The four frames
In almost every discipline-embracing leadership, people devote themselves into publishing numerous volumes of articles on leadership theories. Amid the intense amount of work done on leadership theories, a thorough scrutiny of the existing literature surfaces four crucial frames deemed ample for the purposes of cute understanding of the organizational structures and leadership within such organizations.
“These frames are structural, human resource, political and symbolic frames” (Bolman & Deal 2008, p.27). The paper points out three of the priory-identified frames in relation to facilitating successful implementation of a project despite an unsupportive environment presented as a case study 2005-3 by Raymond Young, available at Macquarie graduate school of management.
In addition, the benefits and the limitations of taking each frame perspectives in facilitation of implementation of the agency’s IT project receive a thorough treatment.
Finally, through consideration of benefits and the limitations of the three frames, the most amicable way of managing processes of change at the agency in future projects implementations will acquire some introspection. In addition, the leadership deemed vital for meeting the challenge of more successful approach to project implementation and change management in the future will receive some glance.
Human resource frame
Introduction
From a human resource perspective, people are the central tools that an organization has in order to achieve its goals and objectives. As a repercussion, the human resource manager endeavors to ensure that he or she responds to the needs coupled with goals of employees as one crucial step toward ensuring that he or she gains the necessary loyalty and commitment of the employees to do the work of an organization.
“This leader empowers people through participation and attempts to gain the resources people need to do the job well but also confronts when deemed appropriate but tries to do so in a supportive environment” (Hersey et al. 2007, p.12).
Tech-media is under immense transformation process. The organization desires to put into place a new system that makes it compliant to the Y2K technology. The CEO of the company sees this as an amicable opportunity to raise funds that would see the company listed in the stock exchange.
Senior managers of the company led by the CEO come together to form a steering committee with the chief intention of weighing various options for achieving the realization of successful implementation of the system. The committee agrees on ERP system. The implementation is within time and budget constraints. However, there is the need for an ample human resource.
Implementation process
For the agency, it is evident that the finance staff was totally unmotivated and unwilling to take up their responsibilities. According to the Young (2005), “most agency staff considered the finance department something of an inconvenience and largely irrelevant to the operational business of the agency” (p. 4).
In addition, Young reveals that, the agency had already acquired an international standard for over decades. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, once a need is satisfied, it ceases to be a motivator anymore. Intentions to maintain excellent status in this case was not a motivator any more.
Since, workers motivation falls under the human resource sphere de-motivation was a substantial impediment to the success of the implementation of the agency’s IT project.
With reference to Bolman and Deal (2008), “the human resource framework places people first, which is remarkably similar to stewardship or servant leadership where participation in decision making and problem solving are primary components of the model” (p.34).
Consequently, decision-making requires hefty inputs of the human resource management to instill the spirit of ‘yes you can’ to those charged with roles in an organization. For the new agency’s finance director, this was largely absent until when the chairperson of the MIS steering committees intervened.
Young says, “the chairman firstly helped by reaffirming his confidence that she had the ability to drive the initiative through” (2005, p.7). This way, the finance director could overcome the criticisms emanating from Mark Black. This perhaps well exemplifies the absence of contributions of the human resource towards maintenance of the workers morale within the agency.
The framework of human resource lie on the foundation that individuals form an organization and that these individuals have different perceptions, have personalized biasness as well as potential and skills which are evidently different for different people.
This fact served as a major impediment to the implementation of the agency’s project since some of the workers would forecast success; other would see failure of the project at the end. In addition, unfortunately, the new finance director realized that “the MIS project failed because no one from senior management had taken the risk of championing the project even though the head of the agency had initiated it himself” (Young 2005, p.7).
Consequently, one of the noble functions of the managers was largely absent: leading. Another function of the human resource that was absent was the job design and work management.
This responsibility calls for the human resource managers to decide on whom to allocate a certain job, and at what time. The new director claims that she “needed the right people to be under her if the implementation of the project was to bear success in terms of making financial decisions.
Inasmuch as direction was required, it is somewhat evident that this agency was at advanced stages in terms of performance in implementing projects. It is thus arguable that every employee of the agency was well acquitted and experienced with his or her duties. Majority of the staff knew much well that delegation was the prime mover of their motivation.
This may reveal itself because the new director claims that everybody kept asking her when she was finally going to make the financial decision over the corridors. This decision was essential in order to give permission to proceed. On the other hand, the chairperson had much hope on the agency’s human resource especially in terms of achieving their delegated chores.
To this ends, he laments that the “MIS did not fail technically but because of lack of sponsorship” (Young 2005, p.6). Support from all stakeholders was vital for the success of the project. Under the human resource frame, individuals get the capacity to learn to defend the existing old attitudes coupled with beliefs about certain ways of doing things.
This fact stands in the IT project implementation by the agency. The agency hired no consultants. The technicians received textbooks to read and thereof decide on what to do. Various staff members also expressed their worries that the project might end up being a horror story of failure. It was evident in some other organization.
As it may be deduced from the above discussion, human resource frame is fully dependent on the capacity of the workers to get fully compliant with the objectives of an organization and appreciate that, in as much the organization demands they also need the institution too.
One benefit of the human resource frame is that, more yields are obtainable for the employees upon the deployment of the appropriate strategies to ensure work satisfaction and motivation among workers. However, determination of essential motivators relies on the position of the employee needs in the hierarchy of needs as established by Maslow and Herzberg.
Since human needs are continuously evolving and dynamic in nature, ensuring maintained workers morale and positive altitudes towards work calls for the inculcation of some new tactics to maintain the motivation of a given worker.
Unfortunately, not every worker would attain the highest hierarchical level, since not all people can fit in the most top management level in an organization. Consequently, at any instance, there will always be unmotivated workers who might be in excessive need for promotion. Another drawback is that the human resource framework sees people as subjects of manipulation through some ways.
However, people are different and have different feelings and emotional attachments. Consequently, opposed to what human resource management theories suggest, what may motivate one worker may not give equally similar effect to another worker. There is the warranty for the assumption that organizations serve human needs.
Conclusion
Change management is crucial for the evidently volatile and yet dynamic business environments of today. A change of human resource management perspectives consequently stands out inevitable. More precisely, change is a process, which from human resource perspectives entails changing the manner in which people execute their duties, habits and beliefs.
In one way or another, this would entangle removing people from their accustomed comfort zones. People are widely reluctant to adopt change. However, taking human resource perspectives implies the need to address such issues.
Structural Frame
Introduction
When one thinks of an organization, perhaps what comes to mind is the pyramidal structure that depicts the hierarchical position of every member of that organization. Adopting a structural framework in the implementation of organization’s projects implies that “the structural manager tries to design and implement a process or structure that will be appropriate to a problem and circumstances” (Jensen & Meckling 1994, p.5).
The procedure would include clarification and setting of the overall goals of an organization, taking proactive strategies to ensure that the external environment is well controlled, ensuring the development of transparent structure that is appropriate with respect to the environment and tasks also putting into place the objects of authority.
In addition, vital to consider would entail “focusing on tasks, facts and logic rather than on personality and emotions” (Jensen & Meckling 1994, p.7). The structural framework, drawn from sociological considerations, places more emphasis on the need of following formal relationships within an organization.
Structures that are created deserve to be consistent with the existing state of technology and the environment. In this frame, it is the responsibility of an organization to “allocate responsibilities, create rules, policies and management hierarchies to coordinate diverse activities” (Bolman & Deal 2008, p.45). More often than not, problems arise in case the established structures fail to be coherent with the existing situations.
Implementation process
In case of the agency, certain roles are placed within a group of peoples: some forming the heads of the departments such as finance and technical among others. The responsibilities for each structural unit strictly lie within that structure so that the policy making process takes a cascaded format.
For instance, Young claims, “most agency staff outside finance department has professional or scientific backgrounds while most of the agency finance staff has clerical backgrounds” (2008, p.1).
For effectiveness, all the existing structures’ workers ought to posses some general knowledge concerning what happens in other structures. Why? A problem here is obvious.
Some omissions are likely to occur when the users of the output of a given structure are not present during formulation and implementation of a given project level. For instance, considering the agency’s IT project, it calls for heavy expenditure and commitment of resources. Consequently, subtle budgeting is essential. Supposing some bailing was omitted, and only discovered when some certain allocated funds remains.
The result would end up being a frustration to the project since chances are likely that additional costs would be incurred in terms of time and other resources to correct the errors that the agency could have avoided. This was possible if the entire team making the policies sat on a rounds table as opposed to over the window approach.
According to Bolman and Deal (2008), in structural frame work, the chief focus is on “how to find some arrangement-a pattern of formal roles and relationships-that will accommodate organizational needs as well as individual differences” (2008, p.50). However, following this framework in the implementation of the new IT project would end up being problematic to the agency.
From experience, some other projects had failed tremendously when this approach was used. For instance in case, “the finance branch (a structure) implemented five separate information systems (AP, AR, GL, inventory, HR), which even though the systems worked, they were not integrated. Significant manual intervention was required to produce the statutory financial reports” (Young 2008, p. 2).
This is perhaps well depicts the significance of incorporating knowhow from all structures within an organization. It is fascinating to learn about such failure while the agency had apple IT knowhow.
For successful implementation of the agency’s IT project through the entire agency, it calls for a breakdown of such structures to make the policies regarding the project across all departments while borrowing the support and technical knowhow of all members of the organization.
However, initially the finance department was reluctant to give an incorporative hand in the IT project. They claimed that they did not like “waste of money on financial systems, the track record in finance branch was poor. There was no reason to anticipate the agency would not be the next horror given the dreadful experience of their colleagues in other public agencies” (Young 2008, p.9).
Conclusion
Adopting a structural approach would pose a problem since it is required that the organization be split up into independent unit. The challenge would be to ensure coherency and coordination between these structures upon splitting them up. Some separate units will have separate responsibilities allocated to them.
This constitutes an enormous challenge especially while implementing an IT project since, such projects constitutes a set of activities so interrelated that a bug in one of the activities would truncate itself throughout the entire project with consequences of posing future troubles.
Need for standardization of skills is yet another drawback. Human beings are different and talented differently and have differing capabilities that aid them in accomplishing certain objectives and tasks. More important is the fact that, “hierarchy and top-down structures tend to work for ordinary and stable tasks” (Bolman & Deal 2008, p.56). In situations of complex environment, it is desirable for the structures to adapt.
In case the agency used the structural frame, more emphasis would be placed on varying the structures to respond appropriately to the existing dynamics. It is also evident that for a structural frame, “few groups have flawless members: the light structure can make optimal use of available resources” (Bolman & Deal 2008, p.70). The need to embrace group accountability would also emerge as an important issue.
Symbolic Frame
Introduction
Visions coupled with inspirations forms essential components of a leader deploying the symbolic frame. The frame borrows widely from cultural and social anthropology. It “treats organizations as tribes, theatre or carnivals” (Bolman & Deal 2008, p.89). The organizations are characterized by cultures driven by heroes, rituals, myths and policies while not negating authority.
Problems typically emerge when “actors play their parts badly, when symbols lose their meaning and when ceremonies lose their potency” (Bolman & Deal 2008, p.99). People normally give more concerns to those organizations, which give them unique identities and make them have a feeling of impeccable significance.
According to Bolman and Deal (2008), “these leaders often rely heavily on organizational traditions and values as the basis for building a common vision and culture that provides cohesiveness and meaning” (p.109).
Implementation process
In the implementation process of the agency’s IT project, some symbols of failure were imminent. Young remarks that, “this period ended when Henry and another opponent took a leave and finally left the agency” (2005, p.10).
The issues surrounding the departure of Henry and his colleague, in fact, rendered the implementation of the project delayed by six months. Henry’s perceptions about the IT project to incorporate internal reporting systems rather than not just external reporting systems relied on the need to enhance the existing system rather than making additions, which would result to complication of the project.
In this context, symbolic frame was essentially constructed by myths about failure, which prejudiced the intents to try some new ways to better the effectiveness and efficiency of the reporting systems with pragmatism. The weird part of adopting a symbolic approach is that, when people hold and advocate for certain beliefs, they normally have the tendencies to translate them into norms.
An ideology that a certain way of executing certain organizational roles cannot work, sparingly without any practical proof, would, thus, serve to undermine development of better systems within an organization. Cultural contexts within work places are enormously valid depending on the number of cultures that are brought together for one single reason: attain the organization’s goals and objectives.
Consequently, the central concern that a leader need pay impeccable attention to is the need to consolidate cultures, beliefs and myths and establish some compromise that only takes affiliations that are congruent with the optimistic anticipations of the organization in question.
However, this does not mean that criticisms fuelled by symbolic frames should be kept at bay. They are indispensable especially when it comes to evaluation of the other side of the story. Nevertheless, the agency’s IT project implementation was not characterized by symbolic of cultural stigmatizations; something that perhaps resulted to the success of the implementation process despite the project being extensively complex.
Conclusion
Cultural considerations of the organizations’ workforce calls for some inculcation of strategies that see the entire workforce recognize the relevance of cultural diversity. These are essential since, more often than not, such people come from different cultures.
One way to accomplish this is shunning away from stereotypical racial inclinations that perceive some people as better than others, not based on their talents and cognitive abilities endowments, but rather on their color and bodily appearances among other racial traits.
Benefits and limitations of the four frames
Introduction
The frames presented by Bolman and Deal play vital roles in contributing towards the change of ways in which people look at the manner in which work and organization are supposes to be managed. As discussed in the previous section, the four frames are political, structural, human resource and symbolic frame.
This section points out the best possible ways of managing processes change by looking at the necessary leadership for successful implementation of projects in the future.
The best Possible ways of managing the processes change
As discussed in the previous sections, each frame has its pros and cons. A brilliant manager would, therefore, and according to Bolman and Deal (2008), “adopt the frame works that will most be appropriate for a given situation” (p.140). The nature of the organizations is characterized by deception, ambiguities, surprises and incredible complexity.
Multiple frames can promote versatility with repercussion of improvement of understanding about a situation facing a manager. Bolman and Deal are for the opinion that “Multiple frames enable us to reframe-to view the same thing from multiple perspectives” (2008, p.157). This way the erroneous indulgences of the managers in narrow thinking would dwindle.
Additionally, this would serve to the advantage of work and organizational systems. Organizations established within a society fragments them into discrete structures possessing some symbols that identify and thoroughly distinguish them from all other structures.
Furthermore, such structures are mostly for individuals who have certain perceptions, feelings and prejudices. This makes it vital for such future agencies to incorporate the strategies of human resources.
On a different account, organizations subject themselves to political influences especially when formulating certain policies (Frost 1986, p.29). Consequently, future agencies call upon managers who are part of the projects implementation committees to consider political frames in an endeavor to ensure that neutral positions are established among all stakeholders.
In fact, it is impossible to align all stakeholders of any IT implementation project to the goal of an organization if they embrace differing political opinions especially bearing in mind how information technology project involves incredible investments in terms of technological knowhow amid large commitments of organization’s funds.
It is pertinent to note also that political frames embrace arriving at decisions through bargaining, jockeying and negotiations emanating from contributions of different coalition parties forming the entire decision making arm of an organization.
Inasmuch as political frame consideration is paramount, arriving at decisions may take quite a long time following the need to provide political views agreement, failure to which they would form subtle catalysts for coercion (University of Melbourne 2003, Para. 3). Consequently, multiple frames stand out as the way out for the future IT project implementations.
If future projects are to be implemented with excellence, “it requires whole some redefinition, perhaps, excellent firm do not believe in excellence- only in constant improvement and constant change” (Frost 1986, p.4). Such excellence may not be achieved through consideration of only a single frame when approaching the nightmare of future project implementations.
Implementing changes demands commitment of energy in an attempt to learn new approaches in development of new skills and capacities to handle emerging challenges. Therefore, future management requires managers who approach organizational challenges from multi-frames approach.
Necessary leadership for successful implementations of projects
With complexities in technological sophistication, it is anticipated that implementation of future projects would pose many management and leadership challenges. One radical shift that is vital is looking at leadership out of the old contexts. Leadership is not synonymous “to power also, it is a distinct form authority” (Bolman & Deal 2008, p.167).
Leadership also differs from the traditional managerial roles in that requires a leader to look beyond the existing personal jurisdictions thinking from a long-term dimension. The leader must possess political skills coupled with an incredible emphasis on renewal, acting as vision carrier of an organization. According to Frost (1986), “leaders are expected to persuade and inspire, not coerce” (p.78).
The future leaders deserve to appreciate that their noble roles in organizations entail making policies vital for future prosperity of an organization. However, they should be flexible enough to allow policies shape them. They are not enforcers.
Leaders, who will be at a position to lead and foster successful implementation of projects, will have to embrace high qualities of leadership. One of such qualities is characterized by visions and focus of the organizations future positions in terms of short term and long terms goals and objectives realization.
To certify this requirement, leaders predominantly deserve to establish their standards of performance, set clear and precise directions, and seek the guidance of both practical and abstract images of the future position of the organization (Bolman & Deal 2008, p.167).
Deep emotional attachment and commitment to work toward the people who are charged with doing the organizations work goes a long way in portraying the leaders passion to work and organizations functions.
Other qualities of exemplary leaders include “technical competency, perceptive, holistic thinking, well endowed with communication skills and intuitive about undercurrents of mood or changes” (Hersey et al. 2007, p.93). These qualities arguably are consistent with calls for future leaders to incorporate multi-frames perspectives.
With reference to Hersey et al. (2007), it is impossible that “managers will provide the necessary support to match the new demands they are making of their employees and employees are expected to emerge from the womb running without any visible means of support” (p.105).
Bolman and Deal criticize the traditional approaches of leadership claiming that leaders operate and execute their responsibilities in an organization as if there is only one frame.
The emphasis here is that, for successful implementation of future projects, the leaders need to establish foundations that would ensure coherency in the way the stakeholders involve themselves in the implementation process. They also need to know how they perceive and attach their anticipations to the entire project.
A competitive leader needs to possess the ability to make the workforce and the heads of various organizational structures see the endeavors of an organization to implement projects that would translate to increased effectiveness of the organization from a positive dimension: enthusiasm for success despite failures of past attempts in other sectors.
Such leaders appreciate the need to learn from such failures and use it to bench mark their organization projects implementation. This way replication of errors committed by other institutions may be avoided. All they need to do is to convince their workers that they can do things in a different way and succeed.
Conclusion
Making organizational decisions on implementation of vital projects that see an organization change its ways of operation and handling of work, calls for bold leaders. These leaders not only deserve to look at all issues entangling the implementation of projects from political, structural, symbolic and human resource frames collectively but also posses high qualities of leadership.
The future leaders, who will perhaps handle intricate projects in future, are called to have high integrity and open-mindedness that prompts them to be open to logic and reason. This measure has the capacity to make them accommodate varying views of the people he or she leads irrespective of whether such views are instigated by political perspective, symbolism, structural frames or even human resource concerns.
The success of implementation of projects squarely lies on the manager’s ability to consolidate and practice his or her roles: leading, controlling and monitoring, effectively. As discussed in the paper, adopting a specific frame while making essential projects implementation decisions exposes a manager to some situations, which curtails his or her efforts to look at the situation from varying latitudes and dimensions.
Consequently, the paper advocates for a multi-frame approach while making management decisions especially by noting that people have different motivators, political affiliations and come from multiethnic society. In this perspective, organizational leadership has been discussed in the paper as complex, unpredictable and deceptive responsibility.
References
Bolman, L., & Deal, T., 2008. Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Frost, J., 1986. Power, Politics, and Influence: In L. W. Porter and others (eds.): The Handbook of Organizational Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hersey, P., Blanchard, K., & Johnson, E., 2007. The Management of Organizational Behavior. Upper saddle river, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Jensen, C., & Meckling, W., 1994. The Nature of Man. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 7 (2), pp. 4-19.
University of Melbourne., 2003. Managing the Educational Organization. Available at: <http/: www. University of Melbourne>.
Young, R., 2005. Against the odds: how an executive project sponsor influenced a project to succeed despite unsupportive environment; MGSM case study 2005-3. Macquarie Graduate School of Management, 1(1), pp. 1-19.