OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I: Joanna Walls

PCA-Politcal Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:

1. Describe the political frame

2. Apply the political 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.

My situation that I am using for my PCA is the situations that led up to my

manager being fired. For months, as a shift supervisor in addition to other shift
supervisors, were running the store while our manager remained childish and only able to
complete small tasks at a time. The schedule would never be correct and he wouldn’t
listen to workers’ requests and availability that he approved at the beginning of our time
working there. Over the course of a couple months, he was impossible to work with while
also not successfully running the store. He would show up late to every shift by more
than thirty minutes causing the shift supervisor responsible to be constantly put at a
disadvantage for the smoothness of the shift.

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

Within the organization of Starbucks, military veterans, military spouses, active

duty military, and ASU Students are very important and provide great diversity to the
store and Starbucks is proud to employee any of these, so much that they receive special
aprons that specify which category they are a part of. My previous manager was a
military veteran who was medically discharged. In Starbucks eyes, he was considered an
automatic hire and I feel that the merit of him as a manager was not taken into
consideration. When he was hired on, the previous district manager was known for hiring
outside of the Starbucks partners and preferred to hire anyone of those specific groups
rather than promoting within the company.

Within the specific store, it was known that the manager was irresponsible, lazy,
and was not very supportive for the shift supervisors within a shift. The shift supervisors

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 and the Assistant Store Manager were responsible for the daily tasks and often pushed the
Store Manager to do some busy work in the back because he was useless on the floor
during a busy shift. Politically, it was a shogun situation with his name as the Manager of
the store but every of supervisor was doing all of the work.

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

As a shift supervisor in this situation with the manager, I had to be political in the
sense of keeping the store alive with the other 6 shift supervisors all while trying to
encourage the store manager to try and attempt to do some sort of work to benefit the
store. The previous manager could have benefitted from at least excelling in
communication, so that we were able to be emotionally attached and not feel that we
were being left out to dry. Due to the lack of management, it was hard for the short
supervisors to gain respect from new hires because of the lack of knowledge of the
situation. These new members explained their side of the manager that they had seen
which was sunflowers and daisies compared to the side that a majority of the supervisors
were saying. He did benefit within the organization with the new hires as well as the
previous hiring district manager.

Within the organization, I feel that as a regional manager and district manager, to
gain more organizational politics, you should hire within the organization and develop
the partners that are already knowledgable about the company and the daily tasks that are
required. By hiring within the company, as a district manager, you now show that you are
invested in the development of the partner and it gives hope to others that they could
possibly be promoted, in turn lowering the turn over rate of employees.

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

Within this situation, politically, I would not hold back on information about the
previous store manager. In doing so, I feel that the new hires would be able to understand
the side of the manager that the supervisors saw. I also would report the behavior as it
happened to ensure that Human Resources and the District Manager could have been
made more aware of the situation. I also would ask the other supervisors not to hold back
information that could have affected the situation further. I feel that there could have
been a way for the supervisors to explain the situation without looking as if we were
purposefully trying to create a problem.

Within the organization, I can’t change how Starbucks views the group of
individuals. I am currently benefitting from the situation as I attend ASU through the
Starbucks College Achievement Program. Starbucks has also provided a Leave of
Absence due to too many partners and not enough labor hours to deliver because sales are

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down and have been down since the pandemic caused our specific store to close for two
months after labor was lost due to quarantine. With the new district manager, she released
my previous store manager and promoted another partner who was an Assistant Store
Manager at another store to become our Store Manager.

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Reference or References