EDP 810 Module 2 The Structural Frame Example

Rules That Help, Rules That Police: A Structural Analysis of a Youth Agency

Student Name

Doctor of Education Program, Aspen University

EDP 810: The Psychology of Leadership

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Rules That Help, Rules That Police: A Structural Analysis of a Youth Agency

The first module reframed the composite Des Moines youth agency's stalled case record rollout through four frames. This paper stays with one, the structural frame, and asks a deeper question than whether the rollout's deadlines were clear: does the agency's structure fit the work it does? Neither the agency nor its staff exist outside this course.

The Structural Frame's Assumptions

Bolman and Deal (2021) list assumptions that underlie the structural frame. Organizations exist to achieve goals. Specialization and division of labor increase performance. Coordination and control are needed to integrate individual efforts. Organizations work best when rationality prevails over personal preference. Structures must fit an organization's circumstances, including its goals, technology, workforce and environment. And problems often arise from structural deficiencies that can be fixed by redesign. The fifth assumption, fit, is the one this analysis tests.

Mapping the Agency

Mintzberg (1980) synthesized research on organization design into five basic parts. The strategic apex is top management, here Daniela and her leadership team. The middle line connects the apex to the operating core; here, four casework supervisors. The operating core does the basic work; here, thirty caseworkers who visit families, schools and courts. The technostructure designs rules and standards; here, the data team and the finance office that chose the new system. The support staff provide indirect services; here, administrative assistants and IT. Mintzberg also identified coordinating mechanisms, including direct supervision, standardization of work processes, standardization of outputs and standardization of skills.

The Natural Configuration

Mintzberg (1980) argued that organizations tend toward configurations in which one part and one coordinating mechanism dominate. In a machine bureaucracy, the technostructure dominates and work is coordinated by standardizing processes; it suits simple, stable, repetitive work. In a professional bureaucracy, the operating core dominates and work is coordinated by standardizing skills through training; it suits complex work that professionals must judge case by case. The agency's casework is complex and unpredictable, and its caseworkers are trained social workers. Its natural configuration is a professional bureaucracy. The new system, however, was designed by the technostructure and imposed detailed process standards, the coordinating mechanism of a machine bureaucracy.

Enabling or Coercive Rules

Adler and Borys (1996) argued that formalization, written rules and procedures, can be designed in two ways. Enabling formalization is designed with users, helps them understand and improve their work, allows flexibility for exceptions and makes the wider system visible to them. Coercive formalization is designed to control, is imposed, forces compliance and treats deviations as failures. The same rule can feel helpful or oppressive depending on which logic shaped it. The agency's new documentation rules were coercive in design: users were not consulted, there was no way to record situations the fields did not anticipate and the weekly compliance report treated late entries as failures.

The Redesign

The redesign keeps the system but changes how its rules are made and used. A joint team of data staff and caseworkers will revise the forms, so that the required core covers what funders need and narrative fields allow professional judgment. Each casework team will have a data lead who checks quality and helps colleagues, placing coordination within the operating core where professional bureaucracies locate it. The weekly compliance list will be replaced by a monthly team review of what the data shows about the youth served, turning the system from a control into a tool for the professionals' own work, in Adler and Borys's terms an enabling design.

Limits of the Structural View

Structure cannot address everything the first module found. Caseworkers' lack of time and confidence, the veteran supervisor's opposition and the system's meaning as surveillance all call for the other frames. Structure can, however, remove a mismatch that made the other problems worse. A coercive system in a professional bureaucracy invites both political resistance and symbolic rejection.

Why the Mismatch Happened

The mismatch had an understandable origin. The system was chosen to meet funders' reporting demands, which are standardized by nature, and the people best placed to understand those demands sat in the technostructure. Mintzberg (1980) noted that external pressures for accountability tend to push organizations toward the machine configuration, because standardized processes are easier to report on. The agency's leaders responded to a real pressure with a design that fit the funders' needs but not the caseworkers' work.

The Middle Line

The four casework supervisors occupy Mintzberg's middle line, and the current design bypasses them. Data flows from caseworkers directly to the technostructure and from there to the strategic apex, leaving supervisors without a role in the system that now tracks their teams. The redesign restores them, since the team data leads report to supervisors and the monthly review is held within each team. This also addresses, structurally, a grievance that the political frame identified in the first module.

Judging the Redesign

After six months, the redesign will be judged on three measures: the share of case notes entered within three days of a visit, the number of exceptions recorded in the free-text fields, which shows whether caseworkers trust the system with unusual situations, and caseworkers' ratings of whether the system helps them do their work. Adler and Borys (1996) warn that enabling designs can drift back toward coercion when pressure rises, so the review will also check whether any new compliance rules have been added without caseworker input.

Conclusion

Mintzberg's configurations show that the agency is a professional bureaucracy whose new system imposed the coordination of a machine bureaucracy. Adler and Borys explain why its rules felt coercive and how they could be made enabling. Bolman and Deal's assumption of fit ties the analysis together. A redesign that moves rule-making toward the operating core can make the system fit the agency's work.

References

Adler, P. S., & Borys, B. (1996). Two types of bureaucracy: Enabling and coercive. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(1), 61-89. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393986

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership (7th ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Mintzberg, H. (1980). Structure in 5's: A synthesis of the research on organization design. Management Science, 26(3), 322-341. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.26.3.322