OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Structural Frame Worksheet

Noelle Marietta

OGL 481

Professor Willmott

Arizona State University

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.

I helped plan my friend’s wedding, a small, simple, inexpensive, event. I’m going to
zone in on one specific situation, which is the reception or lack thereof. The bride and
groom wanted not necessarily a reception, but rather cake and drinks after the wedding
and then take off for their honeymoon. They only had three days as the bride was in the
military and had to go to training for a week after that three-day stretch. The groom’s
mother was adamant that they must have a meal after the wedding, this brought up the
issue of extra cost, and lost time for the bride and groom. The groom’s mother wanted to
hire a caterer and split the costs with the bride’s parents. This was causing stress as the
mother of the bride struggled with the idea of this added cost, the bride and groom
frustrated by the mother of the groom and my frustration as I was being vented to from
many angles. The mother of the bride is very non-confrontational and didn’t know how to
just say no. In the end, finger food prepared by the bride’s aunt was the compromise, and
I avoided throwing down with the mother of the groom. The biggest issue in all of this
was the mother of the groom’s inability to understand and respect the couple’s wishes.

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

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 The structure I would describe as adhocracy. No one person was truly in charge, the goals
for the wedding were changed depending on who you spoke to, and many people were
taking on responsibility and giving out responsibilities without prior discussion. The fact
that the family was involved was not the issue, the problem was that many times the bride
and groom’s vison and goals for the wedding were not respected and worked towards.
Once I cleared up what exactly those goals were and pushed everyone towards them, we
saw progress. This type of structure must have a team that understands the goals and
knows their responsibilities. That way each person knows who to go to for what
information they may need.

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

In the case of the situation is just describe I would recommend the simple structure. The
bride and groom should have been the ones in complete control. While I considered
myself the project planner for the event, I was doing as I was asked. The color scheme,
the music, date, time, etc. The caterer fiasco as described above never should have gone
to the mother of the bride first, but rather the bride and groom. And when the nixed it, it
should have ended there. If it had been okayed then it could have moved on to the person
in charge that operation, i.e. the bride’s parents. While one might have argued that the
simple structure brings the couple too close to the operation, I would argue that the
wedding was small enough, and short enough in planning phase that it would have been
hard to ignore long-range issues and focus only on the immediate ones.

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

I don’t necessarily think that the adhocracy is a bad structure for a wedding but rather for
this wedding and couple, it wasn’t a good fit. No matter what we needed a clear-cut
budget, and a breakdown of costs. This is our backup for requests that don’t fit the budget
and/or scope. If it’s not in the budget, then it’s not in the scope. I would have sat down
everyone that ended up being involved in the wedding, (a few more than I initially
expected) and had a meeting where we lay out everyone’s responsibilities, the couple’s
expectations, exchanged numbers, basically came to a group understanding of how we
can deliver what the bride and groom envision, nothing more, nothing less.

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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