Furnished with better knowledge and understanding of how an organization works, from learning nuts and bolts of and applying the Four Frame Model, their endeavors may all the more proficiently and viably hit nearer to the objective. All four frames are permanently engraved into the life of an organization. Each of these four frame models, they suggest according to their criteria a consideration for interventions and implications. The structure of the model relies on multi-outline considering and purpose. At precisely that point, the comprehensive system incorporating four viewpoints, would appreciation be able to extend and understanding increment. The four-frame theoretical model proposed by Bolman and Deal is an approach through which leaders perceive the issues of an organization. According to them, a leader does his job through the only habitual framework, such that he does not risks being unproductive. Following are the structures outlined by Bolman and Deal:
Structural
The structural frame focuses on the ways and methods of doing and accomplishing a task. Thus it is a task-oriented framework and relates towards the strategies, setting goals, justifying assignments, reporting lines and responsibilities, deadlines meet-up, clarified metrics and developing systems and processes.
Human Resource
The human resource framework emphasizes significantly on the needs and wants of people or employee working in the organization. It gives autonomy and power to the employees for logically doing their tasks with the organized set-up. This also grooms and addresses the personal growth and career of an employee, thus catering to the essentials of an employee.
Political
This framework highlights and solves the issues of interest groups and individuals while having the conflict in the opinion of agendas or working of strategies, mainly when the limitation of budgets occurs and organization makes difficult choices by doing downsizing, up-marketing etc. this frame focuses on the coalition building, creating power-base and work of conflict resolution for supporting the initiatives of the leaders.
Symbolic
The symbolic framework concerns the need of the people and employee according to the purpose and sense of their job. Mainly by inspiring people it focuses on the organizational directions making them distinctive and significant. It creates a vision which is motivated and recognizes the excellence of performance through celebrations at the company.
These frameworks are essential for the organizational set up where leaders are there to provide the motivational and critical support to their subordinates. The organizational challenges are perceived and solved through these four frames, and it gives an overview of the whole organization. While catering to the issues and problems of the company, a may use one frame model or switch between them according to the need of the situation and scenario. A pivotal part of Bolman and Deal's model tries to maintain a strategic distance from the allurement for pioneers to wind up stuck, survey and following up on conditions through one viewpoint or Framework alone. They stated that because no Frame functions admirably in each situation, at that point a pioneer who stays with one Frame is bound inevitably to act improperly and insufficiently. Preferably, a leader must utilize the suitable Frame of reference, and along these lines conduct, for each test. Key to this procedure is asking the correct inquiries and diagnosing the essential issues.
The structural design of an organization is commonly defined by the typical hierarchal setting of communication, authority, duties, and rights. It determines the allocation, coordination, and control of the responsibilities, power and critical roles in an organization. The flow of information is regulated through different managerial levels due to the structural framework.
Basically, the pioneer ought to embrace a multi-Frame viewpoint before picking the proper behavior. Associations usually tend to utilize the Structural Frame yet give careful consideration to the next three Frames. For instance, in a situation where the issue of an organization is the lack of commitment and motivation, then Human Resource frame or Symbolic framework should be better adopted by the leader. But in the scenario of confusion or unclear performance of responsibilities and tasks is occurring in an organization, then a leader should opt out for structural or political approach.
Situation Description
Development of teams in an organization for a specific task is essential for achieving a particular mission, objective, and long-term or short-term goals. The group usually consists of a key player, i.e., team-lead and other team members. The efforts made by a group of people or team in an organization involve the planning and execution of individual tasks for the attainment of organizational objectives, i.e., different tasks, goods or products. Therefore, for the planning and development of the goals, teams usually set-out specific frameworks according to which they work and achieve the aim. Bolman and Deal outlined Four Frames, e.g., structural, political, human resource and symbolic, in their book ‘Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership.' (Bolman, & Deal, 2017).
Different tasks are allocated to each member with a specific deadline and commitment with capability. The working of these frameworks is done by following the procedures and creating the system for developing methods and keeping the targets upright and with no delays (Katzenbach, & Smith, 2015). The Human Resource focuses more on the need of employee regarding the tasks or goals. Thus making an employee satisfied at job increases the performance individually but it inversely benefits the whole group or team of people. The leader of the team is usually directly in contact with the HR and directs the issues to them. However, a person can directly approach to HR and clear out the problems in the organizational matters.
The team effort is to build up in the times of conflict and the stronger the team bond, more easily they get through the organizational conflicts (Breugst, & Shepherd, 2016). Likewise, the conflicts among the team members are also very likely to occur; therefore the ethics and code of conducts. Also, a good team leader would resolve the conflict efficiently. The primary objective of working in a team is to achieve a mutual goal. Therefore the meaning and purpose would give strength to the team members. The team leader motivates the other member and makes them feel significant towards the task.
Application of Theory
The success and failure of organizational goals and aims are reliant on corporate design. Successful organizational structure boosts up the behavior and communication among the employees. It ensures the efficient functioning of the business and clearly defines its operations for the employees. Likewise, it also enhances the hierarchal structure along with a chain of commands. Furthermore, a more healthy and productive work environment is created through a good arrangement of an organization. On the contrary, the failure of an organization is due to the poor design of an organization. Even though, if an organization has talented work-force, clear aims, and great leaders, but does not have a well-defined structure, it cannot succeed (Lee, Kozlenkova, & Palmatier, 2015). For instance, when an organizational structure is not defined, and no hierarchy is followed, this will create conflicts among the employees without getting resolved by people at managerial level.
The following structural design of the organization is essential in the implementation of the four frame model:
Simple Hierarchy
The simple hierarchical pattern of team design is like a pyramid layout. It is usually practiced in small-scale companies. Except for the CEO of an organization, every other employee is a subordinate to some other employee within the company. The bottom of the pyramid is comprised of staff-level employees, exceeding tot the above level, i.e., head of the organization.
Dual Authority
The dual authority structure is one with the two bosses. In this system, every employee is answerable to two heads, not just one. It is applicable in large scale project business in which one is the project manager although other is a functional manager. A team is assembled from different departments, and a project is provided for accomplishment.
Comparison of Advantages and Disadvantages
The advantages and disadvantages of each system are intact in their own place. Such that in the hierarchical order the employees are familiarized with the leadership levels within the whole company not to any specific department, furthermore the levels of authority and responsibility are defined (Hatch, 2018). On the contrary, in dual authority team structure, there is no defined set of administration as there are two bosses involved, so it leaves the project members ganging in the middle. Secondly, in the hierarchical structure employees are developed as a specialist, and they become experts in specific fields (Bolman, & Deal, 2017). Whereas the dual authority approach increases the complexity in an organization, and it decreases the employee performance, and this hinders them from becoming the specialists of their field.
The dual authority is advantageous in clear objectives for the articulation of a project and uses the limited amount of human resource very efficiently. Inversely, hierarchal organizational structure demands for higher human resources and verbalization of plan is not definite. The communication patterns are not much effective across the departments; also it inflates the intra-department rivalry and conflict. This focuses more on individual rather the organizational benefits, whereas the second authority team project works focus on the betterment of the whole organization.
To achieve the goals and aims of the team and ultimately the organization, it is essential to have a competent manager with a perfect setting of agendas and schemas. This is merely possible in the following two steps:
Objectives and Visions
In building a schedule, managers foresee the need and want of the organization and its goals. This means to ensure the needful for the prerequisite and requisites for the organizational aims and objectives. Once the managers are equipped with essential requirements for the goals, it motivates them towards achieving the goals with their teams and subordinates. The vision is built by setting the objectives of the organization, which are further created through set goals and aims (Block, 2016). The activities in an organization to take it towards heights is importantly led by managers or leaders. So managers are expected to be skilled and polished in maintaining and keeping up with the mission statements and organizational goals. Moreover, they are supposed to carry out steps essential to meet their goals.
Strategy Making
A comprehensive tool is provided by the company to their managers for communicating strategies and making them lead the employees through business motivated goals, positioning the employees towards goals achievement. Managers help employees in making the connection between personal and professional goals. It is a collaborative organizational activity, used to set priorities, by focusing on resources and energies, strengthening functions, and ensuring the working of employees and stakeholders towards mutual goals.
Organizational Culture
The culture of an organization is detrimental in defining the success and failure of the organization either for long or short-term. The company's culture sets clear priorities and functioning of the company, moreover tuning the goals and achievements, such that it kept the mission intact and focused towards success (Bolman, & Deal, 2017). Subsequently, it attracts the new and capable people for the organization and also the retention of employee is possible through strong, open and broad corporate culture. It also encourages passion and sustainability, when they are genuinely indulged in their jobs due to a healthy and unified lifestyle in the organization. Lastly, the organization helps in maintaining unique and distinguishing brand identification. Thus the perception of an organization is crucial for its well-being and success (Naranjo-Valencia, Jiménez-Jiménez, & Sanz-Valle, 2016). If the culture is weak and meager, it will affect the organization adversely, thus for preventing the doom or failure. The failure arises where the organizational set up is not up to the mark, and it's not leading towards achieving the aims and goals.
Conflict
The framing of conflict is essential in the aspect that it affects the development of battle, as framing helps in understanding the existence of these conflicts. While a conflict occurs in an organization, frames are the mode of accumulating and analyzing the information regarding issue and position the action plan. Likewise, reframing is also essential in the matter of resolving conflict through framing (Bolman & Deal, 2017). It processes the information through linguistic cues, message patterns, and socially provided meaning of the organizational conflict which is under the process of framing. Hence, the process of framing the conflict sometimes requires a different approach, but these different approaches may enhance the misunderstandings of a situation and make it more complicated.
The frames which are intractable in the given conditions, such as, social, personal or institutional settings are more stable contributing to the inflexibility of the organizational conflict. As in a video about the crucial skill for tomorrow's leaders, it shows how the characteristics of a leader vary according to every person (YouTube). This shows different dynamics of models for framing the future role of a leader in an organization, without which they would not be able to live or flourish. In such conditions, one or more frame helps make the issue less complicated and easy to understand. All the elements narrated by these people in the video can be applied to the role of future leaders as they are all possibly the best characteristics for a leader. However, there are certain circumstances under which one or more frame will further aggravate the issue in an organization rather than making it less complicated, such that cultural-based dissension in an organization should not be dealt with all the frameworks. The best-suited frame for this issue is a cultural framework, and through this, the problems can be resolved in an organization related to the disagreement based on culture.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The four frame model discussed above, analyzes the issues of an organization, such that it is essential for the leaders to keep in view this framework it is necessary for setting and achieving the goals of an organization. The central theme of this model is reframing, as the same issue and problem of an organization can be perceived with four different methods for solution. These situations can be related to the leadership, ethics or the organizational change, the effectivity of each model is according to the circumstances. The reframing suggested by Bolman and deal, as the ‘basic models for re-sizing and altering things,' captures the complexity and subtlety of the organizational situations. It is recommended for the corporate setting which requires changes and alterations in the setup of their department or the whole company while setting aims and objectives according to these frames.
References
Block, P. (2016). The empowered manager: Positive political skills at work. John Wiley & Sons.
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. John Wiley & Sons.
Breugst, N., & Shepherd, D. A. (2016). The effort in entrepreneurial teams. Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research, 36(8), 1.
Hatch, M. J. (2018). Organization theory: Modern, symbolic, and postmodern perspectives. Oxford university press.
Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (2015). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. Harvard Business Review Press.
Lee, J. Y., Kozlenkova, I. V., & Palmatier, R. W. (2015). Structural marketing: Using organizational structure to achieve marketing objectives. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(1), 73-99.
Naranjo-Valencia, J. C., Jiménez-Jiménez, D., & Sanz-Valle, R. (2016). Studying the links between organizational culture, innovation, and performance in Spanish companies. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 48(1), 30-41.
