OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Political Frame Worksheet - Kyle

Kledzik
1) Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.

The situation that I am going to be focusing mainly on is a class-action lawsuit over paint
issues on the newest Tesla vehicle, the Model 3. In cold weather states, they often use salt
on sand on the roads, and there have been many repots that the Model 3 paint degrades
very fast. (Lambert, F., 2020, Electrek.com) Most of these reported incidents are from the
Quebec area, where there are a lot of Model 3 owners. Body shops have quoted almost
$5,000 to fix the issue. The lawsuit is seeking for Tesla to pay the difference between the
price of the car and the diminished value due to the paint issues, which will come out to
about the cost of fixing it, plus an extra $500 to each owner affected. Being as it is a
class-action lawsuit, there is bound to be more and more people opting-in and this lawsuit
could grow to a substantial amount. I think this is a good situation to choose because it
can be viewed from all five perspectives. My role at Tesla is an outside consultant from a
private investment firm, who is looking to make a large investment into the company. My
investment firm is concerned because of the legal troubles that Tesla faces, and the rise
and fall of their stock prices. Sometimes Tesla stock soars, and then it falls abruptly, and
then it soars again. It is currently sitting at it’s highest price in years, which has our
investment firm looking to make a very sizeable purchase, at a discounted rate, giving us
a 10% share of the company. This investment will be a huge deal for both us and for
Tesla, so my company has stressed that I make sure the legal trouble they are in will not
be detremental to the stock, as everyone needs it to continue to grow.

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

The politics of Tesla has influenced the situation in a very similar way that it did in other
frames. They have a centralized decision making structure, with one group of people
making all of the decisions. This centralized group of people are in charge of all of the
decisions that affect where Tesla moves in the future. The power of this group is massive
and trickles down to many other departments.

This centralized decision making team controls the production of their vehicles. From the
factories they use to assemble the vehicles, to the people they hire to work in those
factories, all the way down to the decision of how they will produce their paint. They
have a very political organization, with a core group of decision-makers, who are very
powerful. They had the authority to sign off on each piece of production and they clearly

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 made a mistake. As mentioned in the four frame model, “Some politics can be healthy
and productive, especially when there is competition among employees to reach new
achievements and accomplish company goals.” (The Four Frame Model, 2017) In this
situation, the political frame was not a good thing for Tesla.

3) Recommend how you would use organizational politics for an alternative course of
action regarding your case.

I mentioned this in the last worksheet as well, but I would remove the entire centralized
decision making team. They have too much power. They are the only signing authority
on all facets of vehicle development. There needs to be more people involved in this
process, in order to mitigate oversight. Power needs to be distributed.

If they can’t remove the centralized decision making team, they could adjust it. Since the
political frame focuses on power and competition, behaviors, skills, interests and beliefs,
it can provide a good source of growth potential for employees who want to climb the
ladder. (The Four Frame Model, 2017) If they were to implement a program where
potential employees could see a path to potentially being promoted to the coalition, it
could be helpful.

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

I may sound like a broken record, but if they had a decision making team that required
sign-offs from more people before going to production, they would have avoided this
whole situation. They would have seen that the paint was defective. They would have
seen that the paint was worn when tested under colder weather and driven over salt and
other materials used for slick roads.

Again I have said this before but I would implement a more rigorous quality assurance
program to test for all of these things before sending it to production. Each vehicle they
have going forward should go through a deeper, more through process. That way they can
cut down on any issue like this going forward. At the end of the day, this is just a small
lawsuit for Tesla, but it could have been easily avoided.

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 References

The Four Frame Model. (2017, February 09). Retrieved September 16, 2020, from
http://www.free-management-ebooks.com/news/four-frame-model/