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.

Recently there has been management changes in my department, my old boss, KB, is no
longer my direct manager. They created a new management role for my team, the CMSS
Manager role, that I will to report directly and they will report up to KB. The new
manager, ER, is in Ohio with half of our team (4), and the rest of us (5) are here in
Arizona. Since the changes there have been issues with the dynamics of the teams. The
Ohio team has been working a considerably lighter case load, continuing to work a
flexible schedule of their start and stop times, and have less inbound phone time. The
Arizona team no longer operates the same way. We now have a set time of 7am- 4pm
(Arizona time), and our scheduled inbound phone time increased. We can see how many
cases each person is working, I work about 100 cases more than the Ohio team a week.
Before the changes I only worked about 50 more cases than my Ohio counterparts. The
situation seems to be that the new manager is favoring the Ohio team by delegating
responsibilities to the Ohio members, that have negatively impacted the Arizona team.
Since he was recently a team member and built relationships for years with the Ohio team
he is leading them with trust and giving them responsibilities. Since the Arizona team is
new, we have not had the same time to build trust and closeness with him and therefore
have not earned his trust.

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

Within the organization the political frame very much what one would expect in a large
corporation. The higher up the ladder you the more power and influence that person will
have. From my understanding, the CEO Jamie Dimon cannot just make up policies,
products, or services he wants and everyone has to bend over backwards to please him.
But he holds a lot of influence and power over the different bored members and
stakeholders that would be able to make policies or products if he thought it was a good

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 idea. Similarly, my direct manager cannot fire me but has influence over different parts of
my job.

Looking at the political frame of the situation there are multiple layers. For example the
part of the situation has to do with the flexibility of our schedule. On the one hand our
workable times are from 8AM to 7PM Eastern, as long as there have been enough people
covering phone times we could work our 8 hours as we saw fit. Now however, the
Arizona team is told we have to work 10AM to 7PM Easter, with no exceptions. We are
in a position where we either listen to him because he has the position, in because of the
position has the power. Or do we dispute it with HR and his manager as our times were
never set per the organization.

Similarly as a leader he did not have an agenda when he became a manager, he took the
role to have the position as manager. Prior to becoming the manager he did not excel at
his role and got the position because he got a long with the hiring manager and took on a
lot of extra projects. Instead of looking how phone times were being disbursed or how the
case load was being worked he focused on making sure the Arizona team knew he was
now the manager. Although he not responsible for making the phone schedule as he
delegated the responsibility to a member in Ohio, he does not oversee it or make sure
things are done fairly. Same thing with the case load, it is auto-assigned as we close a
case a new one comes in. However, he does not oversee that everyone sets their program
online to receive cases and in return the case load is not even.

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

Learning about the organizational politics in the text it talked about Kotters four steps to
exercising political influence one of which is “Identifying relevant relationships (Figure
out which players you need to influence.)” (Boleman & Deal. 2021). Reflecting on my
specific situation I feel this would be a great alternative course than just doing what my
manager says because he is in a position of power. KB, his boss used to be our direct
manager and had established a much different culture and environment with her political
influence over our teams. Since she gained 2 more groups to manage they decided to
break us off and give us our own manager and he would report up to KB. I feel in this
situation if I am able to build a relationship with KB she may care about the well-being of
our team since we are still technically under her. That way she could use her political
influence to make changed in the way ER manages.

Currently I would say my organization and department is top-down, and management

uses their influence and power to meet organizational goals. But it would be nice in our
department to be more bottom-up, that way the small group of can collectively decide
what our goals and interests are and collectively move toward them together. Instead of

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 just being told what to do by our manager, and everyone doing it their own way; we
would be able to decide what we should all be doing. I feel there is also a sense of
autonomy within the group where we would want to move collectively.

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

The biggest difference I could have made from the beginning perhaps would have been to
not agree to all the changes simply because he was my boss and I felt like he was in a
position of complete power. As an employee you don’t want to be difficult, or be seen as
insubordinate, so it is hard to speak up in these situations. However, knowing more about
the political frame there were ways that could have changed things before it got this far.
For example bargaining, would have been helpful especially partnered with an agenda.
When ER became manager and we had our first meeting we all just smiled and nodded
and no one had any questions, comments or concerns. However, asking manager ER what
his agenda or goals as a new manager for are team would have been good leverage. As
things became unbalanced we could have had conversations about those goals, and
whether we, as a team, were on our way to meet them. I am also a big believer in self-
motivation and believe people can be gently re-directed to taking more responsibility and
wanting to be more of a team player similar to Maritz style of leadership.

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 Reference or References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership.
Jossey-Bass.