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Four Frames Of Reframing Organizations By Lee Bolman And Deal

Decent Essays

A book that has been foundational for me trying to make sense of orchestras is Reframing Organizations, by Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal. I'll be returning to their framework in later posts, so I'm taking a moment to sketch it out here. Bolman and Deal offer four frames with which to break down organizations: their structure, their human resources, their political environment and their symbolic meaning. They offer a metaphor to capture the essence of each frame (translated for orchestra here): The metaphor for the structural frame is 'the orchestra as a factory'. Looking through this frame reveals an orchestra's systems of roles and relationships and how the work gets made. Problems arise when the structure is not suited to the situation

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