Module 2: PCA Structure

1. Briefly restate situation from Module 1 and your role

From Module 1, the scenario that I decided to use for my personal case study was at a

previous place of employment at a hardware store in California. This hardware store was very

much a local mom and pop style of hardware store that had its fair share of problems. Most of

these problems stemmed from complacent owners and an unwillingness to try new things to

propel the business towards success and to increase revenues. As is common in small businesses,

I wore a variety of hats as the saying goes and performed a wide variety of roles within the

organization. I was a sales associate, cashier, key holder, and window screen repairman all in a

day.

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

I believe the structure of the organization absolutely a large factor influencing the

scenario that I mentioned in the previous paragraph and in Module 1. In Chapter 4 of our

textbook, it states “… Managers rarely face well-defined problems with clear-cut solutions”

(Bolman and Deal, 2017). This was very applicable within the small hardware store. We were

facing a lot of competition from the larger players such as Home Depot and Lowe’s and I believe

it was more than the owners were prepared to handle and more than they wanted to handle as

there is no clear cut way to solve the problems of competition and declining revenue overnight

with a snap of their fingers. I believe this is what led to the culture of complacency and lack of

direction for us employees. Reading the chapter 4, I found multiple structural dilemmas that we

employees experienced during our time there.

The major structural dilemmas we encountered were those of “underuse”, “gap”, and

“goal-less”. “Underuse”, as our textbook defines it, is when people are underutilized and are
have too much free time on their hands. The other employees and I often didn’t have much to do

so we would be on the computer, our phones, or aimlessly walk around the store looking for

things to do. The next dilemma was that of “gap”, which our textbook defines as there being a

lack of responsibility assigned to key tasks, so they often don’t get done. For example, when a

customer would special order something we didn’t have in stock, it often wouldn’t get ordered

and we would have to make excuses the customers which only made them upset or annoyed.

Lastly, “goal-less” was something that I can say I personally encountered because there were

rarely any actual goals for us. It felt that the store’s objective and main goal was to simply

survive and not work towards a specific goal. A combination of these factors coupled with

complacency from the owners are what I would attribute to this scenario occurring.

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

your case

Building off my previous paragraph and the structural dilemmas mentioned, they would

be the first area to address in order to change the workplace culture and atmosphere at the

hardware store. If I were the owners of the store, I would look to address the dilemmas of gap,

goal-less, and underuse, as these would allow the other employees and I a greater sense of

purpose and satisfaction with our work rather than feeling like we’re only at work to be there and

don’t have a specific goal to work towards. In terms of addressing under-use and gap, I believe

the solutions can go hand-in-hand by providing us employees an opportunity to fill in those gaps

by doing the tasks that fall through the cracks (like special orders for customers) and this will

also prevent us from being underutilized. A real win-win and two birds with one stone solution.

Being goal-less can easily addressed by the owners working to move away from a complacent

culture and provide us a goal to work towards either on an individual level or a store-wide basis.
 The reason that I would concentrate on the structural dilemmas rather than the structure

itself, is that such a small store of only 6 people would make it rather difficult to implement

structural changes in the way that the organization operates. I would argue this is further

complicated by the fact that the owners of the store are also the store managers which leaves us

employees with little power or leverage to campaign for change in the organization. I would

argue that the organization being a simple structure i.e. only having a level of management and a

level of operations, makes it difficult for truly transformative change to be implemented unless

one starts from scratch.

4. Reflect on what you would or wouldn’t do differently given what you have learned about

this frame.

During my time at the hardware store, I was only a part time employee working around

20-30 hours per week and only 16-20 years old at the time so it’s safe to say truthfully that I

wasn’t too concerned about the coming and goings in the store as long as I got paid. Sure, being

happy at work by addressing the structural dilemmas would have made a difference in my

experience there, but I feel that young folks like myself are less concerned with their workplace

than our older selves are now. That being said, taking responsibility for my workplace would

have made a beneficial difference in the structure of the workplace by encouraging others to do

the same.

Had I known what I now know about the structural frame, I would have been able to

identify the dilemmas present within the organization and I could have brought them to light

among my coworkers and likely worked with them first to build a solid foundation to which we

could work from coordinate our thoughts and opinions before bringing those ideas to the store

owners/managers. I’m a firm believer in strength in numbers so being able to gather support for
these changes being implemented would greatly increase the chances of them being adopted and

implemented if we presented these ideas as a group rather than just I alone. Especially

considering that I was so young compared to the other employees, I would probably not be taken

as seriously as my 40ish year old coworkers would be in the eyes of the store owners and

managers as unfortunate as that is. I believe there’s a lot that previous generations can learn from

the generations that come after them.

References

Bolman, L. G., and T. E. Deal. Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and

Leadership. Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2017.