OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Identify an organization and situation you want to study over the remainder of the course.
2. Describe the organization and the 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) Name and describe your organization. (I am changing the name of the organization
and business units for confidential reasons).

The organization I am choosing is ABC Enterprise Partners (“ABCEP” or the

“Organization”). ABC Enterprise Partners is a nonprofit parent company for business

units whose function is to collect resources that will be used to advance the charter of a

university, ABC University. Resources are gathered by donations from ABC alumni,

partnerships with other organizations, and gifts of real estate. ABC Enterprise Partners

looks over ABC Foundation, Innovation Business Unit, Government Research Unit,

Education Technology Unit, Space Science Institute, Marketing and Video Unit, and

ABC University Realty. Within ABCEP, there are different departments such as finance,

legal team, marketing, gift processing, IT, human resources, public affairs, and building

operations.

Describe your role in the organization (it can be an internal or external role).

I am a student intern for the Human Resources department. I was brought on board to

create an employee handbook for the organization and will have to present a proposed handbook

to the CEO and other C-suite executives in the organization and business units. ABCEP does not

1
have an employee handbook, they reference a handful of policies that are shown on the HRIS

platform. I am tasked with writing, proposing, and editing new policies that need to be in an

employee handbook that will be distributed throughout the organization. I will make three drafts

of the handbook that are evaluated by the rest of the human resource team, then formatted by

Marketing and Video Unit, then passed through the legal team.

2) Describe the situation, including information you think will help the reader
understand the most important elements of the situation. (This will require
selectivity: part of the art of case writing is separating the essential facts from the
mass of information that might be included)

Our current standard work schedule for ABCEP is 3 days on-site and two designated days

to work remotely per workweek. With the guidance of my business unit leader and

support from my department, I proposed a policy in the final draft of my employee

handbook that addresses alternative days to work remotely, compact work schedules, and

different lunch periods based on the needs of the department. During my first one-on-one

review with the general counsel in the legal team, she immediately struck the idea down

and explained that ABCEP has never done this, the CEO disapproves of this, and the

organization will not do any kind of flexible work agreements in the future. It was

advised that I remove this policy from the handbook before presenting it to the C-Suite

executives. I communicated this with my department and my reporting C-Suite executive,

who asked me to keep the policy in the handbook and single out this policy during my

presentation as she heard something different from the CEO and president of ABC

University. A few weeks later, the CEO vaguely mentioned an upcoming change for our

2
 hybrid work model during a small social event. Not many people throughout the

organization, let alone the leadership team, are aware of the situation and there is no

general consensus on feelings towards it. The differences of opinions and frustrations are

due to the fact that “Communications in organizations are rarely candid, open, or timely”

(Bolman and Deal, 2021).

3
 References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
(7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass