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.

My role within Global Self Storage is Senior Assistant to Vice President of Operations and a

Site Manager for one of the eleven facilities we operate and manage. Within this role, I have run

into scenarios where I find myself not in agreement with my leadership. To give an instance, we

have had another site manager call in multiple times within a month due to illness. My

suggestion was to find a solution to provide this person time to recover with still allowing her

opportunity to return to her role within our company. However, that was not the result of this

situation.

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

As discussed in Chapter 4 of Reframing Organizations, “If structure is too loose, people go

astray, with little sense of what others are doing” (Bolman & Deal, 2021). This can be used as

evidence to support that the structure in place may be “to lose”. This influenced that situation

because the team member did not have the proper knowledge of the consequences of calling in

sick unexpectedly multiple times a month. She was not aware of the consequences or proper

procedure. In addition, this member was not held accountable by being required to provide a

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doctor’s note. This led to ongoing issues with records being incomplete. To further support, this

led to Global Self Storage records becoming incomplete.

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

Using structure, I would development a strategy to instill the policy our company follows for

attendance. The policy that is in place, is not enforced. Global Self Storage handbook states that

in the event of an attendance occurrence, a doctor note may be required. In addition, many

members within our organization holding a management position may be lacking the knowledge

of what these policies are. As described in Reframing Organizations, I would follow a more

Lateral Coordination of structure. From a management level, I would host informal meetings to

touch base and provide managers the expectations of attendance and how to properly handle

attendance concerns that may arise. I would set the expectation for managers to hold or be held

responsible if they are not following or respecting what our policy is for attendance. On an

executive level, I feel that it will also be important to create a metric structure to keep record of

attendance for any repeat offenders. This will also lead to making sure repeat offenders are also

addressed and not overlooked. To close, it will also be essential to have the proper resources

available to help with special scenarios such as, what we can do as employers to help our

employees navigate heath concerns and attendance.

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

Given from what I have learned about this frame, I would be sure to properly observe the

current structure in place for the specific situation occurring. Secondly, being that my

organization is eleven stores, I would need to evaluate that the same procedures are consistent

within the different stores. This step is important because it will allow an opportunity to identify

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the roles each member has. In my opinion, given from what I have learned about this frame, is

that my organization has structure it is just not enforced or used. There are some occurrences

where roles may be too much and overlap. This frame provides me with the tools needed to help

facilitate restructuring certain elements within out structure.

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 Reference

Bolman, L.G., Deal, T.E. (2021) Reframing Organization:Artistry,Choice,and Leadership

(Seventh ed.). Jossey-Bass.