266. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 14 (Moorhead & Griffin, pt. 3)

I went to church this morning but I left during the early singing because I just started crying about mom. A couple people came out to comfort me and I went back in for the last part of the service, but I don't think I'm going to try going to church next Sunday, because it's Mother's Day and that would be too hard. I really haven't cried much yet though. I think maybe it's just that I have so much going on that I just sort of keep going.

My back pain is slowly getting worse, as is the foot numbness and trouble with my legs starting in. And since I haven't exercised enough my fibromyalgia achiness is increased too. Tomorrow I start physical therapy, but I need to start writing cards to send with the death notices I'm sending out to family and friends who couldn't come to the service (mainly due to distance). Tuesday I pick up the printed cards and envelopes and will make copies of the obituary. Then the next couple days I'll be working on getting those out, but I don't have enough of the notices from the funeral home, so my brother in Seattle has to send me more (I left a stack with him), but he's sick too now.

***

Some of the things I'm discussing in this blog about the mission and my experiences with it might seem to some rather nit picky, but when combined to end out with some of the things I experienced with the mission they take on another light and they add up to something not so nit picky.

***

This next quote discusses the results of a British study in which trainees were administered a questionnaire about their values and the values of their new employer.

"The greatest difference between the two sets of values that emerged concerned the task orientation. In the beginning, most trainees saw both themselves and their organizations as being dedicated to the task. However, the trainees at both companies gradually realized that the organizations were not as interested as they were in getting the job done.

The results of the questionnaire and of the interviews showed that the trainees' socialization included becoming aware of the differences between their own preferences and those of their organizations. Hebden concluded that in most cases, socialization does not mean that employees change their values to match those of the organization. Instead, employees grow to understand the differences between values and to discover ways to cope with those differences." (p. 512)

I think that if I had been one of those subjects in this study, I would have fit the responses described here. That is, I learned that the mission didn't value "getting the job done" as much as I did and I didn't change my values. One major difference though, is that the Vienna mission was a total, authoritarian organization and as such could not tolerate members not adopting its own values. So whereas I might have done just fine with the employers where these subjects worked, I did not fare so well with the mission.

***

"In some organizations, the culture written down in pamphlets and presented in formal training sessions conflicts with the values of the organization as they are expressed in the actions of people in the firm. For example, a firm may say that employees are its most important asset but may treat employees badly. In this setting, new employees quickly learn that the rhetoric of the pamphlets and formal training sessions has little to do with the reality of the organizational culture. Employees that are socialized into this system usually come to accept the actual cultural values, not those that are formally espoused." (p. 513)

It seems to me that the Vienna mission was one such organization that seemed to lead a double life: the publicly visible one and what happened behind closed doors. This was, of course, largely because of its security concerns but it was also facilitated by public acceptance of the need for security and secrecy in the geographical context the mission worked in. This said, it seems that I should try to identify characteristics of these two sides of the mission. I'll try to do that, but I'm tired right now, so I'm going to take a break so I can come back more refreshed and clear-headed to give this the proper attention I think it deserves.

***

Okay, I'm back after several days hiatus. I'm wiped out, my fibromyalgia pain is elevated and the possible new stenosis in my lower-mid back is also taking its toll. I'm trying my hand at making strawberry jam... and successfully preserving it. Mom always put wax on her jam to preserve it but when I did that mine always went bad. So I found a good deal on strawberries (the seasons here in Florida are a little different than in more northern states) and I decided to try again. Right now they're macerating in sugar and lemon juice.

Let's see if I'm alert enough to give this subject (about the mission's double life, I mean) a reasonable appraisal. One caveat that I need to make clear at the start, however, is that this is my understanding based on my experiences, observations and recollections. Others may have had different vantage points that presented them with somewhat different impressions of the organization.

***

Public Image:

1. Christo-centric: Christ as the guiding force and raison d'etre
   
2. Bibically based: Biblical teaching assumed to apply also to its modus operandi
   
3. Treats its workers well: Has the individual's best interests in all its dealings with him/her (For example, it made me change my prayer latter explaining how I ended out back in the USA after just 5 months in Vienna.)
   
4. Apolitical (other than disdaining Communism): The mission as pure and simple Christian ministry.
   

Private Reality:

1. Security-centric: Christ's reign subject to security concerns. I.e., Christocentric unless security concerns dictate otherwise.
   
2. Pragmatic: The ends justifies the means. As long as the church in Eastern Europe is strengthened through its ministry, it's okay to sacrifice usual Christian norms, values and beliefs to assure the success of the ministry.
   
3. Treated its workers well only under certain circumstances; is not averse to treating its workers poorly: The worker is expendable and the mission cannot be questioned or disagreed with; the mission will find ways to make the individual conform or leave.
   
4. Probably had at least military connections (through the chaplain h.r. staff)

I'm sure there is more I could come up with, but I think these are some of the biggest broad-brush differences between the mission's internal life and its external p.r.

***

I guess that's it for this post, and since it's taken so long to finish it I'd better get it off. However, I would like to talk some about my family.

As you can guess, a lot has happened, family-wise, with the death of my mother. So now we've lost both parents, since my father died 5 years ago.

I've got all mom's address books and I've been working on mailing out notices to them. To me this seems almost a symbolic act because mom loved to write and she worked hard at maintaining relationships, so I felt like I needed to do more of this than at dad's death. Dad did more - that is had more "accomplishments" - in his life, but mom was the relational person in the family. She was an excellent conversationalist and didn't seem to need to resort to small talk even with new people she met. And she really hated technology, not so much as a Luddite, but because she wasn't technologically inclined. This is no great secret, believe me. So sending out written notices with personal touches seemed like a fitting way to honor her and the spirit of her. I must say it's been very satisfying to do this; it really feels good to do it. But a lot of the people in her address books I don't know or I remember the names but not that much more about them. I hope some of them respond by writing messages on her obituary page, but also maybe donate to the church in her memory.

Even while I was in Seattle though I was calling people to try to inform them and the like. So I had contact with people I hadn't seen in a long time, some of whom I may never see again, I'm sure. If I had to characterize mom, it would be through her web of contacts. But now that she is gone the web is disrupted, broken even.

(Mom was also very dedicated in her Christian faith, too, though, but I'll leave that for another day.)

The thing is that I feel like I'm sort of a temporary surrogate of my mom in my reaching out to all the people that she cared about.

Part of the web of her relationships is familial. In some ways some familial relations were funneled through her. For example, my relationship with my brothers has in recent years largely been held together by our relationship to mom, such as our concern for her, or sharing experiences (such as the Alaska cruise a few years ago) that she facilitated. So now our relationships need to be restructured and redefined. What will they look like a year from now? Five years from now? Ten years from now?

I think my brothers' relationships with one another are pretty secure, so the question is more about how I will fit in in this newly restructured family. In many ways I'm pretty vulnerable (sick, poor), but I'm somewhat ambivalent about my relationship with my brothers for several reasons. I'm not sure I want to go into all that now, but it will definitely be interesting to see how things pan out.

I think that's enough for this post. Good night...

251. Organizational Behavior File, Pt. 3 (Ouchi, pt. 1)

I just posted a very long list of terms used in this blog up to the end of the Socialization file posts. I hope someone finds it useful. I've been working on that, which is why I haven't posted so much these past couple days. Next I want to work on a list of Scripture passages quoted and referenced in my posts. That'll be a lot easier though.

***

This next article is:

Ouchi, William G. (1979, Sept.). A conceptual framework for the design of organizational control mechanisms. Management Science, 25(9), 833-848.

***

"This paper considers a more simple-minded view of organizational control stated in the following two questions: What are the mechanisms through which an organization can be managed so that it moves towards its objectives? How can the design of these mechanisms be improved, and what are the limits of each basic design?" (p. 833)

This seems straightforward enough. First, however, one needs to identify the objectives, I think, because that will make a difference in what kinds of controls to choose, right?

The objective of the mission basically, was to equip indigenous church leaders in Eastern Europe.

***

I'm skipping over market and bureaucratic mechanisms, because they don't provide anything helpful (in trying to understand the Vienna mission.

"Consider the foreman in the warehouse. His task is to oversee the work of pickers and packers. How is the warehouse manager to evaluate the work of the foreman? To some extent, he can rely on bureaucratic mechanisms such as output schedules, budgets, and inventory rules, but these in turn require surveillance. Given that the task of the foreman is significantly more subtle than that of the picker, the manager's task of bureaucratically supervising the foreman becomes very complex. However, if the manager is capable of selecting for promotion to foreman only that subset of workers who display a high internal commitment to these objectives, then his need for explicit surveillance and evaluation is reduced. In short, once the manager knows that they are trying to achieve the 'right' objectives, he can eliminate many costly forms of auditing and surveillance." (p. 836-7)

It might take a bit more by way of mental gymnastics to apply this to the Vienna mission context. But, since this text seems to start with the difficulties of oversight, I'll take that approach too. What would the difficulties of oversight have been for the Vienna mission?

Per me: I don't think I would have been that difficult to "oversee" in the usual sense of the term because it should be readily recognizable if I was filing everything wrong or making a lot of typos in my letters, for example. So from that standpoint a bureaucratic control of me should have sufficed. But the thing is that you have to add in the security issue.

Since the security issue was organization-wide (albeit with different positions have their own peculiar nuances), I'm going to consider the security issue in general.

How could the mission realistically make sure that its workers were complying with the security expectations (written and otherwise, spoken and otherwise)? One possibility would be to post cameras all over the building and having the evil military chaplain h.r. director (or his assistant) sit all day and watch the cameras. However, you might also want to get audio recordings, so there should be bugs in all the rooms and phones too, which would keep the evil h.r. director busy all day (unless he hadn't delegated camera duty to his assistant, in which case the assistant would monitor the bugs).

But then you still would have the issue of what happens when people leave the office. One possibility would be to just not let them leave the office, but keep them safely tucked away under close surveillance. And I suspect the theologians on staff would not have been sufficiently developed to mind these precautions at all, but would have just readily complied for the sake of security, which everyone knew was of utmost importance.

But the Austrian authorities might get suspicious if no one ever came out of the building, and then you have to deal with the schnitzel delivery guy... And heaven forbid someone from the States might come visiting.

No, so even if the theologians would have been okay with this set up, I have a sneaky suspicion it would have been problematic at some point in the process.

Another alternative would be to take a cue from the Soviets. They had something called an informant system in place, and this was so to one degree or another in all the Warsaw Pact countries. In this set up, what you would do is just recruit a few members of the organization to be snitches. And since no one would know who the snitches were, they'd be careful around any other staff members. And the organization could have a policy of everyone having to do everything with another staff member (maybe this is why the practice got started of women not being able to go to the restroom alone in public places - if you're not aware of this American custom it's just that women always go in droves to the restroom, such as at a restaurant).

The problem with this is that it would foster a climate of distrust, and the mission wouldn't go for that because it would make it hard to work together. Also, if anyone figured out who the snitches were they might find a way to do things in groups with no snitches amongst them. These are theologians, after all, and they're sometimes clever. You never know.

No, this text, I think provides about the only way possible to control the workers in the Vienna mission. But the thing is, as far as I'm concerned, just how much controlling should be done? How likely is it that people who have studied for their profession and then spent a year or more to raise support all just to work with the mission would become a traitor and betray the organization? And who would they betray the mission to, anyway? Their whole work was with believers in Communist countries, some of whom paid a heavy price for their faith - would the workers then go tell the Communists about the organization? I hardly think so!

But then there's the issue of Vienna being the hotbed of spies it was. So let's say that someone might accidentally tell a spy something about the mission. Does that mean that everyone should stay cloistered in their homes after work? Or maybe just hang out among themselves or maybe just with native English speakers?

The point is, how far are you going to take this? I've already written at some length about how the mission shouldn't have been so paranoid anyway and forsaken Scriptural teaching for the sake of security. But I wouldn't necessarily say they couldn't have any security precautions at all. I would say they should have rational security kept in perspective. That is, it shouldn't be an obsession and there should be more living by faith. Face it, no one can control everything in their lives. Like, I could go out and get hit by a car tomorrow. Or you could. Right?

Also, besides the Scriptural reasons, and besides the psychological ones (i.e., paranoia), I think there's also a justice issue. That is the mission shouldn't have had the right to treat it's own members the way they did just for the sake of security. In their system, where you had to just trust them on very limited knowledge, without questioning, and go along with everything. In that kind of a set up the individual is just an object, a thing that is controlled and acted upon but has no self-determination.

Anyway, let's go on.

***

This next section is mainly of interest in helping to understand the different social entities involved:

"When these socialization processes characterize groups such as physicians or nurses who occupy different organizations but with similar values, we refer to them as professions. When the socialization process refers to all of the citizens of a political unit, we refer to it as a culture. When it refers to the properties of a unique organization, we may refer to it as a clan. The functions of socialization are similar in professions, cultures, and clans, but our present interest centers on the clan." (p. 837)

Like I say, this text mainly is helpful for defining the differences between socialization in professions, cultures, or organizations.

***

"It is possible to arrange the three modes of control along each of two dimensions: the informational requirements necessary to operate each control type, and the social underpinnings necessary to operate each control type." (p. 837)

I'll just sum up the table.

Market control requires information about prices, and the social requirements are the norms of reciprocity.

Bureaucracy control requires information about prices and rules, and the social requirements are norm of reciprocity and legitimate authority.

Clan control requires information about prices, rules and traditions, and the social requirements are norm reciprocity, legitimate authority, and shared values and beliefs.

***

"A Clan requires not only a norm of reciprocity and the idea of legitimate authority (often of the 'traditional' rather than the 'rational/legal' form), but also social agreement on a broad range of values and beliefs. Because the clan lacks the explicit price mechanism of the market and the explicit rules of the bureaucracy, it relies for its control upon a deep level of common agreement between members on what constitutes proper behavior, and it requires a high level of commitment on the part of each individual to those socially prescribed behaviors. Clearly, a clan is more demanding than either a market or a bureaucracy in terms of the social agreements which are prerequisite to its successful operation." (p. 838)

The thing that I've been stumped on is how the mission could get its members to agree on all the things it demanded from them? Of course, I haven't definitively shown that everyone had the same rules to live by as me, but assuming they did, and I never did anything against the mission but that still wasn't enough, what were they willing to agree with the mission on that evidently went beyond what I was doing? (or else, if I didn't get the treatment I did because of my own actions, then why did I get the treatment I did by the mission?)

It seems to me, too, that there could be a wide range of understanding as to what the "norm of reciprocity", "legitimate authority" and "shared values, beliefs" entail. For example, does reciprocity only encompass my at-work activities? If not, then what else does it include? Likewise, what type authority are we talking about and what is it authority over? Are we talking dictatorial authority? Are we talking dictatorial authority over my whole life? Then there's the issues of shared values, beliefs. What are these beliefs about and how all-encompassing are they? Maybe you can guess, if you've been following along at all, that the Vienna mission apparently took as much liberty as was possible in these "social requirements".

***

I've got this article all marked up and we've only just begun, but it's late and so I'm going to leave off for now.

247. Vienna Mission Years, Pt. 7

"The Mennonites are Anabaptists of Dutch and German origin who found sanctuary in Russia from the eighteenth century, and were by and large well treated under the Tsars. The Soviets found about 100,000 in their territory after the Revolution - and within a decade had set about rooting them out completely, a process accelerated during the purges. They were suspect partly because of their Western origins, but even more because of their traditional pacifism - a key feature in their religious outlook. It should be emphasized, however, that there is not hint of extremism in their religious make-up. A recent Soviet writer on the subject F. Fedorenko (Sects, their Faith and Practice, p. 153), admits that a new wave of activity began in the sect in 1956-7, when active preachers began to return from prison - in other words, the effort at total suppression by Stalin had signally failed. The Soviet Union Remains the only country of the world where there is a major Mennonite colony which has no right to set up an administrative body. Since 1963 they have been encouraged to throw in their lot with the Baptists which means being forced to give up their pacifism and other special characteristics. In 1967 came the first news of registration of a Mennonite congregation in its own right (Bratsky Vestnik - 'Fraternal Herald' - the official organ of the Russian Baptists, No. r, 1967, p. 42), and others have followed."

Religious Minorities in the Soviet Union: A Report, rev. 4th ed. (1984). Minority Rights Group, report no. 1. London: Minority Rights Group, p. 12-13.

***

I think the month of August, my second full month in Vienna, the great welcoming fanfare subsided... the honeymoon period of my relationship with the mission ended. I guess all the people that felt like they had to make initial acquaintance with me had done so, although I wouldn't have thought of it in these terms at the time. I do know, however, that it didn't bother me so much that the fanfare ended (since the welcome seemed overblown to me anyway), as it did that the stressors increased. That is, I hadn't expected so much apparently positive feedback right away nor so much negative feedback that followed.

Actually, I had been getting negative feedback in the form of non-work (reading software manuals) and the mission's continued effort to set me up with a roommate from the very beginning. But the negative feedback at work kept building up even after the positive welcome dwindled. As my mission-centric social engagements tapered off, however, my Austrian activities increased, so that it began to look more and more like my relationship with the mission being a 9 to 5 affair with somewhat more social interaction than one might have at a regular office job back home. So in this way, I was treating the mission as an office job with no real intentions, on my part, of pushing for more than that. Neither did I particularly feel an obligation to anyone to tell the mission what I was thinking nor what I was intending to do in my off hours. So the vacuum left by the mission by way of dwindling off-hour social activities I gradually filled with Austrian activities.

Besides my feeling comfortable in the Austrian context in general, my personality also made the withdrawal of excess attention rather insignificant to me because 1) I hadn't expected such an overblown welcome in the first place, but also 2) my personality is such that I don't mind alone time. That is, the drop off in mission-centric social activities and the resulting alone time didn't particularly phase me, where it might have been meant as a stressor and it wasn't.

That being said, however, I think it was in August that I began having more and more troubles at work. These are hard to explain and I would have had to document them step by step to be able to get them across to you very well now. But what happened for the next two or three months was that I began having more and more problems getting things done at work. That is, when I was given anything to do that involved any interactions outside of my office, such as phone calls or even needing to get supplies, I started having problems in carrying out these responsibilities. But everyone else seemed to have a "logical" explanation for any particular problem I was having. In this way, it made it look like everyone just thought that these problems were normal and to be expected but they seemed too contrived and limited to the work setting for me to believe that. Nevertheless, I felt like I shouldn't open up too much about my frustrations.

A lot of times it felt like I had to do things over and over again to get them right or problems with the phone system, for example, were unpredictable. In this way, my attempts to figure things out was always thwarted because nothing ever worked the way I thought they should or the way I'd been explained. I did express my frustration too, although I wouldn't say I got angry exactly and nor did I let on that I thought these things were intentional tests, but I did think that. The thing was, a lot of times I couldn't explain what the possible mechanisms for these things were, and if I thought I could explain them that would attribute actions and, therefore, qualities, to my fellow workers that I knew wouldn't be believed.

I should also say that these problems at work were particularly a part of my experiences until I was sent back to the States and after that they subsided. Also, this is the only time in my life where I've experienced this kind of thing and it was specific only to my experiences at the office. That is, my experiences in my outside relations and activities did not include these kinds of stressors. This meant that my Austrian activities allowed me to maintain a sense of grounding in the face of my mission-centric problems and shifting sand foundation. My mental map of how to function in Austria grew stronger and continually more accurate, whereas my understanding of the mission grew weaker, if anything.

Now this is a strange thing, when you think of it, because I was working mostly with Americans with a very similar background to mine in many ways, which I've discussed at some length elsewhere in this blog. But then, the problems at work seemed to be more things that just "didn't work" rather than strictly with people. So the main way the people would have been involved would have been if I attributed to how things didn't work to them, and I didn't have concrete enough proof to do that, although I was sure it was true. So I never told anyone I thought these things I was experiencing were contrived.

So through all this what were my complaints that I expressed to others? My complaints were just the problems I was having at work getting things done. So that was the one hook they had to catch me with, the work-related stress.

***

The month of August is rather sparsely populated in my calendar. On Saturday, August 1 I invited the director of human resources and his wife over for dinner. I don't really remember that evening, but in hindsight, considering what eventually transpired - several months later - it's rather ironic that they seem to have been my first dinner guests. They might have been being friendly to me in an effort to try to get to know me, because they would be key people in deciding on the mission's path to take with me. In any event, by that time I was set up enough to feel comfortable entertaining already.

***

As I continued at the Austrian church, there was a wedding Saturday, August 15 and I brought a green salad for 10 people to it. So I was beginning to get settled in there a bit too. This might be a good time to discuss the church.

The church, Evangelikale Gemeinde Döbling, at that time was a church-planting effort led by an American couple. The attendance was about what my current church is, that is around 30 people or so on any give typical Sunday. The people there were very friendly and received me well. Since the pastor and his wife, my colleague from the mission and I were all Americans and the idea was for it to be an Austrian church, I was mindful of wanting to work under their leadership. That is, despite the fact that the American presence included more Bible and theological training than would have been so for the Austrians, many of whom were young Christians, the point was to let them have the leadership. Of course, my German wasn't so great anyway at this point, although I was able to function well enough, as we'll see as things move along here. I expect that bringing a salad for the wedding was my first contribution to the church functioning.

In any case, the problems I had at work most definitely did not carry over to my relations with the church.

***

On Thursday, August 20th I had another appointment with my doctor to get new prescriptions.

***

Then on Saturday, August 22 I had two of the young families over for a picnic. Both of the men in the families were instructors in the ministry to Eastern Europe. I remember this picnic really well, so I'll go into more detail about it.

The reason I had them over for a picnic was because my apartment was so small and I thought the younger kids, especially the ones of the new family, would enjoy being able to run around.

I spent a lot of time preparing for the picnic, including a salad and dessert. I packed everything up and they men helped carry it all to the picnic site, because it was at the edge of the Wienerwald (Viennese Forest) near me, so we walked to it from my place, about 1/2 a mile (ca. 1 km.).

***

Here is one of the recipes I prepared:

Corned-Beef Picnic Buns

6 oz. corned beef, chopped
2 tablespoons chili sauce
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon pickle relish
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
2 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, diced
1 (8 oz.) can refrigerated crescent rolls
1 1/2 teaspoons butter or margarine, melted
1/2 cup crushed potato chips

Prehead oven to 375F (190C). Grease 8 muffin cups. In a bowl, combine corned beef, chili sauce, mayonnaise, pickle relish, onion and cheese. Separate refrigerated dough into triangles. Place about 2 tablespoons corned-beef mixture on each dough triangle near wide end. Pull up sides of dough over filling. Roll to opposite point of triangle until filling is completely covered. Pinch edges to seal. Place buns in greased muffin cups with point of dough on the bottom. Brush tops with butter or margarine. Sprinkle potato chips over bun. Gently press chips into buns. Bake until lightly browned, about 20 minutes. Cool slightly on rack. Wrap warm buns in paper napkins or paper towels. Serve warm or at room temperature. If buns will not be served within 3 hours, refrigerate. Rehead buns on a baking sheet in a 350F (175C) oven 10 minutes. Makes 8 servings.

Deeming, Sue, & Deeming, Bill. (1983). Soups & Sandwiches. Tucson, AZ: HP Books, p. 91.

***

I think everyone had fun. After eating the women stayed chatting around the picnic table while the men and young boys walked around a bit. The boys had a bit of excitement when they found a harmless snake. Then we had dessert later on and eventually walked back to my apartment.

I always have enjoyed entertaining, so it's been difficult when I've been in situations that I haven't been able to do as much as I'd otherwise like to. I am resourceful, though, and always manage to find something else to fill my time with. Still, it's not like I don't know there's some compensating going on for what I'd maybe rather be doing or at least what I'd be happier doing.

***

This is the end of my August 1987 entries in my calendar, and I'm going to take another break here because I have more files I need to go through here before I reach the 5th month crisis point.

181. Socialization File, Pt. 64 (Black et al., pt. 1)

Going back to where I left off at the end of the last post, it really is hard to believe that such highly educated people (all with graduate degrees), people whose education more than likely included some coursework in counseling and/or psychology could have really confused the terms "reality shock" and "culture shock." I have a hard time believing they really thought I had culture shock in the usual use of the term. But even if I did, that doesn't explain their approach to helping me. If they thought I had culture shock (which the head of H.R. explicitly told me I had and had a research article with a graph showing the various phases of cultural adjustment, similar to what the last articles described), there are a lot better (more effective, more constructive) ways they could have tried to help me. But I don't believe it was their intent to help me any more than they really believed I had culture shock.

***

This next journal article is:

Black, J. Stewart, Mendanhall, Mark, & Oddou, Gary. (1991). Toward a comprehensive model of international adjustment: an integration of multiple theoretical perspectives. Academy or Management Review, 16(3), 291-317.

I'm not sure how these culture shock articles got in the socialization file, but I'm not going to bother to move them. It's probably a good idea, anyway, to begin looking at this topic. This article deals with adjusting to an overseas job, so it is very pertinent to socialization. This is a meta-review article, meaning it tries to tie together relevant findings from the extant literature.

***

The first major section is titled: "Review of the International Adjustment Literature."

"These and other studies that had slightly less rigorous designs found support for a positive relationship between cross-cultural training and cross-cultural adjustment, cross-cultural skill development and job performance. They concluded their review of the literature by stating: 'Thus, the empirical literature gives guarded support to the proposition that cross-cultural training has a positive impact on cross-cultural effectiveness (Black & Mendenhall, 1990:120)." (p. 293)

I don't know what kind of "cross-cultural training" was considered in those studies, but I had a fair amount of formal and nonformal learning experiences (cp. Wikipedia for formal, nonformal & informal learning), such as a B.A. in European Studies and Grundstufe II studies at the Berlin Goethe Institut. I suspect that the researchers' standard for what constituted "cross-cultural training" was significantly less than what I had. Thus, I should have had a pretty good chance of having "cross-cultural effectiveness." (p. 293). I think I had more of this kind of training than anyone else at the mission, in any event; no one else had a any kind of a culture-related degree as far as I knew.

***

That was the "Predeparture Training" sub-section, now we move on to "Previous Overseas Experience."

"Church (1982: 549) found in his review of the empirical literature in this area that 'empirical findings support the importance of accurate prior cultural experience or prior exposure... for sojourner adjustment.'" (p. 293)

My European overseas experience, prior to arriving in Vienna goes like this:
Sept. 1981: Member of a sister-city delegation to Nantes, France
Sept. 1981 to Dec. 1981: European quarter abroad, with one month in Louvain/Leuven, Belgium, another month in Heppenheim, Germany and travels with the group as a whole as well as weekend trips in small groups
Dec. 1981: Moscow winter inter-rim course
Dec. 1981 to Jan. 1982: A friend and I trying to leave the USSR because our travel agent bought us train tickets out through Poland when we'd explicitly asked for Romania and NOT Poland; Martial law was declared in Poland Dec. 13, while we were in Moscow and we didn't know what was going on. Then we wind our way up from Budapest (we were finally sent through Hungary), Zagreb, Pula (now in Croatia), Venice, Avignon, Dover, and London, from where we flew home.
June to Aug. 1983: Summer ministry to Eastern Europe; stationed outside Vienna
Aug. 1983: several days with a missionary couple to East Europeans in Hamburg
Sept. to Oct. 1983: Berlin, where I studied German, volunteered at the Bethel Diakoniewerke, attended a German Frei Evangelische Kirche, made friends via repeat visits to seminary in East Berlin, went on a 500 year anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther tour, and made another trip into East Germany to attend a Lutheran youth rally
Nov. to Dec. 1983: volunteered at a research center dedicated to religion in Eastern Europe.

The point is that I had lots of fairly recent experience (recent from the standpoint of when I was working in Vienna) in Europe, including a lot of it where I got around on my own without any problems. So this is another reason my adjustment to live in Vienna should have been relatively easy. Not only did I have just any old "overseas experience," but I had a fair amount of experience in Vienna and other German speaking countries.

***

The next sub-section is: "Organizational Selection Criteria and Mechanisms".

"Many researchers have noted that American MNCs [multinational corporations], despite the evidence that a variety of skills are necessary for success in an overseas assignment, focus only on one selection criterion: technical competence." (p. 294)

Say WHAT!? Technical competence? Then how did I get to Vienna? I wasn't even a professional secretary! (but neither was the gal straight out of high school either, and this might tell you what the mission leadership thought of secretaries - that preparation was optional because it wasn't important and/or not needed.) Since the mission did everything they could to reign in my use of my previous cross-cultural training and experience, I assume that that wasn't important to them either, which makes me wonder why they even offered me the job in the first place? Exactly what criteria DID they use, if not technical competence or cross-cultural competence? Of course, there was the issue of being a Christian and theological compatibility. Maybe that was the only criteria they used to select me. (I doubt that this was the only criteria, but lacking other information, it's the only one I can be relatively certain about.)

At any rate, it seems that cross-cultural skill was not in the purview of the mission vis a vis "selection criteria and mechanisms."

***

The next sub-section is titled "Individual Skills".

"Many researchers have investigated the skills necessary for an executive to be effective in a cross-cultural setting... These skills have been categorized by Mendenhall and Oddou (1985) into three dimensions: (1) the self-dimension, which encompasses skills that enable the expatriate to maintain mental health, psychological well-being, self-efficacy, and effective stress management; (2) the relationship dimension, which constitutes the array of skills necessary for the fostering of relationships with host nationals; and (3) the perception dimension, which entails the cognitive abilities that allow the expatriate to correctly perceive and evaluate the host environment and its actors." (p. 294)

I'll take these dimensions one by one:

1) I really, really needed better stress management skills in Vienna, but not because of the Austrians; rather the expat missionaries I worked with were the problem. But, yes, I was very much in need of better stress management skills.

2) I think I had good relationships with the Austrians I got to know. I was limited in how much I could foster those relationships, though, because of pressures from the mission to be more controllable (that's how it felt).

3) I had no problem perceiving and evaluating the Austrian environment and its actors; what I did have problems with is perceiving and evaluating the mission environment and its actors. How can I not understand my own country men? Right now I'm the only white person in an African-American setting and I understand these people better than I understood the mission and its people! And they were all White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants like me!

***

The last subsection I'm going to address is called: "Nonwork Factors"

"The first nonwork factor that the empirical literature suggests is important to international adjustment is culture toughness. Some countries' cultures seem to be more difficult to adapt to than others... the more culturally distant or different a host culture is from a person's own, the more difficult it is for him or her to adjust." (p. 295)

Let's get this straight: I'm from the United States of America and my native language is English.

There are roughly 6700 languages in the world and languages are often clumped together. Here's a starting point to consider languages of the world. Then look for "Indo-European Languages" and click on it to go to "Germanic Languages", and you will find that among all the thousands of languages and language families, English happens to be a Germanic language, which already right there might give some indication that there might be some similarity between the cultures, or at least more similarity than between, say, English and Russian, for example.

I know this is silly, but when you have mission leaders who seem to flaunt the obvious, then it behooves me to spell things out very carefully and slowly so they don't miss anything, like the difference between "culture shock" and "reality shock".

***

I'm going to end there for now, but we'll begin another major section of the article next time.

13. Work (Part I of Who-Knows-How-Many)

So fine, that was Dad's work - for over 30 years with the same company, but what about me? What about my work? Good question; I thought you'd never ask (that's tongue in cheek, in case you didn't understand that).

I started taking French in 7th grade and took it through the 10th grade and then picked it up again in my undergraduate studies, and even took a class while studying for my second master's degree. I dropped it for 11th and 12th grades because the school levy failures (that's how schools are funded in Washington State) resulted in the loss of one class hour in my school district. So it was French I decided to cut.

But taking French made me realize that I like learning languages and then in high school I became friends with a Swedish exchange student, who I later visited in Sweden and who later visited me in the Midwest. So when I entered college I was thinking I'd go the route of international business, but then the fall of my sophomore year (I just double-checked this on my transcript) I had Principles of Accounting I, Introduction to Statistics and French. I realized then that I didn't like so much working with numbers and that that didn't bode well for me in international business. So I've always told people that I ended out dropping the "business" and keeping the "international", by majoring in European Studies.

My intention was to become a professional missionary to Eastern Europe, so after graduating I continued on to Bible school, where I studied 2 more years.

This might sound very nice and well-intentioned, but you have to remember that this was all between 1978 and 1985 and Eastern Europe was still the big Red enemy, the focus of our Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") that my dad worked with.

I don't know how much of what happened as things unfurled was related to my dad's work and how much was due to other things, but I do know that missions had their own issues, too, as you can see from that FOIA letter I posted earlier.

I do know, however, that I went in to this all very naively. I never really realized before I started off on this that my dad was in military-related work. My brothers find this hard to believe, but then dad had shared at the boys' AWANA club at church, and they both had posters of the space system, which was very cool, I'm sure. I just never paid any attention and I only remember in adult conversations dad talking about the civilian side of Boeing's work.

I also never thought that missions could be so messed up. I mean, if you think about it, the Communist countries were at least partially right in claiming that Western Christian groups knocking at their doors worked for the CIA. And I haven't even told you the half of it either.

I really haven't told you anything about my actual work, only about my preparations for work. But the thing is, I've had 2 career changes even since that one initial profession. Believe it or not, there's still a lot to tell you before you'll really understand me and my life. And if you ever do get to that point, you may be the only person on this planet who does.

There's a joke I'd like to leave you with for tonight. I heard this joke in Dresden (the former East Germany) at a monthly youth meeting in the early fall of 1983.

There were 2 Jews on a tram. They were mostly silent, broken only with the occasional "oi", to which the other would respond "oi, oi, oi" and this went on for some time. Finally one of them ended this dialogue by saying they had to stop talking politics.

~ Meg