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.

View, a dynamic glass manufacturer, produced defective glass products for a period of
about two years. My role, as a project engineer, was to identify, document, and submit for
repalcements. View misinterpreted to shareholders the warranty accrual costs by nearly
$30 million dollars. They purposely discounted the actual costs by only stating the
production costs, while hiding the shipping and installation costs of the product.

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

During the years of 2019 to 2021, View was in turmoil. The company had burned
through a large investment of nearly $1.2 billion dollars from SoftBank, and was
desperate for more funding. To accentuate their financial standing, View misinterpreted
warranty accurals to give the shareholders and other investors a much better financial
picture. This led to a public offering from a blank check company, and View went public.
Soon, the SEC gained wind of what was happening, and View admitted to the
wrongdoing.

View was influenced through the growing concerns of failing as a company, and wanted
to do anything to stay afloat, including misleading investors and shareholders.
Organizational structural assumption number four states, “organizations work best when
rationality prevails over personal agendas and extraneous pressures” (Bolman and Deal,
2021). I believe the CEO and CFO of View were experiencing pressure from investors
and shareholders to take the company to gross-margin positive. Their previous financial
statements, forecasting, and other meetings showed strong financial futures, and they
wanted to back it up with proof, even if it meant bending the rules or hiding the real story
between the lines.

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

I believe View could have used some sort of restructuring. They became goal-bound and
irresponsible because of financial forecasting they so desperately wanted to acheieve. The
first step in reorganizing View would be to change leadership and find someone to right
the ship. Then I would implement an adhocracy organizational structure. As a former
startup that miraculously went public due to illigetimate financials, what View has been
doing is clearly not working. They need to challenge the traditional process of turning a
profit and find news ways to encourage “exploration, self-evaluation, and learning.
(Bolman and Deal, Hedberg, Nystrom, and Starbuck, 2021).

One of the CEOs main talking points during all-hands meetings was that the company
was set out to accomplish something that has never been done before, which was to scale
and mass produce a dynamic glass product. He phrased it as climbing Mount Everest.
Employees who wished to “play in the park” need naught to work here. If we wanted to
climb the mountain, we had to train. But these words fell on deaf ears. Once the meetings
were over, we never saw the CEO. He was locked away in his office or traveling to sell
product to other customers. Terri Kelly puts it well, “The process is sometimes
frustrating...if you spend more time up front, you’ll have associates who are not only
fully bought-in, but committed to achieving the outcome. Along the way, they’ll also help
to refine the idea and make the decision better (Bolman and Deal, Hamel, 2021).

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

The first thing I would do is to remain honest with my employees and work alongside the
SEC to remedy the situation and identify a course of action to get us “back in the black”.
As far as my role within the company, there wasn;t a lot I could do except try and keep
costs down in regards to installation and shipping. I’d work alongside trade partners to
help batch orders of glass so we can save on costs like cranes, manhours, and other items.

If I was the newly appointed CEO, I would work on transparency within the company
and put myself at the lower levels of production to see where we may be coming short in
terms of quality. Understanding quality from the supplier would also be beneficial as we
rely on their quality to make our quality better. Also, while in the lower levels of the
company, I’d identify what is making high-performing teams work best. I’d try to find
teams that are well-developed and committed to their work. I believe these teams would
go the extra mile to ensure our product is leaving the shelves above our current quality
standards and set the bar for quality standards across the board.

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 Reference

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