Musa Kabanangi
OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:
PCA-Structural Frame Worksheet
1) Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.
My situation was in regard with the amount of waiting time when shopping from
Walmart. As an external person (customer), Walmart stores I have visited so far have proven to
be operation the same, chaotic and long lines of customers waiting to be checked out by one
employee operating the only open cash register out of over 15. Walmart employees don’t seem to
pay attention to this issue like I was told by one employee that the store manager is only
interested in meeting the store’s daily sales target.
2) Describe how the structure of the organization influenced the situation.
At any given moment, an organization’s structure represents its best effort to align
internal activities with outside pressures and opportunities[CITATION Bol17 \p 92 \l 1033 ].
These internal activities are put in place to handle issues like the one I experience at Walmart. In
the case of Walmart stores, it seems their internal activities do not align with outside pressures.
Customers come in and have no idea how much time they will spend in the store. Employees do
not seem to be interested in helping customers in line, they are so consumed with tasks they have
been assigned. Having technology in place should make life much easier. Walmart has self-
check out cash registers but these are limited to debit/credit card users only. These users still face
challenges with the technology as it fails to recorgnize some scans and depends on the employee
assigned to that area to sign in and manualy enter the item. This already is time consuming as
this situation can happen at the same time on multiple stations.
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Regardless of the time of the day, human operated cach registers remain closed except for
one or two. With most people paying by cash and others who are not comfortable using self
check out join the line to be checked out even though they pay using debit/credit card. The
customer care desk usually has more than four employees waiting for customers with returns and
other complaints. Electronic area also has one person stationed there, and that employee attends
to customers who come with questions regarding products. This also delays others who come for
with items they want in mind and need to pay and leave the store. Because of how the structure
in the store is organized, people may walk around the store, fill up the cart with items in a short
time, then spend more time waitning to check out. These stores are positioned in high traffic
areas and therefore, management must know that there will be too many people in the store at
any given time and must have enough employees and assign them to strategic stations that will
help with fast service.
3) Recommend how you would use structure for an alternative course of action
regarding your case.
If I was the store manager, first thing I should familiarize myself with is high store traffic
hours. Understanding this will help me with hhow I can structure the store’s personnel during
peak and off peak hours. Rather than having four employees at customer care desk, I would
reduce that number to two and open up two more cash registers to help reduce the number of
hours customers have to wait. I would see to it that dring pick hours, it all hands on deck to help
serve customers efficiently without wasting much of their time. With enough staff in place, the
self check out will have two employees ready to help cstomers with scanning problems.
Electronics area will also have two people attending to customers and in an event one goes to
help a customer with a product, there is always one at the station to attend to customers that may
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show up. I would make sure that every department has at least one or two extra employees
during peak.
The store manager must joing the team in attending to customers where needed and spend
more time on the store floor so he/she can see the barriers and opportunities the store has.
Promoting a team work environment would be great in this situation. Employees must work as
one, jump in and help where someone is falling behind. Make decisions for customers rather than
waiting for the store manager’s decision. Employees must be trained and informed of the reason
why quick service is important. There are so many glocery store around and unsatisfied
customers or customers who don’t have much time to waste would rather go and spend more
money in a store that looks at time as a priority. Employees should use empathy and make sure
to attend to customers needs efficiently. The lesser time customers spend in the store, the more
people will come in.
4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned
about this frame.
What I would do differently is increasing autonomy and team cohesion. My goal would
be to have a structure that is self sufficient at every stage and level. Rather than having me as the
only decision maker, I would empower the team to with tools that will help them make decisions.
I will not be waiting for opportunities show up, I think being proactive can serve both time and
money. My approach to restructuring will be on going process instead of waiting to the last
minute. There is a central belief that structural frame reflect in rationality and faith that a suitable
array of roles and responsibilities will minimize distracting personal static and maximize
people’s performance on the job[CITATION Bol17 \p 48 \l 1033 ]. Working to making roles and
responsibilities as clear as possible will is going to change. I have in the past been telling people
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specific tasks to perform in order to get their jobs done. My approach going forward will be to
define and explain roles and responsibilities so everyone know what is involved in their roles and
should be able to perform the tasks and make decisions if need be.
When people are happy with their jobs, it means high productivity and great customer
service, they will also make sure to achive goals and objectives. My job will be to assure my
team of support whenever needed. The structure will be set in a way that there is no barrier
between myself and the team, we have to start communicating regularly so we attend to issues in
real time. Infact, I will introduce an all-channel network structure in order to improve our
relationships as well as communication. I believe this structure model can work out for us and
we will be able to have information as things happen. This structure will help how effective the
team will be going forward, our current one boss structure has been chaotic especially during a
time when our products are on demand. Customer complaints have gone unreported to relevant
people and returns take long to be attended to. Am sure with all channel network structure we
will be able to help one another and issues that were not attended to will now be attended to on
time as we will encourage ctive communication among team members.
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Reference
Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (2017). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership (6th
Ed.). San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass (Perusall Version Only).
