IOP 460 Week 3 Political and Symbolic Frames Example

Whose Name Goes on the Truck? Political and Symbolic Frames in a Merged Food Bank

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

IOP/460: Organizational Cultures

Week 3 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The food bank, its staff and its events are composites written for a model paper; research and theory come from the sources listed.

The structural and human resource frames explained part of Valley Harvest Food Bank's difficulties after its merger. Two other frames, the political and the symbolic, reveal conflicts and meanings that charts and training plans cannot address. This paper applies them to the case followed since Week 1.

Two Disputes

Six months after the merger, two disputes dominate staff conversations. The first concerns money. A longtime donor gave four hundred thousand dollars restricted to serving the original Valley Harvest neighborhood. The development director, who cultivated the donor, wants to honor the restriction exactly. Leaders of the two merged pantries argue that their neighborhoods, which have higher rates of food insecurity, are being shortchanged and that the merger was supposed to share resources. Meetings have grown tense, and pantry leaders have begun meeting separately.

The second dispute concerns identity. Headquarters plans to retire the names East Side Community Pantry and Casa de Pan, painting every truck in Valley Harvest's green with the Valley Harvest logo. Pantry staff and volunteers are upset, some to the point of tears; one longtime volunteer said, "Casa de Pan is my mother's legacy."

The Political Frame

Bolman and Deal (2017) described the political frame as seeing an organization as a loose alliance of groups that will never fully agree on values or priorities and that must share too few resources. In this view, conflict is central and normal, and power is the key resource. Decisions emerge from bargaining and negotiation among coalitions rather than from rational analysis alone. Leaders using this frame map the political terrain, build networks and alliances and negotiate.

The donation dispute fits this frame exactly. Scarce resources, money and attention, are contested by three coalitions: headquarters staff loyal to the original mission area, East Side staff and Casa de Pan staff. Each has legitimate interests rooted in the families it serves.

Sources of Power

Pfeffer (1992) held that nothing important happens in an organization without power, the capacity to move others and push past opposition, and that people who prefer not to think about power pay for that reluctance. Pfeffer identified sources of power, including control over resources, formal position, information, alliances and the ability to frame issues, and argued that leaders must understand where power lies and how it is used.

The development director's power comes from controlling donor relationships, the organization's largest resource, and from her long tenure with the founder. The pantry leaders' power comes from their relationships with volunteers and families, their knowledge of neighborhood needs and their ability to mobilize community voices. Neither can succeed without the other: donors want results in neighborhoods, and the pantries need donor funds.

The donor wrote one check for one neighborhood; the merger made three neighborhoods share one development office.

The Symbolic Frame

The symbolic frame sees organizations as cultures held together by shared meaning, stories, rituals, heroes and symbols more than by rules. What matters is not only what happens but what it means.

Smircich (1983) distinguished two ways of studying culture: as a variable, something an organization has and can manage like other variables, and as a root metaphor, in which the organization simply is its culture, the shared sense members make of their daily work. The second view emphasizes that culture cannot simply be redesigned from the top, because it lives in members' interpretations.

Headquarters treated the names and trucks as a branding variable, something to standardize. For pantry members, the names are the organization: they carry stories of founders, decades of service and family memories. Removing them signals that their history has been absorbed and erased.

Rituals and Stories

Each organization had rituals. Valley Harvest's annual Thanksgiving turkey drive, East Side's Saturday breakfast for volunteers and Casa de Pan's blessing of the food before each distribution. These rituals reinforce belonging and mission. After the merger, only the turkey drive was announced in the newsletter, a small decision that pantry staff read as a statement about whose traditions count.

The Founder as Symbol

Pastor Mendez is herself a powerful symbol. Her story of starting the food bank in a church basement is told to every new volunteer, and her presence at distributions signals that leadership cares. To pantry staff, however, she is a symbol of Valley Harvest, not of their own organizations. When she visits Casa de Pan only on special occasions, volunteers notice. Regular visits to the merged sites, and telling their founders' stories alongside her own, would carry more meaning than any memo about unity.

How the Frames Interact

The two disputes are linked. Pantry staff who feel their identity is being erased are less willing to compromise on money, and the money dispute makes the name change feel like further dominance. Addressing one without the other is unlikely to work.

Recommendations

Political. Create an allocation committee with representatives from all three sites and the development director, using transparent criteria such as food insecurity rates and families served. Approach the restricted donor jointly to explain the merger and invite a gift for all three neighborhoods, honoring the original restriction while expanding the relationship.

Symbolic. Adopt a shared identity that keeps the heritage names, such as "Valley Harvest: East Side Community Pantry," and paint trucks with both logos. Celebrate all three sites' rituals in the newsletter and invite all staff to each. Hold an event at which longtime members tell their organizations' founding stories.

Ethical. Use political skill to build agreement openly rather than through backroom deals, consistent with the food bank's values. Leaders should share the criteria and the committee's reasoning with all staff, so that no site learns of a decision secondhand.

Conclusion

The political frame explains Valley Harvest's donation dispute as normal competition among coalitions with legitimate interests and identifiable sources of power. The symbolic frame explains the name dispute as a threat to meaning and identity, treating culture as something members are rather than something leaders own. Recommendations that negotiate resources openly and honor all three histories address both.

References

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership (6th ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Pfeffer, J. (1992). Managing with power: Politics and influence in organizations. Harvard Business School Press.

Smircich, L. (1983). Concepts of culture and organizational analysis. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28(3), 339-358. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392246