OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Political Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the political frame
2. Apply the political 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.

My job within Beach Life Fitness Boutique is administrative assistant, where my main
tasks are housekeeping, confirming payments, creating social media content, and managing our
cryotherapy service. To expand, in terms of housekeeping, I do tasks such as refilling towels
and water in each unit, and I also make sure that our pilates reformers are reset after each
class. I also utilize software that is in place to go through our schedules for the week to ensure
payments are processed correctly. This also includes charging members for unpaid bills. In
terms of social media, I assist our office manager in creating informational instagram posts.
Lastly, I am in charge of managing our localized cryotherapy machine, which consists of
marketing the service, scheduling the service, and administering the service.

The situation that I am choosing to focus on is a conversation that I had with Danielle,
the owner of the business. I am fairly new to working at Beach Life Fitness Boutique, so this is
the most significant event that I have encountered thus far. For context, I spent two months
interning for free at the business, gaining experience and information. We treated this as a trial
period for all parties to see if it was a good fit. My situation happened after this trial period, when
Danielle and I sat down to discuss payment and availability moving forward. There were two
large differences in the expectations that we each approached the conversation with.

I was hoping to work the same hours of my internship at $21 an hour. She wanted to
change my schedule to very different hours and at $16 an hour, which is slightly above minimum
wage here in California. We discussed our reasonings for our expectations and actively listened
to one another. I was initially very stressed, because I am a full time student so I could not be
very flexible with the hours, but I need an income at the moment. Ultimately, we compromised
with me coming in for the hours that I preferred, with the pay that she could afford. We agreed to
follow up after 90 days to see what modifications can be made to benefit each party more.

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

Like any organization, Beach Life Fitness Boutique is affected by politics that
occur both internally and externally. Internally, we are a very small business so
everybody knows one another and has their own relationship with the owner. This is
important because allies can form and word spreads quickly. The relevance of this in my
situation is that we each have a different pay agreement with the owner. My role in
particular is different from others, since I am not a fitness instructor, I just work in
administration. The most common frustration that I have heard from other employees is
that there is no blanket pay rate, so some employees are not sure if they are getting paid
too little. This inconsistency made it confusing for me to know what to ask for and is
what caused the shock when I heard her counter offer.

In terms of external politics, Beach Life Fitness Boutique set a new goal for the
amount of members that we have. Danielle, the owner, told me that if we hit that number,
I will be guaranteed a raise and more hours. That is part of the reason why I agreed to our
deal. Politics are all about strategy and relationships, so I would argue that my situation
was heavily influenced by this viewpoint. Both the needs of the business and the needs of
its employees need to be met by creating the right balance. Although there are much more
severe businesses as examples, I feel as though Beach Life Fitness Boutique has room for
improvement in this sector.

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

An alternative course of action from my end could have been to spend more time
asking the other employees questions. Since I spent those two months interning with no
pay, I feel as though I could have been a little bit more selfish with my time. By this I
mean asking the other women in the organization out for coffee to see how their pay
agreements came to be. In the time I have spent as a paid employee, I have learned so
much more about the culture. This knowledge and experience would have been very
helpful to know going into the situation.

In terms of the organization itself, an alternative approach for them could be to

have a standard starting pay for all employees. It is important to note that I have a
different role than the majority of other employees, who are instructors. I am the
administrative assistant, so my pay success is not determined by how many people come
to my classes, since I do not teach. The owner and the office manager could have
clarified this situation by agreeing to an offer in the first place, as opposed to asking me
first. If that alternative course of action happened, my situation would look very different.

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

Given what I have learned about the political frame, I would have done a couple
of things differently during my situation. I learned about how politics are not always
negative, and there are also different aspects to politics. Knowing how to navigate the
inevitable politics within an organization is important to success. That being said, I would
have definitely put more of an emphasis on gathering information during my internship. I
could have done this by asking direct questions to the office manager, who I work
directly under, because she is extremely open when it comes to talking about money.

Although this is the sector that I would have utilized the most if I could go back, I
would also keep aspects of my reaction to the situation. For example, I maintained
respect for the owner throughout our conversations. A constant goal of mine was to never
come across as condescending or greedy, which I would say I accomplished. Without
having a deeper understanding of the organization or the political frame, I would say that
I am satisfied with how my situation played out. Becoming more educated after the fact is
a way to reassess what did happen and create different results going forward.

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 Reference or References

Bolman, L., & Deal, T. E. (1991, September 6). Reframing Organizations, 7th edition.
https://app.perusall.com/courses/ogl-481-org-leadership-pro-seminar-i-2024-spring-a-753029498
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