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 person who was required to follow the recommendations of OSHA and the Emergency
Temporary Standard during the pandemic while at work, I was and still am directly affected
by the decisions that they made on behalf of the public. The company I work for is Vanguard
Veterinary Associates and we partner with a few business by setting up in their parking lots
to give pet vaccinations. Like many of you, I was required to follow the mandates that were
put in place, which included wearing masks and becoming vaccinated or face regular testing.
Since our clinics are set up outside, wearing the masks in the Texas heat for hours at a time
got to be quite uncomfortable and it was not always easy to breath. As soon as they let us
know that we could stop wearing masks if we got vaccinated, many of us did go get our
vaccines. My personal role was to stay educated on the changing rules and to hold our clients
and fellow employee's to the standards as they were updated by OSHA to ensure a safe work
environment. OSHA's role in helping prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the workplace is the
situation I will be studying further this class. They are tasked with mandating and
implementing health standards in the workplace, which is a crucial role. However, the role
they have in preventing the spread of the virus in the workplace has been debated. They
issued an emergency temporary standard for employers that had over 100 employees that
was eventually withdrawn, due to the court finding that they did not have the authority to
make such mandates. Many businesses challenged OSHA's authority to mandate mask
wearing and vaccinations due to employees protesting being forced to do so.

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

The structure of OSHA is a one boss arrangement. The Assistant Secretary has 3 groups of
people who he oversees; A chief of staff, who has 2 people reporting to her; 2 senior policy
advisors and a special assistant; and 2 deputy assistant secretaries,one who has 5 people
reporting to him and the other who has a representative from each of the 10 regions plus two
others that report to her. The Assistant Secretary “answers to the Secretary of Labor, who is
a member of the cabinet of the President of the United States.” (osha.gov, 2022).

The structure of this organization has the ability to reverse as well. In a typical one-boss
arrangement, “information and decisions flow from the top.” (Bolman, Deal, 2017 p. 98).
During the pandemic, however, the regional representatives were able to share information
from their local areas up to their manager, who in turn was able to inform their supervisors,
who have a direct contact with the President. There is at least one office in each state, with
many states having an office in the more populated cities. The local offices were able to
share the issues like those we were having with their superiors, who were then able to report
those issues to the ones who can adjust the mandates as information was being discovered.

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

An alternative course of action that I could have used was to utilize the local office and
the resources they may have had to offer us. Since I was not aware of the local office, I
didn't know we had someone right here we could petition. I could have advocated more
to them, which would have allowed our issues to be shared with their superiors.

We could have identified deficiencies in protocols and report how their mandates were
affecting our ability to serve our clients. By giving this data to the local office, they could
give recommendations that will be more applicable to our situation to the people who
were making the actual decisions.

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

Understanding more about OSHA and the position they were put in during the pandemic
was pretty interesting to me. I didn't realize they not only had a regional representative
here in Texas, but also an office right here in San Antonio. Learning about the structure
of OSHA helped me to better understand how some of their decisions were made.

I don't know that I would have done anything differently, as I am not usually one who
speaks out to governmental offices about decisions they are making. If I had known that
we had someone in our city that we could let know how we were being affected, that may
have been an option I could have given one of my more outspoken co-workers.

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 Reference

(2022). www.OSHA.gov. Retrieved on May 27, 2022.

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
(6thed.).San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bas