to me taking the heat for things that weren’t my
fault. A service advisor is also the person that has to explain the fine print to the
customer, on what the sales people overexaggerated while trying to selling them the car. I
started receiving bad reviews and started to get into trouble with my boss. I then found
out that the other advisors were erasing customer emails from the main database in order
to avoid bad reviews and thus always meeting their top pay amount. Even though this
would have saved me from getting in trouble with my boss and saved my position I didn’t
feel right doing this. I eventually lost my position and was demoted to express advisor
that was only allowed to handle oil changes for vehicles with low miles.

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

In the service department we had 7 service advisors, 2 express advisors and we all
answered to our service manager. This would be described as a one-boss arrangement
team because our manager had the authority and all information flowed from the top
down. (Bolman, 2017) In chapter 5, it states that this configuration is ideal in a more
simple and straightforward environment. The service department is far from being
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 considered simple and straightforward. When this team configuration is used in more
complicated settings, it can overburden the boss and can create delays and bad decisions.
I think this had a big affect on the situation that occurred.

My boss did not encourage me or my team members to delete the emails but I
know he knew. I think he accepted it from them because the bad reviews each of us got,
reflected bad on him as well. So all of this complicated his decision in letting these
unethical practices keep happening.

3) Recommend how you would use structure for an alternative course of action
regarding your case.
I think if the boss would have had more help to make sure the whole service
department was running more smoothly and the customers had a better experience
overall. This should help all the service advisors receive better customer surverys without
having to erase email addresses. This can be hard for one manager to deal with on top of
everything else that they have to handle. Bolman says when performance suffers from
structural flaws, the remedy is restructuring and problem solving. This is the best idea for
making sure we avoid these same issues in the first place.
If they were to restructure the way the dealership is ran it could help prevent these
situations from happening. If the department had more management positions, that had
more responsibilities, the main manager would not be overwhelmed. He could have had
more time to handle the many problems that go unlooked everyday, like the other service
advisors not greeting, not answering the phones, and even doing quality control on the car
washes. This could have helped me from loosing my position, and even helped prevented
the other service advisors feeling like they had to erase emails.

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

I believe I acted within the structural frame by standing by the rules and what was
ethically right. This situation was a clear reprucussion from having the wrong type of
structure for the department. Our manager had too much on his plate to figure out how to
look at the big picture of how the service was being delivered. If I was given a chance to
redo this situation, I would have brought up the problems within the department before
my difficulties came. This way I could have had a better chance to avoid the bad reviews
and so could the other service advisors. I would have also had all service advisors be held
accountable for not greeting customers at the same level as others. This would help the
whole experience for the customer all together.
Hopefully bringing these issues to my manager, with the request for more help
monitoring these things could have made the situation end differently. The structural
frame is very rational and I think this would have been the best route for the best
outcome.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and

leadership (6th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass