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The Four Frames of an Organization Essay

Decent Essays

The Four Frames of an Organization

Organizational issues are often the most difficult part of managing projects. Taking the time to analyze an organization can help identify, understand, and solve potential problems. All organizations consist of four different frames: structural, human resources, political, and symbolic. Each of these frames describes a particular way of looking at organizations and how they function. For example, it can be used to identify the project stakeholders to help meet their needs and expectations or simply can be used to decide which college to attend.

All organizational frames are important for a project success. The structural frame can help understand an organization structure and roles and …show more content…

There are often mismatches between the needs of the company and the needs of the team members. For example, company XYZ imposed unrealistic deadline where as the team members needed additional time to satisfy the stakeholders.

The political frame addresses organizational and personal politics. It is important to identify who opposes your projects as well as who supports them. This step will help discover the main interest groups that would be most affected by the project outcome. The important issue in IMS project related to the political frame is the power shifts from functional managers to project managers after the initial stage of the project. This unplanned power shift to an inexperienced project manager who does not have much knowledge about the organization to deal with internal and external politics resulted in failure of the IMS project.

The symbolic frame focuses on symbols and meanings. Understanding the symbolic frame of an organization can help shape a culture that gives purpose and meaning to work. There is a definite relationship between organizational culture and successful project management. For example, the IMS project at company XYZ failed mainly due to low risk tolerance due to time constraint, weak unit integration within the team and inadequate support for any work related conflict.

No one of these four

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