Jeff Cadle

OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Symbolic Frame Worksheet
Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the symbolic frame
2. Apply the symbolic 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.

2) Re-creating an entire file system that had been neglected for several years. We were now
being audited for our personnel records and these were found to be missing information,
misplaced, inaccurate, and / or out of date documents among other issues. A team had to
be assembled of myself as team lead and various administrative staff.

3) Describe how the symbols of the organization influenced the situation.

Most of the organizations learning comes from stories and documents based on things
employees have encountered within the organization or organizations like ours. These
stories are a crucial way to learn from other mistakes, without them it would be difficult
to train our employees completely as it is nearly impossible to accurately demonstrate all
conditions in training.

In this situation our organization did not have a dedicated training method established for
record keeping. There was a disconnect between the paper based and digital methods
used for tracking and the employees who were using them. Since no official training
existed all training was based around one employee teaching another. The major problem
was this was the varying types of training each person received. One might receive really
good training on document preservation, while another gets very poor or no training.

Subgroups in the organization are built around the tasks of certain teams or divisions and
also among those with varying amounts of time within the organization. Those who have
been with the organization for a long time are considered senior and thus are to be
considered experienced and valued members of a team. These senior members are

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 influencers when it comes to decision making around the organization and within the
various teams.

This also caused an issue when it came to decision making at the administrative level.
Some senior administrative employees and their bosses were close friends and senior
level employees. These employees were not questioned and were never audited, like we
were in our situation, on the paperwork tracking system.

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

We needed senior employees with good skill levels and experience to train the new hires
coming into the new document system. As I have mentioned previously, we were lucky
to have some smart team members who were recently hired and were motivated to work
but they lacked any experience with our systems. Most of the digital training came from
going person to person to see what they were doing, how they were inputting it, and
trying to get all employees, new hires and senior employees, all on the same page.

Also, we needed to ensure subgroups were not created that jeopardized the ongoing
mission of document tracking and file systems, a culture of standards. Inevitably
employees are going to quit, move to other divisions, or get promoted. The system
needed to be in place no matter who was hired. There needed to be a manager in charge
with leadership qualities that superseded personal or subgroup relationships and checked
on quality of work.

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

I would have changed the method of training and continue with the creation of
importance of document tracking and preservation. Our organization did not have a
culture based on the importance of file systems. This caused our organization to suffer
when it came to documentation and preservation. We often discussed its importance, but
there were few actual checks in place to ensure this was being done properly.

As the organization changed the hiring situation improved. Our organization had hired
many who were not qualified for certain positions. Later, we began hiring based on skill
level and competence and this showed in our organization’s abilities. As the auditing
process became stricter and demands were made on the file system it became more
apparent where our organizations mission needed to be modified to include
documentation management.

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 Reference or References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing  organizations: Artistry, choice, and

leadership (6th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass