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The name of this last sub-section of the Ouchi article is "A Few Closing Observations."
"The student of organizational control should take care to understand that clans, which operate on ceremony and on ritual, have forms of control which by their nature are subtle and are ordinarily not visible to the inexperienced eye." (p. 845)The significance of this sentence vis a vis my experience with the Vienna mission is that I was inexperienced regarding this type of thing and as such it was difficult for me to make sense of what was really happening and distinguishing meaningful cues from the seeming chaos. This sentence validates my assertion that although it is hard for me to describe what happened in Vienna between me and the mission, that doesn't mean nothing intentional (on the part of the mission) wasn't happening.
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In discussing the two issues of "clarity with which performance can be assessed" and "goal incongruence" the author says:
"In everyday language, people must either be able to trust each other or to closely monitor each other if they are to engage in cooperative enterprises." (p. 846)In Vienna I think trust took preeminence, and the mission seemed to only trust people members that had been thoroughly socialized and internalized the mission's norms. Performance, especially aspects of the work in Eastern Europe itself, such as teaching courses there, was often difficult to assess, so trust filled that gap. And it seemed the mission was slow to trust people and very demanding as to what it would take for it to trust someone. At least that was my experience of the mission.
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Since this seems like too short of a post, I'm going to start on the next article, a book chapter, which is:
Argyris, Chris. (1989). The individual and the organization. In W. E. Natemeyer & J. S. Gilberg. Classics of Organizational Behavior, 2nd ed. Danville, IL: The Interstate, p. 21-34.
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"One might say that an independent person is one whose behavior is not caused by the influence others have over him. Of course, no individual is completely independent..." (p. 23)Independence was most emphatically not a mission-approved value. In fact, the mission seemed to go out of its way to create dependencies and my experience was that it censured personal independence of just about any kind.
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"Another argument for planning offered by the formal organizational experts is that the organization created by logical, rational design, in the long run, is more human than one created haphazardly. They argue that it is illogical, cruel, wasteful, and inefficient not to have a logical design. It is illogical because design must come first. It does not make sense to pay a large salary to an individual without clearly defining his position and its relationship to the whole. It is cruel because, in the long run, the participants suffer when no clear organizational structure exists. It is wasteful because, unless jobs are clearly predefined, it is impossible to plan logical training, promotion, resigning, and retiring policies. It is inefficient because the organization becomes dependent upon personalities. The personal touch leads to playing politics, which Mary Follett has described as a "deplorable form of coercion."" (p. 25)The Vienna mission did seem to have a structure, but it was, if this article is correct, less than complete. For example, while I did not have "a large salary" I did have supporters, but my position within the mission was, shall I say, somewhat less than "clearly defined". Not only that but it was constantly changing with all the positions I was moved around to. So, at least on the face of it, the mission was illogical in this deficiency.
I did indeed suffer by not having adequate work guidelines or even sufficient work to keep me busy. So in this regard, the mission was cruel.
It was also wasteful because not only did the mission not make good use of my skills and knowledge, but it wasted supporters' money in shuffling me around like a hockey puck, and not having clear grievance procedures in place made it impossible for any mutually satisfactory resolution to my unsatisfactory treatment.
Lacking these organizational structures and meaningful policies (i.e., policies that they actually adhered to) the mission became an instrument of the whims of its leaders. As such, efficiency was not something the mission excelled at, although it's possible that in the publishing end of things this was otherwise.
Now, if I were to ask for support from the average Christian in the pew who might be interested in supporting a missionary to Eastern Europe, how likely is it that this person would support an organization known to be illogical, cruel, wasteful and inefficient?
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After discussing principles of task specialization from the field of industrial economics, the author goes on to discuss weaknesses in these principles:
"First, the human personality we have seen is always attempting to actualize its unique organization of parts from a continuous, emotionally laden, ego-involving process of growth. It is difficult, if not impossible, to assume that this process can be choked off and the resultant unique differences of individuals ignored. This is tantamount to saying that self-actualization can be ignored." (p. 26)I don't think the issue of task specialization fits the Vienna context, except that there was a segmentation of knowledge for security reasons, but it didn't result in an assembly line type of situation, which would be more closely illustrative of what the author is talking about here. However, this statement about the human personality, can be taken, I think, apart from any consideration of task specialization. The Vienna mission clearly tried to "choke off" my self-actualization efforts in several ways. First of all, they pressured me to leave off my Austrian interactions. Secondly, they denied me meaningful work. Thirdly, they did not seem to value my unique assets (in as much as my background was significantly different from others' in my European Studies specialty).
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"Proposition I. There is a lack of Congruency between the Needs of Healthy Individuals and the Demands of the Formal Organization.I wonder if the military chaplains who comprised the Vienna mission's h.r. department knew about this kind of thing...
If one uses the traditional formal principles of organization (i.e., chain of command, task specialization, and so on) to create a social organization, and if one uses as an input agents who tend toward mature psychological development (i.e., who are predisposed toward relative independence, activeness, use of important abilities, and so on), then one creates a disturbance, because the needs of healthy individuals listed above are not congruent with the requirements of formal organization, which tends to require the agents to work in situations where they are dependent, passive, use few and unimportant abilities, and so forth." (p. 31).
In any case I would say I was "predisposed toward relative independence, activeness, use of important abilities, and so on," which, according to this author, describes someone of "mature psychological development". I would also say that I was required to work in situations where I was "dependent, passive, use few and unimportant abilities, and so forth," and the incongruity between me and the role I was to play caused "disturbance" because my needs were not (evidently) congruent with the requirements of the mission.
Since I was at a great disadvantage in not knowing the inside workings of the mission before arriving in Vienna, it would have been difficult for me to deselect myself beforehand. So then the onus is on the mission as to why they would take me on knowing that such an incongruity existed. That is why would they accept someone with my education and work background to do the kinds of work they had me do? For all the advanced degreed workers at the mission it is hard for me to believe that they didn't know there would be a clash between me and the position(s).
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"Corollary 1. The disturbance will vary in proportion to the degree of incongruency between the needs of the individual and the requirements of the formal education." (p. 31)The degree of incongruency was increased, I think, by the mission's disallowal of my compensatory efforts of Austrian ministry and their cutting off my outside contacts. So, in other words, not only did I have this incongruence, but the mission wouldn't even allow me to make up for it externally. Basically, it seemed to want this incongruence.
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"Proposition II. The Results of This Disturbance Are Frustration, Failure, Short-Time Perspective, and Conflict.
If the agents are predisposed to a healthy, mature, self-actualization, the following results will occur:
1. They will tend to experience frustration because their self-actualization will be blocked.
2. They will tend to experience failure because they will not be permitted to define their own goals in relation to their central needs, the paths to these goals, and so on.
3. They will tend to experience short-time perspective, because they have no control over the clarity and stability of their future.
4. They will tend to experience conflict, because, as healthy agents, they will dislike the frustration, failure, and short-time perspective which is characteristic of their present jobs. If they leave, however, they may not find new jobs easily, and even if new jobs are found, they may not be much different." (p. 31)
I felt all of these things in my work with the mission. However, in the case of my experience with the mission, I think the mission might have actually wanted me to have this response to the incongruencies, or at least to some of the incongruencies. That is, the "disturbance" wasn't just a product of a neutral organizational structure, but was intentional.
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That was it for that article, so I'm going to close with this.
