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   Advancements in Agricultural Development 
  Volume 4, Issue 3, 2023 
  agdevresearch.org 

 

1. Caitlin Lunzmann, Graduate Student and Assistant, University of Florida, 134 Grinter Hall, Gainesville, FL 32611, 

caitlin.lunzmann@ufl.edu,   https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4591-5569 
2. Nicole Stedman, Associate Provost and Dean, University of Florida, PO Box 115500, Gainesville FL, 32611, 

nstedman@ufl.edu,  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7970-1798 
3. Ange Asanzi, PhD Student, University of Florida, 406 Rolfs Hall, PO Box 110540, Gainesville, FL 32611, a.asanzi@ufl.edu, 

 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-4999-858X 
4. Amy Clerget Brown, Assistant Professor, Rocky Mountain College, 600 Cole Drive #1064, Red Lodge, MT 59068, 

amy.brown@rocky.edu,  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6378-025X 
5. Damilola Ajayi, Doctoral Candidate, University of Florida, 406 Rolfs Hall, PO Box 110540, Gainesville, FL 32611, 

d.ajayi@ufl.edu,  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0204-5416 
6. Rigo Chaparro, Graduate Student, University of Florida, 7117 SW Archer Road Lot 2629, Gainesville, FL 32608, 

rchaparro@ufl.edu,  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9082-6911 
79 

 

Contextualizing Organizational Frames: Teaching Leadership 
to Faculty in Agricultural and Natural Resources 

 
C. Lunzmann1, N. L. P. Stedman2, A. Asanzi3, A. M. C. Brown4, D. Ajayi5, R. Chaparro6 

 
 

Article History 
Received: May 23, 2023 
Accepted: August 9, 2023 
Published: August 21, 2009 
 
 
Keywords 
undergraduate education; natural 
disasters; case study   

Abstract 
Possessing leadership skills has been determined to be an essential 
requirement within the workplace. A multi-level leadership program was 
designed to help provide undergraduates with more exposure to 
leadership principles. The program team was created through the 
collaboration of multiple universities found within the southeastern 
United States. Through a 14-week online training program followed by a 
field experience, participants were exposed to Bolman and Deal’s 
organizational frames. Participants then created cased studies grounded 
in this leadership framework and based on the data that was collected 
during their field experiences. This study quantitatively analyzed the 
consistency with which each of the frames were used. From the 16 
published case studies on the multi-institutional project’s website, 
assessment questions were analyzed based on which frame/frames were 
being referenced. Findings from this study identified a similar use of each 
of the frames throughout all the case studies. Further research should be 
conducted to better understand each participant’s comprehension of the 
organizational frames prior to the development of their case studies. 

 



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Introduction and Problem Statement 
 
When considering employability, leadership currently ranks fourth, according to the National 
Association of Colleges and Employers’ (2018) list of key attributes employers seek in students. 
With employers and colleges recognizing the importance of this attribute, the need for it to be 
taught throughout higher education arises. In a study that examined a southern land grant 
educational institution, it was found that the leadership development of their students was 
inadequate (Stokes, 2022). In fact, teachers and administrators stated that they felt that 
students’ leadership development was more of an implied goal rather than a key responsibility 
(Stokes, 2022). Upon reviewing literature, Parrella et al. (2023) found that agricultural students 
need to master more than just discipline-specific skills, they need employability skills. The 
reality is that when employers are hiring, they look for both technical, knowledge-based skills 
and soft skills concerned with social abilities such as leadership (Crawford et al., 2011). Thus, 
professions in agricultural leadership education are growing, which requires programs to 
develop agricultural leadership educators (Velez et al., 2014). 
 
In response to the need to develop leadership skills, a multi-institutional project developed a 
faculty-oriented leadership education program. Through this program faculty members would 
create and have access to multiple case studies that they could incorporate into technical 
curriculum to teach leadership principles. The case studies were derived from real life events 
and focused on the lived experiences of communities, schools, and individuals who had 
experienced natural disasters in an agricultural context. The result of this project was unique 
perspectives attempting to apply leadership principles into a teaching tool that could be taught 
by any faculty at the undergraduate level. The aim of this study was to provide a preliminary 
assessment of how these faculty members incorporated the four frames of leadership into their 
case studies. 
 

Theoretical and Conceptual Framework 
 
The use of Bolman and Deal’s (2017) organizational frames played a critical role in the creation 
of the leadership education program for faculty. The selection of the theory was intentional as 
it would be both learned by faculty and then used to develop the case studies. The intent of 
Bolman and Deal (2017) in the creation of this theory was to consolidate a universal view of 
leadership into four frames of leadership: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. 
The four frames could be used to provide a holistic view of an organization and face 
complexities that go beyond just the leader and their followers. 
 
The structural frame is focused “architecture” in place that supports an organization’s pursuit 
of its strategic goals (Bolman & Deal, 2017; p. 51). One key aspect of the organizational 
structure is the manner in which expectations are communicated for the allocation of work and 
the coordination of efforts. This frame puts emphasis on what the individual does and his/her 
specific responsibilities. This frame assumes that organizations work to reach established goals, 
that specialized labor is more efficient, that control and coordination help different units work 



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together, that the best work is done through rational thought, that effective structure is best fit 
to the current situation of the organization, and that when performance is faltering via 
structure, it should be fixed with restructuring.  
 
Meanwhile, the human resource frame assumes that the organization exists to meet human 
needs (Bolman & Deal, 2017). The idea is that both the organization and the humans who exist 
within that organization have needs. When those needs are met by both, then the organization 
succeeds and is productive. Motivation is also considered within this frame, especially in terms 
of what inspires people to work. This frame is influenced both by Maslow’s (1954) hierarchy of 
needs and MacGregors’s theory of X and Y (1960). 
 
The political frame focuses on how decisions are made and how resources are allocated 
(Bolman & Deal, 2017). This frame identifies leadership roles and communication that exist 
within the organization. This frame assumes that organizations are groups of different 
individuals that each have different values, beliefs, and perceptions, that most important 
decisions are about dividing up scarce resources, that resources can create conflict, and that 
goals and decisions are a result of negotiation amongst individuals and interest groups. It is 
through this frame that Bolman and Deal (2017) highlight the impact of power, coalitions, 
authorities, decision making, partisans, morality, and conflicts in organizations. 
 
The final frame is the symbolic frame, which is based on how individuals within an organization 
use symbols and how those symbols give meaning or importance within the organization 
(Bolman & Deal, 2017). It assumes that importance is not defined by what happens but by what 
it means and that any action can be interpreted differently by different people. The idea is that 
when faced with situations that cause uncertainty, symbols can help people find answers that 
can lead to long term resolve, and the culture that exists within the organization helps to tie 
members of the organization together.  
 
Bolman and Deal (2017) pushed leaders to embrace a holistic multi-frame approach when they 
look at their organizations. Instead of limiting themselves to one theory or angle of leadership, 
the organizational frames provide important insight into many realities found within their 
organizations. Gallos (1993) supported this with their finding that multi-frame thinking was an 
effective method of teaching leadership. In 2020, Sowcik and Stein created a best practices 
option for how to use the frames in rapidly changing situations. Similarly, the faculty leadership 
program in this study used a multi-frame approach when teaching faculty participants within 
the context of agriculture and natural resource disasters. The organizational frames were then 
used as the framework for each of the participants’ case studies that were evaluated. 
 

Purpose 
 
The purpose of this study was to quantitatively analyze how frequently faculty participants used 
each of Bolman and Deal’s (2017) organizational frames as assessment questions in the case 
studies they created. 



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Methods 
 
Overall, the study was conducted by performing a quantitative analysis of published case 
studies designed by the faculty participants of the leadership program and examining the 
assessment questions each case study posed.  
 
Multi-level Experiential Leadership Program 
The leadership program was built upon 40 faculty who were selected from colleges of 
agriculture throughout the southeastern United States. Faculty came from a range of disciplines 
within agriculture. Participants were first required to complete a 14-week online academy. The 
online academy consisted of seven modules which focused on the impacts of agricultural 
disasters, using leadership as a lens, Bolman and Deal’s structural and human resource frames, 
Bolman and Deal’s symbolic and political frames, contextualizing leadership, creating case 
studies, and teaching with case studies.  
 
Upon completion of the online academy, participants were divided into three generalized 
groups. Over multiple years, each group was sent to the site of a different natural disaster. 
Faculty participants were exposed to experiences and perspectives reflective of the impacts of a 
natural disaster event by local industry representatives. This included anything that was real or 
relevant to how these representatives responded to the crisis. At the conclusion of the field 
experience, principles of the organizational frames were reviewed, and applications were made 
to ensure that participants left with a strong understanding of the frames. 
 
Using the data and experiences collected on site, the participants had four months to create a 
discipline-specific case study that could be used to educate undergraduate students on basic 
leadership principles using Bolman and Deal’s (2017) organizational framework. Case studies 
were chosen as the method of education because they offered faculty an opportunity for 
professional development by learning how to use a new instructional technique. Once all parts 
were finalized, the case studies were submitted to the project design team who reviewed all 
elements providing feedback and guidance on the use of the frames. At that time, the cases 
were sent to fellow peers, participants, and graduate students for a final revision process. Once 
reviewed, all material was digitized and published online.  
 
Frequency of Frames Analysis 
This study employed a quantitative research design based on data published from the multi-
institutional project’s leadership program. The 16 case studies currently published on the larger 
program’s website were reviewed to identify how faculty used each of Bolman and Deal’s 
(2017) four frames. Of the 16 cases, two were eliminated from the review as they were written 
by the leadership program’s facilitators. Assessment questions from the published case studies 
were reviewed by two investigators. Questions were sorted into each of Bolman and Deal’s 
(2017) organizational frames based on each case study author’s labeling. Any discrepancies 
were discussed by the lead investigator and two reviewers. One case study was found without 
labeling or clear intent of each frame in the assessment questions, while another used a project 



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for assessment rather than questions. Therefore, they were eliminated from the study, and a 
total of 12 case studies which included a total of 201 questions were reviewed. Each case study 
was assigned a numeric label from one to 12 in order to maintain confidentiality. 
 
For the purpose of this study, R was used to analyze descriptive and inferential statistics. The 
descriptive statistics calculated included frequency counts, percentages, and means. These 
were used to describe the number of times the different organizational frames were used both 
within and across the case studies. In order to test for homogeneity of variance across the 
groups, the test for normality of data was first carried out using histograms. The histograms 
showed that the data were not normally distributed, thus a non-parametric Levene’s test was 
carried out.  
 

Findings 
 
Analysis on assessment questions in the case studies indicated that the four frames as 
identified by Bolman and Deal (2017) were used often, as well as questions which combined the 
frames. Specifically, as seen in Figure 1, the case study analysis reveals that both structural 
(27.3%) and symbolic frames (27.3%) were used the most in Study 1 while structural frame 
related questions (40%) took precedence in Study 2. Study 3 adopted majorly structural frame 
questions (58.8%), whereas symbolic questions (33.3%) were mainly used for Study 4. Although, 
the human resource frame (42.9%) was dominant in Study 5, political (37.5%) and combined 
frames (37.5%) were prioritized in Study 6. Furthermore, about a third of the questions used in 
Studies 7 and 8 were embedded within political and combined frames, respectively. It was 
noted that 30.8% of the questions adopted in Study 9 fell under the symbolic frame while 
structural (29.4%) and combined (29.4%) questions were used in Study 10. It is interesting to 
know that for Study 11, there was equal distribution amongst the human resource (20%), 
symbolic (20%), combined frames (20%). However, political frame’s use was prevalent (25%). 
Though Study 12 had the structural (21.7%) and political (21.7%) frames as notable frames, the 
symbolic frame (26.1 %) was dominant. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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Figure 1  
 
Frequency of use of each of Bolman and Deal’s frames within each case study 

 
 
It was discovered that across all case studies, as seen in Figure 2, the mean number of 
structural questions used in all the studies was 4.33 (SD = 2.27) while human resource related 
questions was 3.3 (SD = 1.61). On average, the researchers employed political frame questions 
approximately three times (SD = 2.41) while symbolic and combined frames had on average of 
3.25 (SD = 2.25) and 2.67 (SD = 1.61) questions, respectively. The Levene’s Test for 
homogeneity of variance (F = 0.8123; p = 0.5227) reveals that there was no significant variation 
among the frames employed across the studies. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Figure 2  
 
Distribution of average frequency of each of Bolman and Deal’s four frames in assessment 
questions across all studies   
 

 
The frames were also compared across the case studies, as seen in Figure 3. This figure shows 
the distribution of questions from each study within each frame. For example, of the 26% of 
questions that were structural, it was discovered that this frame was widely used in Study 3 
(19.2%) and was equally used in Study 7 (9.6%), 9 (9.6%), 10 (9.6%), and 12 (9.6%). The human 
resource frame was more dominant in Study 5 (15%), followed by Study 7 (12.5%) and 9 
(12.5%). However, it is evident that this frame was used across all the studies with no 
exemption. Meanwhile, the political frame was majorly used in Study 7 (18.4%) and 9 (18.4%) 
and were followed by Study 11 (13.2%) and 12 (13.2%) respectively. Amongst all the studies, 
Study 9 employed the highest level of symbolic frame questions (20.5%), followed by Study 12 
(15.4%) and Study 4 (12.8%). While combined frame questions were mostly used for Study 8 
and 10 (15.6%), this frame was also used in Study 3 (12.5%) and 10 (12.5%). 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Structural
26%

Human Resources
20%

Political
18%

Symbolic
20%

Combined
16%



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Figure 3 
 
Frequency of use of each of Bolman and Deal’s frames across all case studies 

 
 

Conclusions, Discussion, and Recommendations 
 
It is evident that throughout the 12 case studies there is an equal distribution of questions from 
each of the organizational frames (Bolman & Deal, 2017). The creators of the case studies were 
able to use an almost equal amount of assessment questions from each of the frames as to 
maximize student learning in these cases. The frame that had the lowest amount of assessment 
questions was the political frame. Possible explanations of this are potential lack of relevance 
based on participant specialties and location selected, lack of participant understanding of this 
frame, or personal preference of case study developers. The fact that this was the frame that 
was least used poses an interesting point because one of the key elements of the frame is the 
allocation of resources. Due to the destructive nature of these storms, the resources that were 
once available to an organization may be impacted. Thus, questions designed around this frame 
would be very fitting for these case studies. Alternatively, the human resource frame was used 
across all 12 case studies. This finding could highlight the critical role human resources play in 
leadership during a crisis and how motivation, goal setting, and engagement can change during 
times of crisis. Consistency can be found in the lack of preference for any frame, similar to 
Probst’s (2011) findings. Probst found that participation in leadership development programs 
had no effect on frame preference. 
 
Additionally, it is interesting that throughout all the case studies, apart from case study 6, all 
used at least three of the four frames. Even though case study 6 did not use all four frames, the 

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Study 10

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Study 3

Study 2

Study 1



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study still incorporated assessment questions from two of the four frames. These findings 
support Roddy’s (2010) dissertation work which also found that most headmasters use more 
than one frame. Durocher (1995) found that almost half (45.3%) of his participants reported 
using more than two of the frames. These findings do contrast the work of Bensimon (1989), 
who found that most higher education presidents prefer the use of one frame as a guiding 
leadership development model. These findings have multiple potential meanings. The first is 
that participants of the field experience may have a sufficient knowledge of the frames and 
found application of each frame within the sites that they toured. The second is that those 
same participants may not have a strong understanding of the frames and instead of going into 
depth on the one or two that best fit their data from the natural disaster, they chose to ask 
broader questions that incorporated basic principles of each frame. Additionally, the feedback 
provided to the participants by the team experts could have encouraged the use of frames 
differently, which is a potential limitation. Either way, there is a need for further research to 
identify participants’ mastery of the organizational frames after their field experiences and 
prior to the development of their case studies. 
 
The complexity of a holistic approach to leadership can pose a challenge for participant 
understanding (Kellerman, 2014). Therefore, it is recommended that future research focus on 
how to best educate participants of the multi-level experiential leadership program on Bolman 
and Deal’s (2017) organizational frames. The impact of participant comprehension of the 
frames is key to identifying why all frames are being used evenly and will help identify if 
participants are not going more into depth due to a lack of knowledge of how to incorporate 
the frames within their case studies. The researchers recommend the implementation of a 
qualitative study that examines participant experiences during the onboarding, training, field 
experience, and case study development stages of the program. Additional research that should 
be considered is collecting data on the impacts of these case studies on students’ leadership 
development. 
 

Acknowledgements 
 

The program in this study was funded by a USDA/NIFA Higher Education Challenge Grant, 
Project #2019-70003-29092, and facilitated by the University of Florida, Texas A&M University, 
Auburn University, and the University of Tennessee. 
 
C. Lunzmann – conceptualization, methodology, writing-original draft, reviewing and editing, 
validation; N. Stedman – conceptualization, methodology, writing-reviewing and editing, A. 
Asanzi – investigation, validation; A. Brown – investigation, validation; D. Ajayi – formal 
analysis, writing-original draft; R. Chaparro – writing-reviewing and editing. 
 

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the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 
 


