Virtually every human activity – ranging from obtaining an education to starting a family – is carried out within an organization. According to Bolman and Deal, everyone unconsciously forms frames or mental models which they use to understand and negotiate the organizations that they belong to. These frames can be compared to tools; using the right tool correctly speeds up an activity while using the wrong tool may get in the way and cause complications. The Bolman and Deal model suggests that all organizations can be analyzed through the structural, human resource, political and symbolic frames. The structural frame revolves around roles, policies and technology environment of the organization. The human resource frame focuses on the needs, skill and relationship between the people and the organization. The political frame focuses on power, conflict and competition within the organization while the symbolic frame deals with the organization’s culture, rituals and symbols. Although the frames offer distinct viewpoints, I think they sometimes can and should be combined to gain a more complete overview of the organization.
Teamwork is a very important concept to many organizations today and the Bolman and Deal model considers teamwork from different frames. The model defines a team as a small number of people with complementary skills who have a common purpose and a set of performance goals (111). While the structural frame proposes that the success of a team depends on the way it is structured, the human resources frame suggests that he relationships formed between members of a team have a greater impact on the team’s success. I have no doubt that both viewpoints are correct and thus should be combined to increase the chances of a team’s success. Therefore, when creating or joining a team, I think the purpose and make-up of the team should be considered. From that, a decision a whether the team will have a leader, or be governed by a round table can be decided. When the appropriate structure is chosen, there will be less tension between team members and a higher likelihood that the necessary relationships will be formed.
The symbolic frame considers the organization’s culture and discusses its impact on the organization’s members. An organization’s culture can be defined simply as the way the organization operates as a whole. It is built up as a compilation of its member’s core beliefs, values and practices and provides the organization with a sense of identity. A company can have a negative culture – as in the case of Enron where a culture of dishonesty led to the company’s demise – or a positive culture like Nordstrom, whose exceptional customer service and employee satisfaction has kept it at the top of retail service ratings for several years (Bolman 275). Considering that an organization’s culture also reflects on its members, it is essential to learn of an organization’s culture before becoming a member.
A company’s culture can be represented by more tangible attributes such as its dress code, level of formality between employees. Understanding a company’s corporate culture could be an indicator of how good the fit is between the company and an employee. For instance, I was raised to refer to older individuals with titles such as miss or mister; calling an older individual by their first name was deemed disrespectful. It was therefore a culture shock when I interned at a company where employees were strictly on a first name basis regardless of age or role within the company. Fortunately, I was able to overcome this shock, integrate myself into this culture and return as an intern the following year. An irreconcilable difference however, would have led to me never returning to the company. This experience has ingrained the idea that a company’s culture is just as important as the job description when deciding on the companies to apply to. In the political frame, Bolman and Deal discusses the role of the manager as a politician. One of the key roles of the manager as a politician is bargaining and negotiation. Bargaining and negotiation is important to decision making and is needed whenever two or more parties with some conflicting interests need to reach an agreement (Bolman 221). It can also be useful to individuals in non-managerial positions. An example of this is my Corner Office presentation team for this class. All three of us agreed that we needed to give an effective and memorable presentation, but could not agree on the exact method of delivering this presentation. One individual wanted a case study, another wanted a detailed activity that required the class to move and I wanted a simple activity that left a great impact but took very little time to complete. After negotiating back and forth for an hour, we all got what we wanted. We agreed to have a very short PowerPoint with an activity that takes about 7 minutes. The activity will be a very brief case study and the class will be divided into groups in a way that will require minimal motion.