For those of you who are new to my blog, it's often quite difficult to pick things up mid-stream. Right now I'm writing a fictional story about a hypothetical evaluation, based on real people at the mission I worked at, the culture of the mission and otherwise what I knew of the mission.
Then the next section of the blog (after I stop the evaluation story part) is an ongoing effort to try to make sense of my experiences with the mission, and I'm using journal articles and the like as spring boards. I worked in a mission that worked in Eastern Europe (but was located in Vienna, Austria) in the late 1980s before the fall of Communism in that part of the world.
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When everyone returned from the restaurant, Inga returned downstairs to her desk, but she and Heather had promised to do something fun together over the weekend. Also, while everyone was gone Heather and Inga straightened up the meeting room, and got things set up for afternoon refreshments.
Mr. Benson asked Heather if he'd missed anything while he was out and she told him about the phone call and that Inga had directed the caller to Mr. Cummings. Satisfied, he went in the room with the others and closed the door behind himself.
***
After everyone had gotten comfortable they started in immediately in where they left off before going to lunch. Inga pointed to the poster sheets on the short wall with the main subject areas of the study, which were: "Process - decision making," "Process - h.r.," "Process - communication," "Process - outside relations," and "Organizational culture (Naturalistic)." Underneath these handwritten titles the sheets were blank. Inga continued saying that the objective for the rest of the afternoon was to brainstorm and than select specific issues under each heading to focus on. She also explained that today's decisions would be considered tentative, but they should be decided upon more firmly before the study began, particularly the "process" areas (the organizational culture part of the study would be more emergent). Changing midstream could affect the whole study, she explained, although small changes might be easier to accommodate.
What they needed to do now was to identify specific aspects of each of the five main topics that might be most crucial for an accurate understanding of the general process and specific aspects that might be most useful for decision making purposes. To start the process going, she gave everyone, including herself and Ms. Gunderson, a blank piece of paper and instructed everyone in the room to fold it into thirds and write the names of each of the 5 subject areas at the top of each third of the paper, using both sides, which would leave one third blank. When everyone had done that she set a timer out and said she was giving everyone 10 minutes to try to think of as many things as they could to go under each heading. Then she started the timer and everyone worked in silence for the next 10 minutes, punctuated by occasional whispers.
***
Although Ms. Elliott and Mr. Douglass didn't realize it, these 10 minutes were very difficult for Mr. Adams and Mr. Bensen because they were thinking more about what they did not want to include in the evaluation than what they did want included. If Ms. Elliott had been aware of this she probably would not have been surprised because it wouldn't have been the first time she'd encountered such sentiments in her career as an evaluator, but she might have done more to address their concerns if she had known.
***
Ms. Elliott started with "Process - H.R." because that seemed the most straightforward and so a good place to start. She opened the floor for suggestions as to what might be included in that part of the evaluation. It was then that she noticed a hesitation on Mr. Adams' and Mr. Benson's faces, but she chose to ignore it for the time being. Instead she turned to Mr. Douglass, who also was noticing the hesitation, and he suggested "selection process," meaning how new missionaries were selected for positions. Ms. Elliott wrote "selection process" under the heading and then asked for other suggestions. Mr. Adams then suggested "discipline," thinking that that should be an easy one since no one ever needed disciplining; Ms. Elliott then added "discipline" to the list. Finally, after she failed to elicit other suggestions, she wrote her own idea on the board, "record keeping" and under that "socialization." Part of the problem, on this issue, was that a lot of the regular h.r. duties, like "pay" and benefits were handled by the sending missions. Still, there was an h.r. department there and so that department must to something.
Next, Ms. Elliott moved on to "Process - Communication," thinking this one might be easier, which turned out to be true it seemed. Mr. Benson, maybe trying to make up for his silence on the previous topic, quickly piped in "mission wide meetings," thinking in particular of the women's monthly meetings and the monthly staff meetings. Mr. Adams added "newsletter." Mr. Douglass hadn't contributed anything yet but made up for it by making two suggestions at once, "informal meetings," and "communication of instructions." Since the latter was a bit vague, however, Ms. Elliott pressed him for more information about it, which resulted in "communication of work instructions".
The rest of the afternoon went like this, so that in the end they had enough ideas for the evaluation, but not enough that any could be weeded out. So then it was pretty clear to Mr. Douglass and Mr. Elliott that their hosts seemed to be holding back.
In the end Ms. Elliott instructed everyone to think about these things and try to come up with at least 2 more suggestions for each of the 5 categories. Then, since there was time left over, she explained the general sequence regarding what they needed to accomplish to develop an agreed upon evaluation plan, such as deciding where Ms. Elliott should work from (such as a desk or office), as well as things like reporting schedules, not to mention data collection strategies and the like.
***
When it was clear they had gotten accomplished all they were going to for the day, Ms. Elliott suggested they leave a little early and come back refreshed with more ideas in the morning. The group was quiet as they left the room. Mr. Adams called his secretary over and gave her some instructions for the next day and also for getting in touch with Mr. Cummings. The others all left with Mr. Benson who took Ms. Elliott back to the hotel and then took Mr. Douglas home with him for dinner. After a bit Mr. Adams joined them. Mrs. Benson was her usual sociable self and, taking a cue from her husband, set about making Mr. Douglas feel very welcome by introducing her family to him and asking him about his. In this way the evening was pleasant, although Mrs. Benson could sense that something was wrong, even though she tried to divert Mr. Douglass' attention away from the two men who appeared to be stewing in their own juices.
***
Back at the hotel, Ms. Elliott was seeing red flags big time. For the first time she thought that maybe this was going to be harder than she had anticipated. Something seemed to be wrong but it might be difficult to get to the bottom of it. Experienced evaluators develop a sixth sense for this kind of thing, and she definitely had it. She knew that she was going to have to be very careful in the planning decisions to not let the mission try to pull the wool over her eyes. She thought that Mr. Douglass knew something was wrong too, but she hadn't had a chance to talk with him alone about it yet. She felt that they needed to agree on how to proceed, and then to do so carefully. She hoped that Mr. Elliott wouldn't be out to late so they'd have a good chance to talk things over that evening.
Meanwhile, Mr. Adams and Mr. Benson had been having similar thoughts, that is, thoughts that they needed to agree on how to proceed and to not let Ms. Elliott and Mr. Douglass pursue things they didn't want them to pursue. They were also hoping that the dinner wouldn't go to late so they'd have time to strategize alone.
***
After everyone had finished eating and after they'd finished their fresh cups of decaf coffee in the living room, Mrs. Benson suggested that their guest might be tired and like to go back to the hotel room to rest. She did this out of character (because she really enjoyed entertaining), because it seemed the men were preoccupied with something. Mr. Benson protested, not wanting to appear like they were rushing their guest out. But Mr. Adams and Mr. Douglass agreed that might be an idea, so Mr. Adams said he would take Mr. Douglass back to his hotel room. But before leaving, Mr. Adams and Mr. Douglass agreed to meet early at the office the next morning to discuss some pressing business.
***
Back at the hotel, Mr. Douglass knocked at the door to Ms. Elliott's room and found her still up poring over her PowerPoint slides and other various notes strewn all over the desk and some even on the bed. Ms. Elliott welcomed Mr. Douglass with a bit of relief. Then they both sat down to discuss their impressions of the day. Mr. Douglass had also noted the hesitation from Mr. Adams and Mr. Benson, but he'd interpreted it differently than Ms. Elliott. Mr. Douglass respected Ms. Elliott's professional expertise and they'd always agreed eye to except on maybe little details that were basically inconsequential, so this was the first time they'd really disagreed. He told Ms. Elliott that he knew these men and he was sure she was overstating the problem. Maybe they were just tired or thinking about some other concerns of the organization they'd been neglecting since he and Ms. Elliott had arrived. Ms. Elliott was a little surprised at this response, but she knew in her heart she was right anyway and sooner or later Mr. Douglass would realize it.
But she set that aside and asked what Mr. Douglass thought about how they should proceed. Mr. Douglass was scheduled to return home the day after tomorrow but she didn't think they'd be far enough along in the planning for him to go, because they wanted him there for that part of the evaluation. He agreed he'd need to extend his stay in Vienna, but otherwise took a watch and wait attitude about the situation. Nevertheless, Ms. Elliott had come up with some contingency plans in the event that something changed.
Then the two went over the lists from the afternoon's brainstorming activities and Ms. Elliott showed her additions which she wasn't going to suggest until it seemed the others were all at a standstill.
***
I'm returning to my textual discussion now. I'm picking up in the sub-section of the article called "Fixed vs. Variable Socialization Processes."
"Furthermore, what may be true for one person is not true for another in variable socialization processes. Such a situation requires a recruit to search out clues to the future. To wit, apprenticeship programs often specify only the minimum number of years a person must remain in the apprentice role and leave open the time a person can be expected to be advanced into the journeyman classification. However, since the rates of passage across any organizational boundary are a matter of some concern to people, transitional timetables may be developed by recruits anyway on the most flimsy and fragmentary information. Rumors and innuendos about who is going where and when they are going characterize situations marked by the presence of the variable socialization. Indeed, the would-be general manager often pushes quite hard to discover the signs of a coming promotion (or demotion). The individual listens closely to stories concerning the time it takes one to advance in the organization, observes as closely as possible the experiences of others, and, in general, develops an age consciousness delineating the range of appropriate ages for given positions. And, whether or not this age consciousness is accurate, the individual will measure his or her progress against such beliefs." (p. 244-245)
What I know about the Vienna mission context would argue for a "variable" socialization process there. First of all, the mission would not have, I'm sure admitted to their being any socialization process, or certainly not any intentional socialization process. So the individual is left to their own demises to figure out whether this was true in the first place and if so whether it was variable or not. But if it did (intentionally) exist at all, it was variable... to certain extent. I think initial commitments were commonly two years (to be extended at the discretion of all concerned parties - the individual, the Vienna mission, and the sending mission). Within that time frame, then, it would seem reasonable that the initial socialization shouldn't take an inordinate percentage of those two years. Thus, a socialization process that took 1 1/2 years, for example wouldn't seem very reasonable, at least not by "normal" criteria of determining "reasonableness." In such a case maybe the mission might be motivated to expedite the basic socialization process to allow for a maximum percentage of the two year commitment to be spent as a trusted insider who could fully participate in the functioning of the mission.
However, there was also the issue of security which would argue also for expedited socialization - a "crash course" type of socialization, if you will. This is because the mission couldn't afford to have a poor security risk person on staff because of that increased security risk, but this was also compounded by the extra resources the mission had to expend on the individual trying to socialize him or her. That extra effort would be drawing energy and time away from the "regular" duties of the mission but if a certain amount of energy at any given time could be socializing a certain number of new members, an increase of numbers of people unsocialized would compound the problem. For example, if when I arrived 2 other people were also at some stage of being socialized, then the mission would have had 3 people at the same time drawing energy away from the direct mission-related activities and if one or more of those people ended out taking inordinate lengths of time to be socialized, when other new people joined the mission that number could climb to 4, 5, 6, etc. because previous new arrivals weren't leaving the socialization to join the ranks of those who would be not only full participants in the work of the mission, but also potential socializers of other newcomers.
Drawing too much energy into socialization efforts might not only drain the mission from focusing on its primary tasks, but also could potentially drain energy away from regular collective security functions, and so become a security liability in that way, in addition to any security risk an unsocialized member might present by virtue of simply being in the mission but not socialized. So there might be a double security risk from having unsocialized individuals in the mission: 1) the unsocialized individual him/herself as being a risk, and 2) draining organizational energies away from other security activities.
A final reason why keeping recalcitrant individuals on staff for any length of time is problematic is that the longer the person remains unsocialized (despite continuous mission efforts to the contrary), the more the person might be a risk and the more strenuously the mission might need to try to socialize the person.
Because of all these reasons, then, I think that despite there most likely being a variable socialization process most commonly in use by the mission, there would be a lot of impetus to make it as brief a process as possible.
Other than that, this text also fits at least my experience of socialization with the mission, although on this issue I can only speak for myself because I don't know how others viewed this aspect of socialization. Although I must say that it was only later on in my time with the mission, in the second year of my term with them, that I was vulnerable to thinking in the terms described here; namely the efforts to try to gauge where I was headed. I don't think I ever tried to figure out any kind of standard socialization time-frame though. But it didn't take long to know that I was not responding appropriately to the mission's efforts and that the mission was not kidding around and that the things I was to be socialized into were nonnegotiable; certainly by the fifth month or so I understood these things.
I think though that it might be possible that in as much as later on in my time with the mission it might have been taking a different tack to getting me to concede to them in frustration (or something similar). Early on they might have tried to goad me on by giving me unnecessary overly simple tasks to do, which might have caused a caving in from one angle, and when that didn't work as planned, then they tried other angles, such as dropping intentional "clues" and "hints" of this or that potential plan for me and/or for my boss, that may or may not have been real possibilities, or reasonable to varying degrees. If this is the case, then the mission might have been digging for my "hamartia" or fatal flaw (in the Greek tragedy sense). Once they found it they could have offered a cure and then we (the mission and I) would have shared this common understanding about my weakness which could also be used in a sort of emotional blackmail way to help me submit totally.
I do know that sometimes it felt like they knew more about me than I thought they did (although usually it was about something they could reasonably have known about, such as from the mission I'd worked with prior to joining the Vienna mission; that mission was also one of the 15 missions comprising the composite effort I was on loan to in Vienna).
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"Relatedly, Roth (1963) suggests that a special category of 'chronic sidetrack' may be created for certain types of role failures. thus, in the fixed socialization processes of public schools, the retarded are shunted off to district classes where the notion of progress does not exist. Similarly, in some police agencies, recruits unable to meet cretain agent demands, particularly during the portion of the socialization process which is fixed and takes recruits typically through the academy to the patrol division, are provided long-term assignments such as city jailers or traffic controllers, not patrolmen. Such assignments serve as a signal to the recruit and others in the organization that the individual has left the normal career path. To the extent that such organizational "Siberias" exist and can be identified with certainty by those in the setting, chronic side-tracking from which there is rarely a return is a distinct possibility in fixed socialization processes. On the other hand, sidetracking is usually more subtle and problematic to a recruit operating in a variable socialization track. Indeed, many people who are working in the middle levels of management are often unable to judge just where they are, where they are going, or how they are doing. Consequently, variable processes are likely to create much anxiety and perhaps frustration for individuals who are unable to construct reasonably valid timetables to inform them of the appropriateness of their movement (or lack of movement) in the organization." (p. 245)
There are a couple things I'd like to say here regarding my experiences and observations in the Vienna mission. The first is that there was little room for advancement, so generally members wouldn't be thinking along those lines and so this issue would have been irrelevant. The other thing is the prevalence of starting with a two-year commitment to the mission. These two years then would be what would make or break the individual, at least regarding the possibility of a future with the organization. So the individual had two years in which to prove him/herself, which included both being socialized and then also serving as a full-fledged accepted insider in the mission.
I should note, however, that although there wasn't much opportunity for advancement, meaning moving to another higher position in the mission hierarchy, there was room for being given increased responsibilities within one's position. Thus, for example, if the Poland country coordinator was on a teaching trip in-country (i.e., in Poland) then one of the other members of the Poland team would temporarily cover for the absent country coordinator. Also, I think that as the mission and missionary worked together successfully, the mission would learn what the skills, knowledge and interests were of the member and try to provide opportunity to utilize those gifts, as long as it was in keeping with the mission's needs and operations. Perhaps this kind of thing (being given more responsible duties) became a pseudo-advancement in that context.
The other thing is that I was clearly side-tracked. But in my case I was, I think, side-tracked/disciplined, given a chance to 'prove myself' (security-wise, i.e., vis a vis submission to the mission), re-instated, and then side-tracked for good before leaving the mission. There are, as I've mentioned innumerable times on this blog (in one way or another), several ways one could interpret this. At least two opposing impetuses could have been involved in causing my mission to treat me that way. On the one hand, they would have been motivated to socialize me so they wouldn't have to go through the process of finding someone to replace me, then waiting for (the deputation process) her to get to Vienna and finally socializing that new person. But a countering concern would have involved the desire to minimize their security risks. So on the one hand they wanted to whip me into shape so I would not be a security risk (according to their own criteria and means of determination of what a security risk might be) while at the same time trying to make me useful to them by way of ministry advancement. I think they wanted both, but ultimately they couldn't have anyone on staff who was a security risk as they defined that term. In this way I soon found out that anyone is expendable and the most important thing for them was not being a security risk. And for me the most important thing was sticking by what I believed in unless convinced otherwise; and "appeal to force" was not (and still is not) an acceptable means of convincing me, especially regarding issues I hold to be of any importance. So, basically, in this particular interpretation of my experience in Vienna, it boiled down to a stalemate and the mission, with the more power made the final determination regarding my fate, which was based on the security issue and the security issue alone. This, of course, is just one interpretation of what I experienced with the mission, but it is a reasonably plausible one, even if it doesn't quite answer all the questions (such as why I seemed to be the only one going through this type of thing).
***
Each of these discussions in the text regarding pairs of socialization qualities ends with propositions.
"2. Fixed socialization processes are most likely to produce innovative responses; variable socialization processes are most likely to produce custodial responses.
The logic behind this proposition is simply that a variable situation leads to maximum anxiety and this anxiety operates as a strong motivator toward conformity. Intuitively, most managers utilize this principle when they attempt, for example, to control their most rebellious or difficult subordinates by telling them that their next career move 'may not happen' within a given time frame." (p. 246)
I think variable socialization processes were probably most likely in common use in the Vienna mission, as I've said before, with the exception of the debilitation aspect being a regular component of the experience. In the mission context I think that the leadership did want conformity to a large extent, especially regarding values and norms, but these had to not only be in use while in the office or otherwise "on the job" but continually for the whole duration of the time one was with the mission, including, for example, relations and activities external to the mission. In this way it was probably more like a spy agency than anything else. I'm not talking about living a life of moral rectitude befitting a missionary, but living a life in accordance with mission (unwritten) security norms. The mission would, undoubtedly disagree with this on several accounts, including denying that the security norms existed at all (or that my assertions in this regard were way overblown) and they might deny that they demanded anything other than biblical Christian maturity.
***
That ends this section of the text and I'm running late for church...
