297. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 23 (Gray & Starke, pt. 2))

It never ceases to amaze me how much I can just keep on going on the subject of my tortured tenure with the mission in Vienna and continue to keep coming up with new things that shed considerable helpful new light on what happened there.  This issue of the informal organizational is one of these such instances.

***

I've realized that I haven't been attaching dates to these blogs.  These ones that pertain in general to my time in Vienna (not counting the pre-Vienna deputation) would be 1987-1989.  I'll try to start adding these labels, but I'll have to go and retroactively add them to previous posts later on.

***

This afternoon I have physical therapy.  I'd like to start taking the Special Transit Services for trips of any distances (such as physical therapy, which is ca. 15 miles or more one way) but you have to call a day in advance to make arrangements so I can't do that for today and Friday I have an appointment with the pain doctor that works with the neurosurgeon and it's too close time-wise to my p/t appointment for STS, so I'm going to have to drive Friday too.   I'll have to start next week then.

At home I want to continue my thorough post-remodeling cleaning.  Because I'm not feeling well this cleaning is going slowly, which I think I've mentioned before.  So today I want to clean the guest shower.  That finishes the guest bath except for the vanity top, which I'll leave for now because I'm using it as my central cleaning station for sponges and rags, etc.  However, I offered to host a couple coming through from church Saturday night, so I'll clean it before then.

Then my next room will be the kitchen, so I'll start there next.  I've generally tried to have all my knickknacks and things behind glass, but my canisters in the kitchen are all on open shelves, and so my plan is to take them all down and dust them, so I'm going to start with that in the kitchen.

But I also have cooking to do today.  My next meal is going to be Russian.  Being single I cook a meal and have left overs and also freeze some meals.  Pork chops cooked in sour cream, baby potatoes poached in broth and just plain broccoli (the latter is not particularly Russian).  I also need to make juice for my bedtime smoothies as I finished my last batch yesterday.  This time it sill be ruby red grapefruit and yummy smelling peach juice.  I hope it comes out a good combination.  The peaches were on sale and smelled so yummy peachy I just couldn't resist them and the grapefruit were likewise hard to resist there I was with to fruit that I wasn't sure how they would go together, so we'll soon find out I guess.  I have a feeling it depends on the sweetness of the grapefruit as to how well they'll go together.

Anyway, back to the text...

***

This next section of the chapter is: "FUNCTIONS OF THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION"

The following quote is the introduction to this section.

"A better understanding of a phenomenon can be achieved if it is known what function it performs.  If we analyze the reasons behind the existence of the informal organization, we can improve our understanding of how it can be managed. While all of the reasons (or functions) discussed below are interrelated, we treat them separately to sharpen our understanding of the behavior patterns operating in informal structures." (p. 431-432)

It sounds like the authors more or less equate reasons with functions, but we'll have to see if that fit the Vienna mission context as we read the text.  In any case, understanding the function and understanding the reason does sound like it could be very helpful to know.  Why did the Vienna leadership decide they needed to create an informal organization?  Why did they make it serve the functions it did?  Why did they make the informal organization in the particular form they made it in?  Why?  Why? Why?  Let's see if we can find out...

***

This section subheading is "Security."

"One of the major functions of the informal organization is to increase the feeling of security of its members... Deviant or abnormal behavior is not tolerated, and this assures members a reasonable degree of stability in their interpersonal relationships.  The informal organization also increases member security by protecting members from outside influences such as management or other work groups...

"A major reason workers find security in the informal organization is that the rules for behavior are set by the workers, not by management." (p. 433)

... Unless of course you happen to in an organization where the management created the informal organization and established the rules for behavior in it.  Well, maybe it's not right to really think of the mission in terms of workers and management, like in an ordinary workplace, but, on the other hand, should we consider the mission a spy agency?   Would your average mission in, say, Bolivia or Thailand go out of their way to purposely and deliberately create an informal organization with all the bells and whistles that might accompany an informal organization? Probably not; they have other things to do... like ministry, for example.

Getting back to this quote, feelings of security in the Vienna mission, in my experience and observation, were acquired when one succumbed and gave in to whatever it is they wanted of you so that you and the mission lived in harmony.  It had to be a relationship of complete mutual trust, no holds barred.  Without that you didn't have security, plain and simple.  People who were there shorter terms (a few months or visitors) would have been shielded from the cruel realities of this kind of thing.

In any case, the workers did not set any rules of any substance, and certainly no rules having to do with whether or not you felt secure or not.  Example of rules workers might have been able to set would be rules involved in the women's monthly meeting, as long as the rules didn't involve things like security or the like, which would be management's sole prerogative to set.

By "workers" I mean anyone below the level of department heads.

***

The next sub-section is titled "Social Satisfaction"

"We learned from the motivation chapter that people have social needs that are manifested in social contact (e.g., the formation of significant interpersonal relations and the striving to be accepted by other people). The informal organization facilitates satisfaction of those needs.  For example, the interactions required by the formal organization tend to initiate the social contacts made, resulting in the formation of attitudes, feelings, and beliefs about other people.  On the basis of these required interactions, individuals then form close-knit groups that provide maximum satisfaction and security...


Moreover, it is easier to develop a social identity in a small informal group than a large formal one.  In many cases, employees become only numbers to the formal organization; they therefore seek personal identity, recognition, and acceptance in their informal groups." (p. 433)

I think what we have here is a case of Habermasian colonization of a lifeworld.  That is, whereas individuals might want social satisfaction the administration imposed their view of that social satisfaction should look like by using their artificially created informal organizational structure to also dictate social mores and relations.  All in the name of Christian love and the great commission.

***

The next sub-section is "Communication Channel"

"As mentioned earlier, the informal organization provides an additional channel of communication for the organization, called the grapevine.  Information that is deemed important by the informal organization is sought out and quickly communicated to interested group members.  Because the information is seen as important (if it weren't the informal organization wouldn't bother with it), it tends to be transmitted rather quickly, the exact speed depending partly upon the degree of importance of the communication...


... But regardless of the accuracy of the information, the mere act of communicating necessary information tends to satisfy the needs of the informal organization... " (p. 433, 435)

Since the informal organization in the Vienna mission was a creation of the administration in the service of the administration, the communication channel was also part of this instrumentation, and such there was no room for error, at least as far as I'm aware, and I suspect that if error did come up it would be quickly corrected and an effort would be made to avoid it happening again in the future, because error could have catastrophic consequences in their work.

In my opinion, formal communication channels were largely fronts from the public view, part of the deception - the partial truths, like saying they were an international publisher.  Communication really happened 1) in informal channels, or 2) behind closed doors (some of which might have been formal channels).  So informal channels were actually pretty important and I think a lot of communication between upper management and department heads happened in informal social situations, whether it was out jogging together or a spur of the  moment discussion on the fly.

The only communication channels that might have been of any importance and also formal would have been the board meetings and the regular management meetings.  These had minutes which were available only on a need to know basis and there was otherwise no written formal communication that I would say was of any significance, other than symbolic and p.r. or fundraising.

Again, it should also be noted that the management had a monopoly on communication, including the informal organization communication.  In fact, there were times I mentioned things to a couple of the secretaries that I (naively, it seems) thought was in confidence, but later on there wee things that happened / that were said that made me think that my confidence had been broken and they had passed on what I'd said.  I suspect their bosses had asked them about out time together.  So then it's clear that the informal communication channels were in the service of the management and these secretaries were, if you will, informants.  An example of this was mentioning that I was feeling stressed and one secretary telling me about the Austrian herbs that some of the workers had tried.  This was before I was sent back to the States.

One other things about this is that towards the end of my time in Vienna, I feel I was fed a lot of dis- or misinformation to confuse me about what was going on in the mission and where it was headed.  So this was a use (or misuse?) of the grapevine.  It seems it would be in the service of the management, but where exactly the dis- or misinformation originated I'll probably never know.  That is, who thought up what to tell me and what who should tell me.

***

This next sub-section is titled "Balancing Device."

"The informal organization serves as a balancing device in several ways.  First, it has the capacity (although not always the motivation) to overcome deficiencies built into the formal structure.  Since it is impossible for formal systems to prescribe every type of decision and behavior that is necessary for effective work accomplishment, the formal organization often relies on the informal organization to take up any 'slack' that may be present or to compensate for important areas that are not specifically covered in job descriptions.


Second, the informal organization serves a balancing function by giving satisfaction to individual members that the formal structure cannot give.  A production worker receiving little respect from management can derive considerable satisfaction from being an informal group leader, by being held in high esteem by coworkers, or by having workmates laugh at his or her jokes." (p. 435)

Although the Vienna mission leadership created and managed the informal organization, if an individual was in good standing in the organization s/he would be given some latitude in carrying out his/her job, although the mission wouldn't tolerate mavericks, so it was generally accepted that regular communication with relevant colleagues and/or superiors regarding innovations needed to take place to keep everyone affected on board (assuming it wasn't something ridiculously trivial like your method of washing the windows or something).  This functioning might not be completely dissimilar to in a regular informal organization, except for the Big Daddy informal organization always looming in the background.

The second balancing device would be irrelevant in the Vienna mission because if the mission management was not pleased with you than no one would be and you wouldn't find anyone who'd cross the mission leadership because to do so would be professional suicide.  So in this case the mission management made sure that their informal organization didn't function at all.  Period.  Explanation Mark.  End of question.  Time to move on...

***

The final sub-section is titled "Source of Motivation."

"The informal organization is often a source of motivation for individuals." (p. 436)

I decided that rather than cite the text, I'd summarize the ways an informal organization can motivate individuals, according to the text.

1. One can be motivated by being recognized by ones peers (as funny, as a good worker, etc.)

2. One can be motivated by having interesting / enjoyable coworkers.

3. One can be motivated by status or position held within the informal organization.

Numbers one and three are only going to happen if you are in good standing with the management, although being in good standing with the management does not guarantee these things.  For example, you could be in good standing with the management, but not necessarily in a particularly high status.

Number two probably will also only happen when you are in good standing with management because if you are not in good standing with them your peers will use social pressure to get you to change (or oust you or whatever management wants to happen to you) and chances are that even if they are otherwise interesting and enjoyable people they won't seem so if you are not in good standing with management.

So if you are not in good standing with management, it seems that the informal organization, which is (s I've said many times already now) an instrument of the mission management, will lose it's motivational properties once you are on the outs with the mission management.

***

In this case, then, the question is what is there to make you want to correct the problem between yourself and the mission management?  The answer, clearly, is beyond the purview of this text, but it is one that seems relevant to me and my relationship (back then in the late 1980s) with the Vienna mission. 

What then is the Mission?  Stripped of a viable relationship with the pseudo informal organization (I think it's pseudo, because it's contrived rather than organic), then I'm left with a relationship with a relationship with the formal organization and, my sending organization.  We already know that the formal organization is basically a front, a shell of an organization mainly for public relations and fundraising purposes (and minimally for financial and legal reasons). That's what my relationship is with after I'm stripped of a relationship with the pseudo informal organization.

How do you relate to a shell of an organization?  How do you communicate with a p.r front? Excuse me for being paranoid.  Who are you anyway, Vienna mission? 

It's at times like these that one can start to believe that books like Alice in Wonderland may not be so fantastic after all. 

***

It is soooooo... late.  I've got to go.

296. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 22 (Gray & Starke, pt. 1)

I don't have any appointments today, but I always have things I can do.  I am getting sort of nervous about making the trip to get my glasses and pick up the two pictures in the southern part of town.  The thing is that my legs are getting worse and worse all the time, and that's a ways to drive going through town, although I can sort of go around it on highways.  The thing is that I won't have the money (accessible) to pay the remainder of my glasses until I get my SSDI deposit on the 3rd.  But I don't know how my legs will be by then.  But maybe I should just go pick up the pictures today and if I can't drive by then I can take the Special Transit Service to get my glasses.    I already paid for the picture framing, so it's just a matter of going to pick those up, but I was going to pick them up when I got my glasses to do it all in one trip.  But when I get those pictures then I'll have all the pictures for the living room and I can start hanging those pictures there and that will be nice.

I still need to try to schedule the pick up for the book case too to get those door repaired.  I can't get through to them and they're not returning my calls.

***

The next text I'm going to use as a sounding board is a chapter from the following book:

Gray, J.L. & Starke, F.A.(1988). Organizational Behavior: Concepts and Applications. Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing.

The chapter is:

12. The Informal Organization and Organizational Culture (p. 423-457)

I find "informal" quite interesting as it pertains to organizations.  There exist several of these "informal" issues, including "informal organization," "informal power" and "informal communication." Generally speaking, in my mind the more you of these informal issues you have in a context the more red flags I see... but that's now and I was naive about any of this when I went to Vienna in 1987.  So this is a case of "if I'd known then what I know now I would have/wouldn't have done X."  But since when do we live in a conditional perfect world? A lot of us might like to at times, but that's just not the way things work.  So we chalk things up to experience, try to learn from the past and move on, more or less, right?

***

"Examples of behavior in the informal organization are many and varied:


1. A production worker may restrict output to conform to the norm of the work group.
2. Management may plan an important announcement for employees, only to find out that the message was leaked earlier through the grapevine.
3. The manager or a department may find that the leader of the company baseball team appears to exert more influence during the baseball season than the line managers.
4. A potentially conflict-laden meeting proceeds very rationally since most of the disagreements on issues were worked out the nigh before over a few drinks." (p. 425)

None of these specific examples would have happened at the mission in Vienna (1. restricting output?  come on! 2. leaking anything in that paranoid secrecy fortress? Hah! 3. baseball team? I don't think so! 4. Conflict-laden? And these people are still  on staff?  Don't they know conflict is not allowed?)

But the point is that people do and say things that aren't strictly reflected in the organizational mission or vision statements, rules and regulations, etc. In the case of the Vienna mission, it would probably be most helpful to say that the informal organization might be what goes on that is not in the public eye.  I think this is a pretty valid way to look at it because all the written rules, etc. (except maybe regarding the details about working "in country" - in the Communist East Bloc countries - this was the late 1980s) were potential p.r. tools to show how wonderful and above board the organization was.  It could always pull out any of these as needed to demonstrate it's lily whiteness, but this did nothing, of course to address what this chapter calls the informal organization and culture, which went largely undocumented... mostly on purpose, and very conveniently so.  This way if anyone had an accusation against the mission they could say "prove it" and it would be very difficult to come up with documentation... and they know it.

***

"In general, the informal organization emerges because the formal structure does not satisfy all employee and organizational needs. The exact form the informal organization will take thus depends on the specific deficiencies in the formal structure and in employee need satisfaction.  It is important to remember that managers do not have a choice as to whether or not the informal organization will develop: informal relationships will be formed within any formal structure." (p. 426-427)

This makes it sound as if managers don't particularly want informal structure, but in the Vienna mission it seemed just the opposite that they wanted to construct a sort of informal underworld what wouldn't necessarily be evident to outsiders and that wouldn't be part of the formal documentation.  On the other hand, the leadership had developed a social control atmosphere that reinforced through positive affirmation or negative rebuke how one spent one's free time and who one associated with.  These are broadbrush assertions, but I think I've gone into more detail about them elsewhere.  Basically, the mission members were so conditioned en masse that they'd pretty much all together confirm or invalidate you depending on whether or not you sought informal social relations other than those intended by the mission leadership.

***

Next the authors discus the difference between job demands and role demands.  Job demands are generally what's written down in a job description, but there may be other role demands above and beyond that, such as to get a raise, or for a profession, etc.

The role demands on me included befriending my boss's wife and sort of becoming a big sister to one of their daughters who they were afraid was becoming worldly (she was a pre-teen at that time).  I did it and I don't remember complaining, but I did feel like I was being stuffed into a stereotypical mold and not given any chance to use my skills or knowledge.  I did like spending time with the daughter, but I didn't like how it was thrust on me, any more than I liked the thought of the secretaries being my main identity group.

***

"Ideally, the goals of the informal organization are in perfect agreement with those of the formal organization.  In actual practice this is almost never the case, partly due to the fact that workers have individual goals that are seldom in complete agreement with formal organization goals." (p. 428)

In the case of the Vienna mission, the goals of the formal and the informal organization mesh very nicely, I'm sure, because the leadership, unlike in most organizations, created both, and doesn't allow other competing informal organizations.  If the mission wouldn't allow me, just one person, I can't even imagine how it would react if an non--assimilated (or only partially assimilated) informal organization  That would REALLY be interesting.

***

"The formal organization equates authority with influence: in other words, if individuals have been given authority, they are assumed to have influence.  In contrast, influence processes in the informal organization occur by approval from the relevant group, not by the organizational decree.  Generally, the individual with the most influence is the person who is most able to satisfy the needs of the group.  This may or may not be the appointed (formal) leader." (p. 428)

So in the Vienna mission you had the usual formal organization, but then you had the formal organization-appointed informal organization, so you can guess who might be the leadership in the informal organization... Well, just in case you're having trouble with it, I'll tell you, the formal organizational leadership appointed themselves to be the leadership of the informal organization too.  Quite clever of them, no? So then they had double the power, formal and informal.

How could they get away with this though?  I think they could get away with this by being the ones with inside knowledge.  Also, department leadership recognized them as leaders, so then those under them would follow suit.  Often at group meetings the top leadership would banter back and forth with this or that department head, often with a light-hearted tone.  They also could be sometimes very humble and sometimes quite firm and authoritative and sometimes very approachable so knowing when to be what helped clinch them as informal leaders also.

***

"In Chapter 10 we discussed how control (e.g., rules, policies, procedures, etc.) are inherent in the design of formal organizations... In the informal organization, standards of behavior, referred to as norms, are similarly communicated to members through social processes. Because the informal organization is a social organization, norms are oriented toward controlling social behaviors, and sanctions are directed at those who violate them." (p. 429)

 I've discussed these a fair amount, but I wanted to bring this up here in the context of the informal organization.  The thing is that what was happening to me in Vienna might have been largely happening in the informal organization, but the thing was that the informal organization was in actuality under the control of the management, so it's not like it was some accidental free-standing set of unfortunate experiences I had with them.  That would be naive at best to think.  However, the mission could try to make it look like the were just some accidental free-standing set of unfortunate experiences I had with them (if they acknowledged that the events occurred.)  So it's a very handy set up they had there, don't you agree?

***

"One of the major functions of hierarchical lines of authority in formal structures is to identify the correct channels of communication.  Therefore, lines of authority can also be viewed as lines of communication... Informally, however, this is seldom happens.  The informal organization devises its own channel of communication (the grapevine) for both social and organizational communicational purposes.  The grapevine carries whatever information the informal organization needs and, although it is selective and often carries inaccurate or distorted information, it is generally faster than formal channels of communication." (p. 429)

In Vienna I must admit that it was through the secretaries (and sometimes others) that I often got the most helpful information during off hours regarding various tidbits that would help me understand that's going on there.  So that would be a kind of grapevine, I guess.  And I do think that that kind of thing was pretty wide spread.  However, I think that the accuracy was pretty high because they got used to requiring high accuracy in their line of work.

One thing about having so much informal communication was that it could be hard to pin down formal rules and the like.  So then you basically had nothing to stand on and you were at their mercy.   Another thing was that the management could manipulate information if they wanted to, which would work for those who didn't yet know whatever information was being manipulated.

This would be another incentive to be part of the informal organization - in order to keep "in the loop".  In my experience, other formal meetings, etc. couldn't provide the information I could have gained from the informal sources.

***

I hope this comes out okay.  I'm really tired.  I drove to the south end of town to get my pictures this afternoon and they were all ready, including the ones at Michael's near me.  My legs are getting worse and the numbness is creeping up my legs; it's not up past my knees.  I still have some feeling, but less and my legs don't move well, so I need to get prepared to start getting rides to places.  My glasses weren't ready yet today, although they were down near where I was today.

When I got home I hung all the pictures in the living room.  It looks a lot better now.  There are still 2 more pictures to hang, but one needs a frame and I'm not spending any more money on house things right now (except maybe potting soil!).

295. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 21 (Katz., p. 6)

I finally went to the dump (the one I'm really supposed to go to) and ended out with a grand total of $2 in charges (figured from ca. $60 for 1 ton, so I had 1/30 of a ton in junk, I guess).

Otherwise, I've just been working on things at home, and I watched a little TV too, for a break.

***

We're still (!) in the section titled "Motivational Patterns: Consequences and Conditions," but now we're in the sub-section "Conditions conducive to internalization of system goals."

"Internalization of organization objectives can come about through the utilization of the socialization process in childhood or through the adult socialization itself.  In the first instance, the selective process, either by the person or the organization, matches the personality with the system.  A youngster growing up in the tradition of one of the military services may have always through of himself as an Air Force officer.  Similarly, the crusader for civil liberties and the American Civil Liberties Union find one another.

The adult socialization process in the organization can build upon the personal values of its members and integrate them about an attractive model of its ideals.  People can thus identify with the organizational mission.  If the task of an organization has emotional significance, the organization enjoys an advantage in the creation of an attractive image.  If the task is attended by hazard, as in the tracking down of criminals by the FBI, or of high advanture, as in the early days of flying, or of high service to humanity , as in a cancer research unit, it is not difficult to develop a convincing model of the organization's mission." (p. 143)

Okay, once again, there's really a lot here. 

The childhood socialization would have applied probably in most cases - with most of the workers - in the mission in Vienna.  Some may not have been raised in Christian families or became Christians later, in their teens or as young adults, so this wouldn't be relevant to them.  Others might have been raised in a Christian family or church that might not have socialized them properly for work with the mission - and I would fall in this category because I came from a church background that welcomed questioning things, which in my experience generally would only come back to haunt you if you did question something there.

Anyway,  getting back to childhood socialization, for those who were raised in the churches that would have prepared them to go to the right seminary and then on to the mission, they undoubtedly had a leg up on transitioning into the system there.   They may have already more or less understood the value system that led to the kinds of precautions and deceptions and they probably even had the appropriate political viewpoint to facilitate going along with these things. 

And it did seem to me like the mission was getting a lot of theologians from one particular seminary, so I wasn't sure if it was a conscious effort on the part of the mission or whether it was just that there were a lot of interested people at that seminary or a combination, so I don't know who was more responsible for the selection, the individual or the mission, or maybe it depended on each case.

As far as adult socialization is concerned, I've discussed this in quite some depth already. 

So the things is, though, that if the person doesn't come already with the internalized goals from childhood socialization, than this would have to come via adult socialization if it is going to come at all.  This author has said that it isn't necessary for everyone to have internalized values and goals, except some voluntary organizations want at least some of their rank and file members to share these traits, and I've already demonstrated that the Vienna mission was a total institution and as such demanded that all it's members shared these traits, so it pretty well had to use adult socialization to make sure all its members shared the appropriate values and objectives.  Unfortunately, however, I tried mostly to take it (the organization) at face value and only got mud in the face, and the thing was to get to the core values and objectives - what they really would have wanted from me - they would not put in black and white, write them down in clear English, etc.  So you had to sort of guess them like a game of charades or something.  One thing I do know, though, is that when I left Vienna I was "standing up on the inside" which is not what they wanted.

So now to the part in this quote about the type of organization, if it has emotional significance, an attractive image, is hazardous work, is adventurous, is in service to humanity, etc.  The Vienna mission really was all of these, when you think about it.  It was a Christian mission.  Churches and Christians back home often look in awe at missions and missionaries, maybe more so than they should sometimes, so it's attractive to many people.  Because the mission was working in clandestinely Communist countries it was hazardous work. Because the work was cutting edge and involved setting up new groups and courses and trying to meet the needs of a wide variety of groups in different countries it was adventurous.  Because we were helping church leaders in difficult situations so that they could do the work in their own countries when they otherwise wouldn't have the resources for this kind of training and we were doing it free of charge to them, it was a kind of service to humanity.  So there were a lot of potential kudos going on there that could very easily draw anyone in to share the missions goals and values.

But in my mind, all of that is still not enough to justify deception, the kind of treatment I got, including the misuse of psychology, their friendship with goverment/military & their demand for unquestioning submission.  I don't give anyone that kind of submission.  EVER! (unless your name is God.)  That means, if you say, "Jump!" I might not necessarily answer, "How high?"  Rather, I might respond, "Why?"

***

I'm skipping a couple paragraphs about internalization that aren't very helpful for my purposes...

"This suggests three additional factors which contribute to internalization of group objectives: (1) participating in important decisions about group objectives; (2) contributing to group performance in a significant way: and (3) sharing in the rewards of group accomplishment.  When these three conditions are met, the individual can regard the group as his, for he in fact has helped to make it." (p. 144)

Here is another good example of why I did not internalize the group objectives in Vienna.   In the context I think Katz is talking about subgroups, but that's even worse because I moved around so much with the mission that I never got a chance to internalized group objectives or become very attached to any group.  I never ever participated in an y important decisions about group objectives.  I contributed to group performance, but not so as to really leave a mark.  It's not as if I was going to  be missed from my position or anything, or like I was indispensable or hard to replace.  No, because I moved around to much and wasn't given a chance to do anything but grunt menial tasks.  As to the third item here, I'm not aware of any "awards of group accomplishment" as pertaining to anything I was involved in in Vienna.

Since none of these were met while I was in Vienna, is it no surprise that I didn't feel like any group was mine? (including the secretaries?)  So much for identification.

***

Can you believe it?  We've finally reached the end of this article!  So next time I'll start with another article.

294.Organizational Behavior, Pt. 20 (Kratz, pt. 5)

I just returned from church.  Next week I'll probably have to bring my foot pillow for the foot neuropathy.  It was nice to be there though.

***

We're still in the section of Katz's article titled "Motivational Patterns: Consequances and Conditions," but we're starting off in the sub-section "Instrumental system rewards."

"It is important to distinguish between rewards which are administered in relation to individual effort and performance and the system rewards which accrue to people by virtue of their membership in the system." (p. 137)

This section winds through a somewhat involved argument regarding the affects of various individual and aggregate reward systems on productivity, motivation, turnover and recruitment.  I won't discuss all of it here, but some it is does raise some interesting thoughts about the mission as it was when I was working with it.

For example, if potential theologian-missionaries back home got wind of the effective work being done and the professionalism of how it was being carried out, these things might interest them in working with the mission, or at least taking a teaching trip with the mission to try it out.  The effectiveness and professionalism would be among the "rewards" that would interest them and the professional theologian-missionaries on staff.

However, as Katz also mentions, providing rewards, say a staff fitness center, wouldn't necessarily translate into increased work productivity, although it might result in easier recruitment and also allow them to set higher work standards because the workers would be willing to work harder because of the better work amenities.

In Vienna the system rewards might be things like the monthly women's meetings, the semi-annual retreat, the monthly all-staff meeting, the monthly newsletter, the monthly birthday party, etc.

The individual rewards varied widely depending on the individual and the individual's position.   I'll try to take a stab at what my rewards might have been, although this was a moving target (i.e., fluctuated during my tenure with the mission).  When I first arrived in Vienna, my individual rewards probably included having an office to myself next to my boss, having an apartment to myself, and being allowed to attend the Austrian church. Just before I left Vienna the only thing I had left was the apartment as I was working in the reception area and attending and English speaking church, which I'd started attending because I'd gotten tired of swimming upstream against the mission.

So it is clear that the system wasn't rewarding me (understatement), which is a clue that maybe they didn't really want to retain me, because rewards  are given to retain people, right?   And according to this author, rewards are also given to increase productivity, so the mission was not concerned about productivity either when it came to dealing with me.  In fact, from the very beginning, it seems that productivity was not important to them (remember the computer manuals?)

And that's not even looking at whether they were punishing me or not. 

***

The next sub-heading is "Conditions conducive to effective system rewards"

"We have just described one of the essential conditions for making system rewards effective in calling attention to the need to make the system as attractive as competing systems which are realistic alternatives for the individual." (p. 139)

What Katz is saying here is that the systemic and individual rewards should make the individual think that this organization is better than some other competing organization.  Now think about my experience with the Vienna mission.  How likely do you think it is that I might have thought about leaving for another better mission?

Well, you're probably thinking that there is a very great chance, and on one hand you're very right, but on the other hand you're very wrong.  The thing is, and you might not have read all 293 posts leading up to this one to know this, but I was aware of a great number of the other missions working in the East Bloc countries and there were some 20 or so working with the group I was was with in Vienna and I'd written a letter to some 30+ before deciding on my sending mission and I'd gotten some very disturbing answers (rather paranoid, etc.), so I was thinking at this point that the whole lot of missions to this part of the world was a rotten lot and not to be trusted  - that they were all in bed together, more or less.  There were a very few that I thought weren't bad, but they weren't working in the areas I was interested in.  Child Evangelism Fellowship is one group I highly respect and at no time had any questions about, I even went on a vacation trip with one of their workers from Vienna to Istanbul and I had a good friend that worked in east Asia too.

But on the other hand, I did start looking for other options outside of the mission, like other fields of work even because I began to see that there was no way either me or the mission was going to compromise and come the end of my 2 year term we were going our separate ways.  I wasn't going to broach them on the issues and they weren't going to come to me either, so it was a mutual standoff, and maybe a mutual distrust, if they distrusted me, which I'm not sure about.

***

"The critical point, then, is that system rewards have a logic of their own.  Since they accrue to people by virtue of their membership or length of service in an organization, they will be perceived as inequitable if they are not uniformly administered." (p. 139)

The system rewards, as far as I can remember right now were generally equitably available, but the last few months of my stay in Vienna, my social exclusion might be seen as possibly system reward being inequitably withheld.  Also, information could be divulged or withheld in a similar manner.

***

We're skipping the sub-heading "Conditions conducive to effective individual instrumental rewards" (mostly applies to factories) and jumping to the sub-heading is "Intrinsic job satisfaction."

"The motivational pathway to high productivity and to high-quality production can be reached through the development of intrinsic job satisfaction. The man who finds the type of work he delights n doing is the man who will not worry about the fact that the role requires a given amount of production of a certain quality. His gratifications accrue from accomplishment, from the expression of his own abilities, from the exercise of his own decisions." (p. 141)

I think this could have been me in Vienna if I'd been given work that was truly meaningful and if I'd been trusted to take some initiative in my professional training.  But I wasn't.  Even the time I went on the women's ministry trip they didn't seem to really trust me and I felt like they were just testing me out and I didn't have much freedom of expression.

***

The next sub-heading is "Conditions conducive to arousal of intrinsic job satisfaction."

"If intrinsic job satisfaction or identification with the work is to be aroused and maximized, then the job itself must provide sufficient variety, sufficient complexity, sufficient challenge, and sufficient skill to engage the abilities of the worker.  If there is one confirmed finding in all the studies of worker morale and satisfaction, it is the correlation between variety and challenge of the job and the gratification which accrue to workers (Morse, 1953)." (p. 141-142)

In Vienna I never really had any variety.  In Dallas, working in the office I was kept busy, but it wasn't a lot of variety.  As a secretary in Vienna there was a bit of variety but I wasn't ever very busy and didn't have a lot of responsibility because I wasn't in the position long enough to own it, and in the reception position in Vienna I did take some initiative, but it wasn't a lot of variety there either.  Considering what I was capable of, these positions were all pretty boring for the most part, although I tried to make the most of them and focus on learning them and trying to make the position better, if I had the opportunity.

***

The next sub-section is titled "Internaliation of organizational goals and values."

"The pattern of motivation association with value expression and self-identification has great potentialities for the internalization of the goals of subsystems and of the total system, and thus for the activation of behavior not prescribed by specific roles...  The internalization of organizational objectives is generally confined to the upper echelons or to the officer personnel.  In voluntary organizations it extends into some of the rank-and-file, and in fact most voluntary organizations need a core of dedicated people - who are generally referred to as the dedicated damn fools." (p. 143).

If there were 40 people working in the Vienna mission, then there were 39 "damn fools" because I was the only one who didn't subscribe lock, stock and barrel to their "organizational goals and values." That is, I subscribed to their publicly available goals and values, but not to their internal values, in as much as they appear to differ from the public values.  Right now it feels good to now have gone along with the crowd, because I don't particularly like the moniker "damn fools."

***

Next the author describes two types of partial internalization, which is says is more common than the full internalization described above.  Incidentally, the Vienna mission generally wanted full identification, but in the area of theology, it had to allow some license in minor areas.  Theologically the mission had to take into account the 20 some missions working together and also the believers in the various countries and their theologies.

"The first [type of partial internalization] has to do with some general organizational purposes which are not unique to the organization.  A scientist may have internalized some of the research values of his profession but not necessarily of the specific institution to which he is attached...


A second type of partial internalization concerns the values and goals of a sub-system of the organization.  It is often easier for the person to take over the values of his own unit." (p. 143)


These both could have happened in Vienna, but I can't speak to them because I wasn't privvy to that information and it would have to have been someone closer to those departments to say for sure whether or not these happened or not.  If either of these did happen, the first type would most likely have involved the instructors, probably the country groups, although possibly the textbook writers too.  Any of the departments could have been "guilty" of the second type because the departments did become like second families and had their own insular life more or less apart from the rest or in addition to the whole group relations.  I think there was an effort on the part of the leadership, though, to not let any group become too detached and independent.  Still it's possible that this second type of internalization could have been a risk at the very least.

***

I'm still not done with this article, but I need to do some other things, so I'll pick up where I left off when I come back.

293. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 19 (Katz, pt. 4)

Jumping right into the discussion of the text, as it applies to my experiences in Vienna, we're still in the section "Motivational Patterns: Consequences and Conditions", but now we're moving on to the sub-section "Conditions conducive to the activation of rule acceptance."

***

"Though compliance with rules can bring about reliable role performance, the use of rules must take account of the following three conditions for maximum effectiveness: (1) the appropriateness of the symbols of authority and the relevance of rules to the social system involved; (2) the clarity of the legal norms and rule structure; and (3) the reinforcing character of sanctions." (p. 136)

The Vienna mission didn't have any tolerance for poor performance of role expectations or poor reliability in any particular individual, so it would have been interested in anything that might have served to increase reliability in individual reliability, so these three things are potentially very interesting and helpful to my purposes of understanding of my experiences in Vienna.

***

"Appropriateness and relevance. The acceptance of communications and directives on the basis of legitimacy requires the use of symbols and procedures recognized as the proper and appropriate sources of authority in the system under consider.  The worker may grumble at the foreman's order may grumble at the foreman's order but he recognizes the right of the foreman to give such an order.  The particular directives which are accepted which are accepted as legitimate will depend upon their matching the type of authority structure of the system." (p. 136

 The thing here is that, as I have mentioned before, I was unique in the mission in that I was raised in a mid-Acts Pauline denominational church (vs. Acts 2 denominational church).  The name of my home church was "Berean" and I had Acts 17:11 drummed into me, as follows:

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

What this says, is that anything we are told is not to be taken at face value no matter who it is that is doing the telling.  Scripture is ALWAYS the final yardstick of truth.  (This being said, I don't want to make them out to be perfect in this because my brother found out that there are definite limits to this when he used Scripture to question an aspect of predestination, but for my purposes I learned to think for myself and not accept human authority above Scripture's.)  Since the mission was very clearly in the realm of Christian work and I thought everything about it should be held accountable to Scripture just as a church or Christian individual should be, I thought I was justified in holding Scripture as a higher authority above the mission leadership, and the mission leadership failed so badly vis a vis Scriptural mandate that I forced to make a sort of patchwork authority system, for myself, where the mission leadership filled only the parts I thought they filled appropriately according to biblical standards.

 I think I did have another standard, though, that consisted of what I knew of European studies/cultural studies and missiology.  I've discussed this elsewhere more in depth, but I think I need to at least mention it here for completeness of the current discussion.  This mission operated by other standards and they weren't accountable to anyone.  What I mean by that is, just try doing an objective program evaluation of them.  Then you'll know what I mean.

So getting back to the appropriateness and relevance of the rules of the mission.   The rules I saw as appropriate and relevant I did accept.  But that, of course, was not enough, because this wasn't a pick and choose sort of situation.  By picking and choosing I was setting myself above the organization as being able to evaluate their rules, which was not allowed.  So this had to be discouraged, but I was a Berean, and my mandate was to search the Scriptures daily to see if these things were as they should be... in other words not accept the mission and their rules carte blanche, but set myself, or at least set Scripture up as above them.

What kinds of things might not have been appropriate or relevant?  I've discussed some of these already, but I'll mention a few here.  The forced trust in them with relatively little knowledge (i.e., no questions asked), forced relative seclusion from local Austrian life (even when my position didn't seem to need it), apparent waste of supporters' money by not giving me useful work to do, etc.

***

"The acceptance of legal rules is also restricted to the relevant sphere of activity." (p. 136)

This applies to my experience in Vienna because I thought while I might have some evening and weekend mission-related activities and responsibilities, I would also have some free time that would be my free time to use as I wish (within reason of course, that is, as long as I wasn't doing anything unChristian, for example).  But eventually it became clear that that was not the case, because, as I later learned in my research, the mission was a "total institution, and as a total institution "free time" is an  illusion that is provided only if you are an insider knowing when how and what kinds of activities are permitted as "free time" and with whom.  For those who are short-termers, however, they aren't aware of this system and they get free-time in the usual sense of the term, and others have to humor them to make sure they aren't aware of the other system and that they return home happy and unaware of the other system.

I didn't think they had the right to completely cut off my free time, especially since I didn't think I was otherwise doing anything egregious or offensive to them in my free time.  Then I began to dislike them for being such "ugly Americans" and stuck in their own enclave.  So that didn't help my transition to work with them.  Here's my vision of what my time was supposed to be like with the mission:

secretary by day, Vienna outreach evenings/weekends

and their view of me:


secretary by day, hobnob with boss's wife and children & other secretaries evenings/weekends


So basically they wanted to throttle me in the secretary role which wasn't at all to my liking to say the least and the ethnocentrism it entailed also went against my values.  So their rules (formal or otherwise) to limit my freetime activities overstepped the line with me big-time.

***

"Another prerequisite to the use of rules as the appropriate norms of the system is their impersonal character.  They are the rules of the system and are not the arbitrary, capricious decisions of a superior aimed particular individuals." (p. 136)


Bingo.  I've already shown how even though there were written rules at least 2 (days off when supporting guests visit and language classes upon first arrival) were not permitted me, and in the latter case I was told there was a lot of work to do, but in fact I spent the first 2 months doing practically nothing (I've discussed that in detail elsewhere in this blog).


Other than this, the socialization process, as I've also discussed at some depth, is mostly quite individual and as such the rules end out being - or at least seeming - somewhat arbitrary and capricious, at least, I imagine, until one becomes initiated to a certain level that I never reached.  I'm not positive about this though, it's possible it always seems somewhat capricious and arbitrary, at least at the levels above which one hasn't reached yet, and/or in the areas one isn't privvy (such as in other departments).

This arbitrariness and capriciousness, as I've described before, if not exactly in those terms, is probably mainly because of the security issue and intentional in nature.  That is, the leadership wants things to seem arbitrary and capricious so as to keep secrets secret from those who shouldn't know them.  This includes insiders.  So, for example, the East German team (remember this was in the 1980s) shouldn't know certain things about the Romanian team and vice versa, and the textbook team doesn't need to know certain things about the Women's ministry team, etc.  And I, who was on the outs with just about everyone, didn't need to know much of anything, so most everything seemed capricious and arbitrary and as such the rules of the system seemed aimed at me and they didn't pass this prerequisite as being "appropriate norms of the system." In fact, they weren't really norms of the system at all, they were just capricious and arbitrary rules aimed at me, although there may have been systemic rules that allowed for these rules aimed at me, but the rules themselves that were aimed at me were not systemic.

***

"Clarity.  A related condition for the acceptance of legal norms is the clarity of authority symbols, of proper procedures, and the context of the legitimized decisions. Lack of clarity can be due to the vagueness of the stimulus situation or to the conflict between opposed stimulus cues." (p. 136)

There were several kinds of "legal norms" going on in the Vienna mission.  There were1)  those that were written down, like the ones about the right to study German when you first arrive in Vienna to work with the mission.  Then there were 2) those technical aspects of the job to be done, which may or may not be written down but were generally pretty clearly specified in one way or another.  Then there were 3) the organizational and social cultural norms and these were mission critical, partly because of it being a total institution and partly because of working together in East Bloc countries and the need to rely on one another sometimes in difficult situations requiring immediate response. 

The first rules were clear except for their being only selectively applied.  The second rules I think were pretty clear and were probably the best, although I can't speak across the board for all positions.

The third rules were the least clear, though, I think.  It's possible, however, that they were the least clear to me because I didn't agree with them.  I've discussed this before too, but I'll just say briefly that I don't let anyone be my end all for final decision making as far as what's right and what's wrong and I felt like that's what the mission required of me.  For one thing, after how they treated me I couldn't trust them, but also, I just didn't like their values and their modus operandi on many fronts.  I didn't think I'd done them any harm and I didn't see how they could justify treating me so badly, for example.  But as to clarity, I all to often didn't really understand what would really make them happy, what they really wanted from me.  I could surmise that "total submission" was what they wanted, but if I gave them that, then what?  And if I did that, that would be going against my beliefs anyway to give such total submission to anyone other than God.  So was it just the submission they wanted?  Or was it something that they thought they would get after I submitted?  It really wasn't clear at all to me. And being upfront and asking directly would be stupid because they'd just give you a stupid look like they didn't have a clue what you were talking about... well, it depended you you asked.  It's possible one of the secretaries my be somewhat helpful, but not the military chaplain H.R. staff or my boss.

***

"Reinforcement.  To maintain the internalized acceptance of legitimate authority there has to be some reinforcement in the form of penalties for violations of the rules... Sometimes the penalties can come from the social disapproval of the group as well as from legal penalties." (p. 137)



In a regular job you might get a demotion, a write up, or even get fired.  For very egregious behavior - say getting drunk or the like - you might get sent home from the mission field, but otherwise missions have to use other means of control.  It's possible the supervisor might call you in to talk with you about a problem that's come up and try to work with you to resolve it.  But usually they'll want to work with you to keep you on the field, so they'll do all they can to make things work out.  After all, it's no small thing to get a missionary to the field.


In Vienna they most certainly did use "social disapproval" in the form of shunning, especially the last months I was with the mission.  But they also used psychology and moving me to the States and moving me internally within the building in Vienna and within positions in Vienna.  I view all of these as means they used to reinforce their rules (written or otherwise).  So, basically, my whole time in Vienna was spent with them trying to reinforce their rules with me... socialize me.

***

This is the end of that sub-category and I need to get on with my day, so we'll continue next time with this article where we left off.

292.Organizational Behavior, Pt. 18 (Katz,pt.3)

I had another eventful day today.  This morning and early afternoon was pretty normal and I got a bunch of things done at home and ran a few errands. But then on my way to physical therapy, walking through the halls of the hospital from the car all of a sudden I got really light headed and had to lean forward and lean into the wall.  I was almost to physical therapy so they sat me down and took my heart rate and blood pressure and both were high.  They had me rest for a bit and then tried me on a machine that's sort of a seated elliptical, but even that raised my pulse too high so that's all I did at physical therapy.

Then on my way home some guy insisted I hit him.  Actually he drove up to me I guess about 2 or 3 blocks after the alleged incident and started yelling at me asking if I wasn't going to pull over because I hit him and I said I didn't know what he was talking about (I really didn't) because I didn't hit him.  So then he followed me all the way home and he even lives in my complex, so he followed me in through the gate.  I got out of the car and he said he reported the incident to the police and he asked if I wanted to see it and he said it probably wasn't much that I just bumped him.  But I said no I really had no recollection of hitting anyone and I wasn't going to act as if I did.

I told him about the incident a week or so ago when I did hit someone when I was parking and I left a note on their windshield, when a lot of people wouldn't have done so, but in this case I really didn't think I hit the car.  He could have reported it as a hit and run, though, which is pretty serious.  So as I sat at home thinking about everything I decided I should probably call my insurance company, so I did that.  I didn't have any information about the driver, the car or anything - I wasn't even sure about the details about the alleged incident except I think it is supposed to have happened in the vicinity of the I-95 northbound exit 16 (Ives Dairy Rd.) and/or the overpass heading West.

IF I did in fact hit this other car then I'm afraid that the affects of fibrofog and this headache are affecting me in a way to sometimes make me not attentive enough, which is very probable.  I've been thinking I should probably start taking STS (Special Transportation Services - a country transportation service for handicapped people, like a group taxi for $3 a ride).  It only goes in the county, and some of my doctors are in the neighboring county, and if I need/want to make multiple stops it's not very practical.  But if I'm going to start having accidents and things like that I should start using STS more.  I think that this would be the only explanation if I did hit this other car, because when that other driver started yelling at me I really didn't know what on earth he was talking about.  I had absolutely no recollection of hitting anyone.  I'm only going to bring up this possible explanation if it becomes evident through the various investigations (insurance, police, etc.) that I did in fact hit the other driver.

Anyway, back to the lightheadedness/heart issue, I have a history of supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), rapid heart beat.  I had a cardiac ablation in 2007 and had no problems until possibly today.  If today's incident is another SVT, possibly an early sign of one, than it's a new SVT, because the ablation cured the old one.  That is, it's when there's an extra nerve pathway in the heart that makes the heart get stuck like a broken record.   So now I wonder if my cardiologist is in network... (i.e., takes my insurance).

But let's forget about my problems and get back to Katz...

***

This section is titled: "Motivational Patterns: Consequences and Conditions" and the first sub-heading is "Compliance with legitimized rules."

"In discussing bureaucratic functioning Max Weber pointed out that the acceptance of legal rules was the basis for much of organizational behavior (Weber, 1947).  Compliance is to some extent a function of sanctions but to a greater extent a function of generalized habits and attitudes toward symbols of authority... A great deal of behavior can be predicted once we know what the rules of the game are." (p. 135)

There is really a lot here as several individual words and phrases need commending on and parsing.  So I'll take them one by one.

Bureaucratic functioning.  The Vienna mission did have a fair amount of this, some of which I think was serendipitous, as in, "oh, how convenient that we can hide behind all this bureaucracy" or "oh, well, we have to document everything very carefully and make sure that only those who need to know know but that they do know or have access to know."  And the hierarchical aspect of bureaucracy has already been discussed.  But in the Vienna situation, there is an assumption that the mission leadership, the top/heart of the bureaucracy are paragons of Christian spirituality and as such will develop "legal" rules according to Biblical norms and values.  So everyone (workers, supporters, board members, in-country believers, etc., etc.) pretty much assumes this.  No one questions this or holds them accountable for reasons discussed elsewhere in this blog.  So we have to sort of take Kierkegaard's leap of faith that their rules are "legal" - although I think that I'd rather stand with Kierkegaard on this one and take a leap of faith in God than in the legality of the rules of the Vienna mission (vis a vis biblical teaching).

Legal rules.  The rules of the Vienna mission were legal based on pragmatic principles, as I've stated before.  As I think through the various rules I think this is the main principle, pragmatism - what works.  So as long as it was pragmatic, it was "legal" to them.

I'm not sure to what extent in the Vienna mission compliance was a function of sanctions, but for me this seemed to be largely the case.  That is, I wasn't evidently complying by other ways so I became the subject of sanctions.  Of course, that's assuming they wanted me to comply.  And, as I'm mentioned before, sometimes I didn't really know what they wanted me to do or how I should comply.

Generalized habits and attitudes toward symbols of authority.  This is sort of the kind of thing I've meant when I've talked about complete submission to the mission, but I don't think that Katz necessarily means that here.  The difference is that the Vienna mission was a total institution, where as corporations, for example, usually aren't.   This is where you internalize the culture (habits and attitudes), but also take part in some of the traditions.

A great deal of behavior can be predicted... The problem in Vienna was that I remained enough of an outsider the whole time I was in Vienna that I never became very good at predicting behavior there.   But, as I've said elsewhere, I think a lot of this was purposeful, because they had layers of secrecy that you could only gain access to by being trustworthy and barring that you would remain on the fringes.

...once we know what the rules of the game are.  If you don't know what the rules of the game are you can't predict behavior.  I came to Vienna thinking I understood the rules of the game - that is the rules of ministry to East Bloc countries.  But I didn't understand the rules of corrupt, paranoid, politicized ministry to East Bloc countries.  So that's where I messed up.  Big time.

***

"It is not necessary to take representative samplings of the behavior of many people to know how people will conduct themselves in structured situations.  All we need is a single informant who can tell us the legitimate norms and appropriate symbols of authority for given types of behavioral settings." (p. 135)

So this is exactly what the Vienna mission tried to do in setting me up with the secretaries, especially the secretary of my boss's boss to be sort of my mentor.  As I've said before, however, that was okay, except that I didn't really see myself as a secretary other than that was my job for 2 years, but not my persona and how I viewed myself.  That one secretary was good for giving tips and instructions, but I didn't really relate to any of the secretaries such that I really clicked with any of them.  

Then some of the norms that they shared with me were really insulting and degrading, although I did try to do my best to go along with them.  I've mentioned them before, it's the old single missionary help with the married missionaries' children bit.  Or the wife of the boss is jealous because you spend all day with her husband so you should pay some attention to the wife too to make her feel better about the situation.  (Sheesh, send them to marriage counseling if she's so vulnerable!)

  ***

"In the third area of behavior necessary for effective organizational functioning, namely innovative and spontaneous acts, which go beyond the call of duty, rule compliance is useless by definition... organizations cannot stimulate actions by decreeing them.  In general the greater the emphasis upon compliance with rules the less the motivation will be for individuals to do more than is specified by their role prescriptions." (p. 135)

In the Vienna organization there were at least two areas where this kind of innovation was particularly needed, and that was in the teaching & textbook writing end of things and in the in country aspect of the work.  The former is sort of the typical academic type of license you'd expect in a higher education institution and academic publishing institution, and the latter is what you'd expect in a spy agency, for example, for all the secrecy and elaborate precautions that were taken.  Innovation was necessary because one had to be on one's feet and able to make snap decisions as needed.

***

I'm tired and it's late, so I'm going to take another break.  Sorry this is going so slowly.

291. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 17 (Katz, pt. 2)

I saw one of my neurologists this afternoon and he's ordering an MRI of my lumbar and also upping my migraine (?) medicine again (!).  Then when I got home and did some cleaning (I'm trying to do a thorough post-remodeling cleaning, but it's going slowly because I don't feel well) I plugged the steam vacuum into an outlet and discovered the outlet doesn't work, so that's another thing for the plumber/electrician to return and fix.  I forgot to tell him that I found his tape measure in addition to the level I'd already notified him about.

But back to the text.  I'm skipping some parts that don't seem to useful and picking up at a section titled "Types of Motivational Patterns."

***

"It is profitable to consider the possible motivational patterns in organizations under six major headings... These patterns are: (1) conformity to legal norms or rule compliance; (2) instrumental system rewards; (3) instrumental individual rewards; (4) intrinsic satisfaction from role performance; (5) internalization of organizational goals and values; and (6) involvement in primary-group relationships." (p. 135)

The author discusses each of these separately and I'm going to have to follow Katz to get his intended meanings.

***

"Rule compliance or conformity to system norms.  Conformity constitutes a significant motivational basis for certain types of organizational behavior... Once people enter a system they accept the fact that membership in the system means complying with its legitimate rules.  In our culture we build up during the course of the socialization process a generalized expectation of conforming to the recognized rules of the game if we want to remain in the game... We develop a role readiness, i.e., a readiness to play almost any given role according to the established norms in those systems in which we become involved." (p. 134)

Now this is definitely relevant to my Vienna experience, so the thing is just to flush it out.  I already discussed socialization at some length here so we already know about that vis a vis my experience with the Vienna mission.  When I went to Vienna I certainly had every intention of conforming and did not foresee the type of total institution and anti-Christian (in my opinion) aspects of what was going on (deception/lying, misuse of psychology, military connections, etc.).  

So then you have to deal with that pesky work "legitimate" in the text.  as in "complying with its legitimate rules".  The rules (explicit or otherwise) that I was as illegitimate I could not comply with, and the ruler that I used to judge whether they were legitimate or not was Scripture and I thought that that was a fair ruler because this was an Evangelical Christian organization involved in Christian ministry.  In this way then I could not comply or conform to the aspects of their rules that I saw as illegitimate, but I did comply to the "rules" I thought were reasonable and legitimate.  This wasn't acceptable to them, however, because they were a total institution and rules were to be accepted all or nothing, as I've already discussed elsewhere.

***

"Instrumental system rewards. These are the benefits which accrue to individuals by virtue of their membership in the system.  They are the across-the-the-board rewards which apply to all people in a given classification in an organization.  Examples would be the fringe benefits, the recreational facilities, and the working conditions which are available to all members of the system or subsystem.  These rewards are instrumental in that they provide incentive for entering and remaining in the system and thus are instrumental for the need satisfaction of people." (p. 134)

 Operant conditioning? In my case they also used punishment - the removal of rewards, such as when I wasn't allowed days off when supporter-friends came from the States to visit me, when the rules said we were supposed to get days off in such cases.  So that was a case of punishment.  Otherwise, if you were on good behavior you were eligible to receive all kinds of instruments system rewards and all kinds of warm fuzzy group belongingness. 

***

"Intrinsic satisfaction accruing from specific role performance. Here the gratification comes not because the activity leads to or is instrumental to other satisfactions such as earning more money but because the activity is gratifying in itself. " (p. 134)

You'd think that missionaries would generally have a lot of this, and this would have been true for a lot of the people I worked with in Vienna.  But it wasn't true for me because I never felt like I did anything that used my gifts or knowledge and half the time I felt like I was just being shuffled around or not really having much of anything to do even, so this wasn't really true for me in Vienna.

So I came to Vienna convinced that the work the mission did was crucial for the growth of Christianity in Eastern Europe, although I wasn't that excited about the position I was going to, but I was told it would be okay if I had outside ministry with the Austrians so I could have people ministry because I didn't want to just do secretarial work.  But when I got to Vienna the mission made it very difficult for me to have an outside ministry and they made my life hell altogether and eventually I lost faith in them although I tried to keep doing my work to the end.  So at that point neither my part of the work nor the work as a whole gave my satisfaction, because I didn't like my work and I'd lost faith in the organization.

***

"Internalized values of the individual which embrace the goals of the organization. Here the individual again finds his organizational behavior rewarding in itself, not so much because his job gives him a chance to express his skill, but because he has taken over the goals of the organization as his own." (p. 134)

Before I even arrived in Vienna I had embraced what I thought were the goals of the mission, but, as I've discussed elsewhere, I never internalized the values of the mission as I experienced them while with the mission.  That's why I remained somewhat of an outsider until the day I left, and I may be the only 2-year termer that ever left under such conditions, not having succumbed to the mission's socialization processes.  

When you think about all I went through with the mission it's pretty amazing that I didn't succumb, but I've always been the type that reserves the right to make my own decisions and I'm not afraid to be different from others.

***

"Social satisfactions derived from primary-group relationships. This is an important source of gratification for organizational members." (p. 134)

I've also discussed my identification group (the other secretaries) at length, so I won't belabor it here.  I'll just say that if I'd had a primary-group that I really could identify with I may have had more social satisfaction and that may have somehow changed things, although I can't say how because of so many other unknowns.  I do know, however, that the primary group the mission set up for me wasn't one I felt a particular affinity for so it didn't do a whole lot for my "social satisfaction." Sure I did some things with them (mostly on an individual basis), but not really any more than with others.

***

Reviewing my comments above it looks like there might be a motivational problem regarding my organizational behavior while with the Vienna mission.  In light of this, it's rather amazing that I complied at all!  So why did I comply?  What was my motivation if none of these usual bases seem to adequately explain any compliance I may have exhibited?

One possible explanation might be found in Kohlberg's stages of moral development.  I think that stage 5, the social contract, might possibly fit here.  I had committed to 2 years working with the mission and I was going to adhere to my commitment.  So staying, which might be a kind of compliance, and not just up and leaving could be explained by Kohlberg's theory.

The other thing is that although I had major issues with the mission, there definitely were things that I could comply with with no problem.  But the thing was that, as I've mentioned before, since the mission was a total institution, the norms weren't a smorgasbord where you could pick and choose what you want; rather, you had to accept everything, the whole kit and caboodle, preferably with no questions asked.  So I might as well have just rejected everything, because the mission wasn't going to play around with partially compliant members, and it's not like anything was really negotiable, especially for someone like me who was on the outs.  It was really hard for me to believe the mission was as bad as it seemed it was.  

***

I'm going to stop here and we'll continue with this article next time.

290. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 16 (Organ, D.W., pt. 2; Katz)

I had trouble getting on here, but it looks like it has to do with a driver, as I was able to get on via a different browser, so I'll have to work on it later.

But back to the text...

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"Since Krebs's review, the evidence has continued to mount in support of the parsimonious explanation of mood (i.e., affect or emotional state) as a major determinant of altruism and other forms of prosocial behavior." (p. 30-31)

Having done some research on civil society and social movements, this statement (and the surrounding text) does seem to mesh with with other things I've read in those areas.  But it doesn't fit my upbringing that well, in that my family didn't think that way.  I think my parents might not necessarily have had the worst affective situation, but their upbringings weren't that great, yet they both were very altruistic and gave of time and money rather freely to help others.  So this idea of having affect determine your altruism was pretty foreign to me, I think and in Vienna I wouldn't have thought this way.  Later on, in Russia I eventually started to become burned out and sort of tired of swimming upstream.

I'm skipping over a discussion about mood because I don't think it applies much to my time in Vienna.  I think at that time I was generally a pretty upbeat person, although I'd been through a stressful time the few years before in my living situation and financially while in Bible school.  But I was certainly much, much more upbeat and positive in my outlook than I am now after all I've been through at this point in my life. 

***

The rest of the article discusses instruments developed and tested to measure organizational citizenship behavior.  The discussion is not pertinent enough to the issues I need to discuss, although motivation and job satisfaction are things we'll come back to eventually, and you can imagine that that will be interesting.

Although it's late and I could end here, this would really be a short post, so I'll begin commenting on another article:

Katz, Daniel (1964). The motivational basis of organizational behavior. Behavioral Science, 9, 130.

***

"At the practical level.... we need to cope with such organizational realities as the attracting of people into the organization, holding them within the system, insuring reliable, role performance, and in addition stimulate actions which are generally facilitative of organizational  accomplishment...

The complexities of motivational problems in organizations can be understood if we develop an analytic framework which will be comprehensive enough to identify the major sources of variance and detailed enough to contain sufficient specification for predictive purposes.  The framework we propose calls for three steps in an analysis process, namely, the formulation of answers to these types of questions: (1) What are the types of behavior required for effective organizational functioning?... (2) what are the motivational patterns which are used and which can be used in organizational settings?... (3) What are the conditions in an organizational setting?..." (p. 131)

As you can see by the "..." in this quote I'm leaving sections out, mainly for brevity.  One of these ommitted sections notes that generally organizational members are required to play several behaviors in the organization, which might entail entirely different motivations and settings.  An example of this in the Vienna mission setting might be my duties as a secretary and the informal expectations that I would befriend my boss' wife and children.  These would be exactly the kinds of things that might need to be addressed separately, so we'll see if this author has anything that might she some light on that aspect of my experience in Vienna.

And since it is after 1 a.m. I am going to call it a night, so you'll just have to wait until my next post to see if we can find anything helpful out from this text.  And hopefully I'll be able to return to my usual browser too.

289. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 15 (Organ, D.W., 1985)

I'm done with the bulk of fixing up my condo, I've started work on the family heritage cookbook, I'm feeling crummy from my variety of ailments (fibromyalgia, neuropathy in my feet which recently returned, weakness as side effect of antibiotic, and a 6-month migraine).  I need something to get my mind off my being broke from the condo expendetures, family stuff, and my health, so I'm turning to other problems... at least not current ones.  My pastor made me feel a bit better by telling me not long ago that I seem to have more problems than most people.  I know I have a lot of blessing, though too, and a lot to be thankful for, like this condo and an education that equips me to write this blog.

Since it's been a while since I've written or thought seriously about the meat of this blog I may have to work up to being in full form so I hope you'll bear with me as I get started again.  This first chapter is of interest particularly for what comes later on in the chapter, but the first part lays the groundwork.

***

Organ, D.W. (1985).  3. Accounting for OCB. In Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Good Soldier Syndrome. Lexington, MA : Lexington Books, p. 27ff.

***

"By 1970, there was already a body of empirical literature sufficient to warrant a rather lengthy review by Dennis L. Krebs in Psychological Bulletin... Krebs concluded that the studies that had examined prosocial behavior as a personality trait 'were plagued with difficulties. Because altruism is a positive trait, it is difficult to separate it from other positive characteristics.' (Krebs, 1970, p. 298)... The most that could be concluded was that there is a somewhat greater tendency toward prosocial behavior among those who are socially well adjusted, generally lacking in neurotic symptoms, extroverted, and who have a stronger need for nurturance than for achievement or dominance." (p. 28)

The issue here is organizations wanting members (employees) who will take initiative to do the right/good thing vis a vis the group and other individuals in it.  They want to know why and when people act this way so that they can encourage more of it.  In the Vienna mission I worked for this was a mandate and anything less than the very most prosocial behavior virtually all the time was, in my experience and observation, asking for some kind of correction, depending on the situation.  So the management of the Vienna mission might have been very interested in reading and studying up on this kind of thing discussed in this book.

***

"The strongest evidence that prosocial behavior arises from an internalized norm is the consistent finding that among children the probability of prosocial responses increases with age. Furthermore, some studies show a relationship between level of education and prosocial behavior and a stronger orientation toward certain forms of prosocial behavior among professional and managerial classes as compared to either blue-collar or entrepreneurial classes... But, noted, Krebs (1970), 'the danger with normative analysis is that norms can be invented post hoc to explain almost anything" (p. 295)." (p. 28-29)

It seems to me that this fits pretty well with the pragmatic way of thinking where the ends justifies the means.  So that you can justify doing something relatively antisocial because it might be for a prosocial ends.  Of course, this is not the same as coming up with an explanation post hoc.  That is, the mission didn't lie about what it did (i.e., say it was an international publisher, which was a half truth at best) and later come up with a reason for doing that.

But I do think that, for example, if my assertion that their "tentmaking" was lying and not at all what the Apostle Paul or anyone else in the New Testament would have done were pressed to them they might well have to come up with a post hoc norm to explain better how what they do might really be biblical.  (Good luck at that one... I expect they'll have to jump through a few hoops to do that...  For those who don't know me yet, I tend to agree with Jacques Ellul's analysis of the Church, so that might give you an idea of where I'm coming from if you are familiar with him.)

***

"Krebs concluded... that positive affect mediated the relationship between the experience of success and altruistic gestures.  To the extent that affect - feelings, mood, emotional states - is the underlying determinant, one may wonder just how much deliberation figures in the process by which prosocial behavior occurs." (p. 30)

I think that this probably is true by and large, and it's possible that the leadership in Vienna assumed that it would work with me too.  That is, I'd be relatively malleable strictly at the emotional level.  As discussed elsewhere here, that was true to a certain extent - that is that they had an emotional affect on me probably in some cases more or less what they were looking for - but I was too cognitively engaged and committed to ministry to that part of the world to be easily manipulated.  However, when I first arrived in Vienna I was sort of swept up in this great overwhelming welcoming flurry which could have made me vulnerable to this prosocial process described in this text, but instead it sort of took me aback as it was somewhat more that I'd expected and then the irregularities that I've already described began to take their toll too.  So this didn't really work for me in Vienna, and I think it would have had to right at the beginning or not at all.

***

"Conversely, numerous studies show that whatever may be presumed to contribute to unpleasant emotional states typically also acts to retard prosocial behavior.  Subjects put under the stress of information overload show a reduced propensity to help others... A thorough review by Cohen... documents the assertion that a reliable aftereffect of stress is a disinclination to help, or even be concerned about, others." (p. 31)

This quote, it seems to me, gives some credence to how it might have been difficult for me to show "organizational citizenship behavior" (OCB) once I'd become the target of major organization discipline.  The fact that I did show OCB I think is a wonder at all when looked at in this light.  Heck, Organ even says that patron leaving a sad movie leave less in a donation box!  I think I went through a bit worse than a sad movie - I was the star in a real life sad drama and I still did a lot by way of organizational citizenship behavior.  I'm talking about taking initiation in taking a short-term worker out for her birthday or streamlining the office supply management system.  How could I do it?  Not because of the emotional state the organization had had a great part in determining, but because of my internal norms, something I'd learned from my family, from church, from school, but not so much from the mission.

***

You see, I try to do my best and do what I think is right, even when I might have to suffer for it, and yes, I have had to suffer a fair amount for what I think is right and I'm not sorry one minute for not giving in because you know what it's like to have a clear conscience?  I have enough things on my conscience, anyway, but there are times when I've been able to stand firm for what I believe in and I've had to pay a price for it.  I must say that I've only been able to do this when it's been things that I have strong convictions about and I really believe are wrong.

There are a lot of Christians that think I'm wrong and that's why these missions are still operating today. 

***

I have to take a break now so I'll continue with this article in my next post.