446. Military Chaplaincy, Pt. 53 (W.E. Smith, pt. 1)

I really am feeling crummy and it's a bummer.  I have just one more pod for the dishwasher and I want to get more from B.J.s, where I get the big container of them, but it's more of a trek out there, and I might not be up to it.  So I might just have to get a stop gap supply at the regular grocery store. 

I just get wiped out so easily  and I'm still dealing with the set back on my legs/back too, in addition to the chest congestion issue too (I have lowered immune system response because of being on a rheumatoid arthritis medication that has that as a side effect.) 

And I had all these projects I was just starting when these health things caved in, so that's not that great either.  It's nice having the steps up to the bath/shower and the bar installed.  So that was timely, at least.

This next article is:

Smith, Wilford E. (1977, Summer). Church and state in America in the twenty-first century A.D. Military Chaplaincy Review, 28-40.

***

Wilford quotes Milton Konvitz at some length including this passage:

The Nuremberg trials establish the principle in international law that the defense of having acted pursuant to orders of the government or a superior does not absolve a defendant from responsibility.... (p. 31)

In introducing the second batch of Konvitz quotes, Smith says: "He goes on to argue that modern enlightenment is opening the way for man to question old ways and to stand boldly on his own feet." (p. 31)

The thing is that it this is a chaplain saying that this is how it should be in the military and these are things that chaplains need to bear in mind in their serving and ministering in the military.  So ultimately, if something horrible is done they have to have the guts to stand up to their superiors and say no they won't take part in it because it is wrong. 

There are several things going on here.  First of all, they have to be able to think for themselves, right?  Then they have to have values, which is not necessarily the same as just thinking.  So they have personal ideas as to what right and wrong are.  Then they can't be timit fearful beings, scared to stand up for what they believe in.  And there has to be some sort of opportunity, however large or small, for them to be able to act according to their conscience.

It's wonderful that this chaplain even brought it up, because my experience at the Vienna mission was such that I was scared to death to speak my conscience.  I avoided the most egregious to me conscience offenders, like what it would have taken to help socialize a new person. 

In the Vienna mission, as far as I could tell it seemed to me that groupthink was paramount.  Individuals had personalities, for sure, and that came out, but the group was always central and security was central and number one.

And I always have to come back to my own experience, because that's what I knew best, and all I knew was that anything that I did on my own seemed to increase my stress levels vis a vis my relationship with the mission.  And I never got the impression that the individual was ever supposed to think of him/herself seperate enough from the group to think in terms of this kind of responsibility as is described in this sentence about the Nurenberg trials. 

So in the end, just before I left Vienna, I was symbolicly accused of doing this by making me out to be the little boy who "was standing up on the inside" (when he finally sat down after the teacher's repeated instructions to do so).  I had thought of myself as too separate from the group, which was my mortal sin.  I was able to think for myself and decide right and wrong for myself and I would have even been able to stand up against an authority with my beliefs if I thought they were wrong (and I did altogether too often). 

But they didn't know that I disagreed with them in all these various areas.  All they knew was that I dared to be separate.  And that wasn't allowed.  It's allowed in the military, it seems, however.  At least enough so that this passage was put here.

***

The rest of the article doesn't really have anything I want to comment on right now.  He talks about some church and state issues, but mainly speculating about what might happen, and it's not something I want to go into right now.

348. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 72 (O'Reilly, Chatman & Caldwell, pt. 1)

We're beginning a new text today:

O'Reilly, III, Charles A., Chatman, Jennifer, Caldwell, David F. (1991). People and organizational culture: a profile comparison approach to assessing person-organization fit. Academy of Management Journal, 34 (3),  487-516.

***

"Results of a series of studies have shown that person-job fit predicts performance, satisfaction, and turnover across a variety of jobs." (p. 491)

I think it's safe to say that there was poor "person-job fit" between me and the job most of the time I was in Vienna (or the States, when they sent me back for a few months).  Let me explain.  For a good chunk of the time I was a secretary I was doing stuff that was very unchallenging, like being on a short term temp job as a clerk or something, not even a secretary.  And some temp clerk positions were more involved and challenging than what I was doing even.

I was given some in-country trips, mostly teaching ESL with the other secretaries, but also one women's ministry trip (conveniently just before my parent's came and I was always suspicious about things that occurred in and around my parent's visits and the like - which you'll maybe understand later.)

So, basically, for the most part, the person-job fit for me at the Vienna mission was pretty attrocious; and according to this text, that means that my performance, satisfaction and turnover should all be affected.  Well, I don't think my performance was affected and I never got any indication that there was any problem with my performance - except the 100%, total, no bars held submission, of course, which I've already discussed in great details all over the place in this blog.  (For new readers, the mission was a total instution and there were things I didn't know about before coming that I could not completely agree with, so I could not give that total submission, which also entailed faith in the mission because the security issues meant that you were on a need to know basis.)

My satisfaction leval was in the gutter almost the whole time I was with the mission.  The reasons I stayed were because 1) I couldn't believe that the mission was really as bad as it seemed they were and in the end we were going to have a chance to talk theings out (that was delusional thinking) ; 2) what was I going to do if I left the mission?  I'd written like 30 or so letters to missions that work in that part of the world and about half had responded accusing me of being a spy trying to find out about their work and only two missions had seemed at all interesting and the other worked with children and I'd given that a whirl in the States and decided against it, although they wanted me.  3) my commitment was for 2 years and if I went home earlier I'd have some explaining to do to my supporters, although to stay was really almost a waste of their money.

When my two years were up I left with no fanfare and really as an outcast.  I doubt there was any possibility of salvaging my missions career, because it probably was lost from the beginning because of my relationship to my dad.  If I had tried to prolong it to extend to another year I would just have been in for more of the problems I experienced the first year because all they wanted was to get rid of me and it was the two military chaplain H.R. directors who were orchestrating that.

***

"Typically, researchers have agreed that culture can be through of as a set of cognitions shared by members of a social unit." (p. 491)

The Vienna mission shared enough of the home country (ies) Evangelical Christian culture to easily fit in back home, but unique aspects of working in "closed countries" that kept them more or less at arms length from others made them particularly close knit.  Also, their security issues the work and life in Eastern Europe all became particularly strong parts of those shared cognitions.

***

"Schneider (1987) proposed that individuals may be attracted to organizations they perceive as having values similar to their own.  In addition, organizations attempt to select recruits who are likely to share their values.  New entrants are then further socialized and assimilated, and those who don't fit leave... Just as research has shown that similar backgrounds, attitudes, and experience can increase liking between individuals...,  it may be that organizations that manifest and reward characteristic outcomes and behaviors will be more or less attractive processes of selection and socialization acting as complementary means to insure person-organization fit (chatman, 1988). Thus, congruency between an individual's values and those of an organization may be at the crux of person-culture fit." (p. 492)

I certainly was attracted to the Vienna mission at least in part by their values, although primarily by the very mission itself - that is, the task it had set for itself, to educated church leaders in Eastern Europe.    Of course, I wouldn't have been interested in it if it had had a theology that was to much at variance with mine, but it was the task, the mission, that drew me to it.  I assume the mission was doing the same when it selected me.  I don't know what it did with my critique of SGA (that I shared with my sending mission), or if they ever heard about that critique, which they might not have.

But then the mission and I have to get to know each other further and that happens through socialization.  I don't think I got any clue during candidates' course with my sending mission of what might happen during socialization with the Vienna mission, although socialization could be highly individualized too.  How could I know that almost immediately they'd be lying to me, things my sending mission had assured me of were not so, and I would so quickly no trust them?  These aren't the kinds of things I want an explanation for; they lied and that's all.  They lied, period.  There's nothing really to explain.  So then I felt like I just felt like I had to watch as to why they might be doing it or how ingrained that kind of thing might be, etc.  Sadly, it seemed to be very ingrained.

I'm very glad to tell you that I didn't succumb to the culture of deception, which isn't to say that I'm perfect, because I'm not.  It's just that I didn't become a part of that way of life.  It seems that for security they think it's necessary.  This seems like a good place to refer to Scripture...

Ephesians 4:25

King James Version (KJV)

 ²⁵Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

Since I'm not exactly sure what went on behind the scenes in my application process I'm not sure who dropped the ball, but it seems to me like someone did.

***

This is from the results of the study.

"[I]ndividuals with high needs for achievement show a significant preference for aggressive, outcome-oriented cultures.  Respondents with high needs for autonomy show a preference for innovative cultures and negativity toward those characterized by an emphasis on supportiveness and teamwork." (p. 502)

I'm going to go through the table through each of the "Organizational Culture Profile Factors."  This is from a questionnaire result (N= 395) of M.B.A. students & new accountants.  I'm only listing items with statistically significant results.

The underlined terms are from a list of terms that the subjects were to put in value order as related to their workplace.  That is from most important to least important.  So that means, this list includes things that might be undesirable.

The items behind the letters and the left perenthesis (e.g. "a)" ) are qualities the subjects had to rank as pertains to themselves.  Again, these might include undesirable as well as desirable qualities.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with statistics (and I'm more of a qualitative person myself, actually, but at least I can more or less handle this much anyway), the p<.01 and p<.05 refer to how statistically significant the finding is, or how certain one can be that the finding probably is not just a fluke or chance role of the dice or something.  p.<.01 is a stronger statiscal finding than is p<.05.  The smaller the number the greater the likelihood it's not a chance finding.

Also the (neg.) indicates a negative relationship.  For example:

Innovation correlates with aggression.

Innovation correlates negatively with abasement.

    Individual                Organizational Characteristics
Characteristics

1. Abasement.   a) (neg) innovation (p<.01); b) (neg) aggressiveness (p<.01)

Since abasement wasn't in my nature (except perhaps instilled in my by the mission so by the time I left maybe it was a part of me), it shouldn't be of that much interest what kinds of organizations fit or didn't fit that kind of personality.  However, since by the time I left the mission seemed to have turned me more or less into this kind of personality, maybe it is useful to know that organizations that are innovation-oriented or prefer aggressiveness are contrary to abasement personalities.  However, amazingly enough, I think the Vienna mission was innovative, since it was on the cutting edge and unique in the kind of mission it was doing, being a conglomerate of 15 missions working in closed countries and out of one building.  That was unheard of outside of the Vienna mission.  I can't say the mission was aggressive, though, at least not how I understand the word.  It's not like they were cutthroat salesmen or something.

2. Achievement.  a) (neg.) outcome orientation (p<.01); b) aggressiveness (p<.01)

I do to a certain extent appreciate achievement, but not necessarily in the usual way.  That is, I'm not necessarily a ladder climber, for example.  I'm not opposed to getting ahead, but that's not really what I'm all about.  I'm curious, and I want to do my best, and I have values, and I'm concerned about issues.  So all these things take focus and lead to different types of achievement.

I can see how outcome orientation is a negative correlation to achievement personality.  Have you ever heard of teaching to the test?  This might be a U.S. phenomenon.  It's when a teacher has to give a test (some authority above the teacher forces it on the teacher) and the test has certain other repercussions.  So the teacher teaches content that will specifically help the students do well on the test.  It might not otherwise be what the students need to succeed in the world or succeed in their next class, but it's what they need to do well on the test.  Well, outcome orientation is like that: you work specifically just to receive specific outcomes, nothing less, nothing more.  Of course, sometimes you can get in a little extra, but that's a bonus.  But you really HAVE to get in the expected outcomes or you're in deep doo-doo. People with an achievement orientation would feel very stymied by this type of culture, and I'm not sure I'd like it for long.  Maybe to start out with, as a training wheels situation, but that's it.  Then I'd be moving on pretty quickly, or as soon as I could find a place more challenging to me.

People with an achievement personality were a good match when the organizations culture was aggressive.  I'm not that achievement-oriented, because I don't like aggressiveness.  So maybe it's more accurate to say that I'm somewhat achievement oriented.

3. Affiliation.  a) emphasis on rewards (p<.05); b) (neg.) team orientation (p<.01); c) (p<.01)

I don't think I'm that affiliation-oriented.  Maybe that's why the intense greeting when I first arrived bowled me over and seemed overblown.  At the meetings everything was all hype and success stories and commendations and all upbeat.  It was rare that there was anything negative.  The only thing I can think of was maybe  finances at one point having to watch our budgets or the like.  You'd think you were at one of those pyramid scheme meetings for all the hype and positive thinking though.  Norman Vincent Peale would've been proud had he been there.

I'm not sure why team orientation correlated negatively, and strongly so.  Maybe because the affiliation was with the whole group/company and teams disrupted that or something.  But that's beside the point, because I'm not so strong on affiliation.

I'd like to stop and make a note on this though before continueing on.  The way my life has gone has made me disentangle myself from groups more then associate with groups, so I've ended out appearing like affiliation is not strong.  But in fact, I really do think that since other things like my values that have caused me to step away from groups, have taken precedence maybe in fact affiliation is not such a strong character trait in me.  There have been a few groups though that I've left just because I've moved away that I would otherwise preferred to have stayed with. 

4.  Aggression.  a) innovation (p<.01); b) (neg.) supportiveness (p<.01)

I'm not aggressive, and I don't really care to discuss this one.

5.  Autonomy.  a) innovation (p<.01); (neg.) supportiveness (p<.05); c) team orientation (p<.05)


I do like autonomy, but not exclusively.  It's not surprising that organizations that are charactarized by innovation correlate highly with individuals who like autonomy.  On the other hand supportiveness does not correlate well; maybe it stifles autonomy.  And team orientation correlates moderately; maybe you could still have more autonomy in a team than with a boss breathing down your kneck.

The problem for me is that I think that most people in the mission got to experience this kind of thing, but I didn't much at all, if at all.  Once people were oriented and had internalized the organizational norms and values and had gotten the swing of their position, then they could do some of these things and act as the professional that they were, within reason and within the scope of the security guidelines.  But I was just shuffled around everywhere, hither and yon, and never had a chance.

6. Change. 1) innovation (p<.01); b) (neg.) supportiveness (p<.05)

Change wasn't anything I particularly valued, although once I entered in the mission I sure as all get out saw a few (!) changes I wouldn't have minded seeing happen.   If they are reading my blog this is the first they are learning of them, however.


7. Creativity.  a) (-neg.) aggressiveness (p<.05); b) supportiveness

I don't think of myself as a creative person in the formal sense of the word (i.e., artistic), and I think that's what they mean here, but they just use a broad word to include more facets of creativity.

8. Deference. a)  (neg) innovation (p<.01); b) supportiveness (p<.05)

I did not think of my self in deference terms, and even when I left the mission they didn't get me that far down.  They got me to abasement, but not to deference.  For example, here an atmosphere of innovation is contrary to deference, but in my last position I created a new system to organize the ordering of office supplies for the whole organization and also the supply cabinet. 

9. Dominance.  a) innovation (p<.01); b) outcome orientation (p<.05); c) aggressiveness  (p<.01); (neg.) supportiveness (p<.05)

I'm not domineering and I don't value dominance.  I'm more egalitarian, although when I have been in leadership positions I recognize that for some things a person needs to have leadership, but I prefer more egalitarianism.  Even, for example, in my last library job when we had to schedule the lunch breaks and I was the one in charge we did it fairly together taking into account everyone's needs, not just me sitting at my desk assigning everyone as I liked or something.  It was a little thing, but I think everyone appreciated it and felt like it was a fair way to do it.

10. Endurance.    a) outcome orientation (p<.05)

If outcome orientation is the only thing to correlate with endurance then my tendency is to shy away from it.  However, that being said, I did stick it out with the mission the full 2 years of my commitment even though my time with them was mostly pretty horrible.  And outcome orientation has zilch to do with my staying.  Still, maybe I should give a second look at endurance and consider that maybe that was a value after all.

11) Exhibition. a) innovation (p<.05); b) (neg.) supportiveness (p<.05)

I'm not necessarily big on exhibition.  I'm the kind of person who's not ashamed to speak her mind (except in Vienna!!).  So if you have a small group discussion on a topic I'm interested in you might want me in it to liven things up.  But  half the time I'm so unassuming people underestimate me and who I am, what I'm capable of or what I might know.  So I'm definitely not what you'd call an exhibitionist.

12) Nurturance. a) (neg.) innovation (p<.05); b) emphasis on rewards (p<.01); c) (neg.) team orientation (p<.01); d) decisiveness (p<.05)

I wouldn't say that nurturance is particularly a word I'd use to describe myself. 

13) Self-confidence. a) aggressiveness (p<.05)

 Although I entered the mission with strong self-confidence, aggressiveness would not have been qualities I appreciated.  I think of aggressiveness not as self-confidence but as something else all its own.

14) Succorance. a) (neg) innovation (p<.05); b) (neg.) aggressiveness (p<.05).

 I had to look this one up: it means something like dependence on or seeking nurturant care.  This definitely is not me and was never me.

There are several things that could possibly be gotten from this exercise.

1. First of all, which of these descriptors fit me best and did the mission fit the complementary organizational descriptors.

2.  Secondly, what might have I been like at the end of my time with the mission

3.  Third, which combination of organizational descriptors best fit the mission.

I. Which Best Fit Me

2. Achievement.  Because of the terms connected with Achievement I have to say that I'm a moderate here (because I'm not aggressive).  But achievement is more or less like competition, in my mind, and I'm not really competitive, except to do my best and maybe do better than I did last time.  So maybe putting me in a moderate position is accurate.


 5. Autonomy.  The autonomy issue is really a tough one vis a vis the Vienna mission because I was treated differently from others in how I was moved around all over the place.  So maybe no one really got to work by themselves autonomously, but they did get to work in teams, which I got precious little of.  About the closest thing to team work I got was the ESL team to Czechoslovakia (remember that was the late 1980s).  That was pretty short lived too.

However, individuals did need to know how to work autonomously, but generally in teams, most commonly in pairs, according to what I knew.  So in this the mission did foster a team spirit (whether departmentally, organization-wide, or for any particular team on a ministry trip), and did foster a spirit of problem solving and team effort.  This could be seen, in a very localized way, as innovation, and it was encouraged by the mission, and one had to always be on one's toes for potential security problems while one was behind the Iron Curtain.

13. Self-confidence.  I don't like how self-confidence is paired with aggressiveness.  (How come all my qualities are matched with aggressiveness!?), but be that as it may, just consider that I have self confidence that is somewhat shy of aggressiveness.  In any case the mission did not value aggressiveness, that's for sure.  I think the mission valued self-confidence, as long as the person was in full submission to the mission, if the person wasn't, like me, the mission would bring him/her down a notch... or two... or three... or.... etc. which is what it felt like is what they did to me.  If I had stayed longer they would have kept going I guess until I was just a blubbering idiot or something.

II. Which Best Fit Me At the End Of My Vienna Years

1. Abasement.  This definitely fit me at the end of my years with the Vienna mission.  They really put me through the wringer and kept sort of ever tightening the noose around the kneck - or that's how it felt to me.  I've talked a lot about how this happened in various places in this blog.  I think that's the main change, at least from these qualities, that happened during my stay in Vienna.

III. The Descriptor Combinations That Best Fit the Mission

In this exercise I'm not going to be looking so much at the first word, which refers to the individual, but the following descriptor(s), irregardless of what the personal descriptor is.

12.  This one is a pretty good fit, although the negative for team orientation is problematic.  But other than that it's certainly the best fit of any of these here.  The mission valued innovation for problem solving, not to mention materials writing and lesson planning.  The emphasis on rewards was in keeping with the focus on sort of positive thinking and team spirit.  I think the idea was to bolster morale, but there was also security concerns, so it was important to keep everyone upbeat for those reasons as well.  I already mentioned the team orientation issue; it was valued in the Vienna mission, so it doesn't fit the statement here, which holds the opposite.  Decisiveness was valued out in the field mostly, but could also be valued at times in the mission itself also.  For those in positions where decisions would most likely be made on a day to day basis decisiveness was important because their position as authorities needed to be maintained.

***

I spend a lot of time on that article, on the chart in particular, but that's it for the article now.  It's after 11 p.m. now and I spent a good chunk of my day on this post, so I'm finally going to post it.

347. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 71 (Golden, pt. 1)

The whole fall-out over my having sent out Easter cards has left me with some things to think about.  The main "fall-out" was that I didn't end out sending cards to my brothers, because my relations with them is strained and we really only communicate only minimally and I think they actually know more about what's going on in my life than I know about what's going on in their lives, as I know virtually zilch about them.  Anyway, since all my dad's family (sister and her kids) are in the same city as my one brother, and my aunt had him over for Easter, it was pretty much inevitable that he found out 1) that he didn't get a card when virtually everyone else did and 2) the contents of the letters; namely, how I'm doing.  So the Monday after Easter he sent me and my other brother both a very short e-mail wishing us both well and a happy resurrection day.

I don't know why, but I felt like I was caught (having not sent him a cart) so I sent both of them a brief exerpt from what I'd sent.  I felt sort of driven, like I had to do it.

But when I got a note from someone he knows well and would be in visiting in his area and I thought he would like to see her, so I e-mailed him (plus, I thought maybe he could use some spiritual guidance because I think he's messed up, but I wouldn't tell him that), but he brushed him off.

The thing is that with that brother it's a power thing so that I really feel powerless and it's scary too.  I really am afraid of him, and it has a sexual aspect to it too.  It's really creepy.  I wonder if mom experienced any of this.  I mean, I'm beginning to think that with him anything's possible, but I never knew about this aspect of him until after mom's death.  So that's a new angle on him.  I really don't care if I never see him again.

To that end I've been trying to figure out a trip out West.  I thought I'd most likely fly in to that city, although another city is possible.  With my health, I may need to fly nonstop and pay more.  I may need to consider this my last foreseeable trip out west due to my health.  I plan to get a rental car, but I'm really going to have to be super religious at maintaining my exercises.  And I'll have to get the okay from my doctors too I guess.  At this rate, though, my health is never going to be perfect.

Anyway, I would head off to mom's home town pretty quickly but try to rig it so that not too many people there knew so that my brother wouldn't find out.  I just couldn't risk him finding out, is the thing.  Under no circumstance do I want him finding out and coming out to join me.  That would be the last thing in the world I'd want.

And then it's hard when people don't believe that this kind of thing is going on. 

***

The next text is another journal article:

Golden, Karen A. (1992). The individual and organizational culture: strategies for action in highly-ordered contexts. Journal of Management Studies. 29 (1), 1-21.

***

"In spite of their differences, each of these conceptualizations... suggests that the latitude for individual action increases as the orderliness of that context decreases." (p. 1)

From an outsider looking in there didn't seem to be a lot of order in the Vienna mission and there certainly wasn't a written order that meant anything to speak of.  But the organizational values and norms left little wiggle room, I think, for individual action, otherwise I would have had a lot easier time of it.  Although the expectations might have varied a bit from individual to individual in the mission those individual-specific norms were generally nonnegotiable.

***

"This article has incorporated a more dynamic perspective of action into the cultural analysis of organizations in order to highlight individuals as active agents in their surroundings...


Based on these analyses, four general types of strategies for individual action emerge: (1) unequivocal adherence; (2) strained adherence (3) secret non-adherence; and (4) overt non-adherence. The first two types, strategies of adherence, result in an individual's conformity to the cultural guidelines.  They differ, however, in the extent to which individuals share, or regard these guidelines as their own.  Only the first strategies creates a close one-to-one correspondence between action and culture." (p. 17)

When I first arrived in Vienna I fully expected to be in position #1.  In the first two or three months it became clear that that might not be quite as likely as I initially though, so I degraded to position 2.  By the 5th month, when I was sent home to the USA, I moved to position 3, where I remained until I left the mission.  I don't think I could have stayed in Vienna as a #4.  I think they really would have treated me as if I were crazy.  I can't imagine what they would have done if I'd gone open with my opinions and viewpoints.  They scared the bajeebers out of me when they sent me to the States so I knew enough to keep my thoughts to myself, so I stayed a #3.  I highly doubt that's what their intent was when they they sent me to the States, but that's what happened.  The end result was to make me know when to shut up and keep my thoughts to myself.  Think of it as an unintentional effect, if you will.

To say I held to secret non-adherence for most of my time with the Vienna mission, was true, does not tell the complete story.  For one thing, I always did support the idea of what the mission did, because I had already before coming decided that it was cutting edge as far as something that was really needed for the church to grow in these countries.  Also, there were some things that I could agree with.  But it was hard to pick and choose, and the more there was to disagree with and the more fundamental the things I disagreed with then the harder it was to just pick out isolated things to focus on the agree with.  It just took more work to do that.

***

Well, that's it for that article.  As you can see, some of these article just have a couple pieces I'm interested in taking from them.  Next time I'll have someting different for you.

346. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 70 (Schneider, pt. 2)

This weekend all the women from church are all away at a women's conference so I'm going to visit an afternoon service I've been wanting to check out.  I didn't feel up to going to the conference.  If it were close by I could just go to snippets of it and return home when I'd had enough.  It's just me, so I have to know my limits; I don't have anyone to take care of me.

***

As I said at the end of my last post, I'd be discussing text from the section "Functionalism" of Schneider's journal article.

"There were at least two major orientations of Functionalism: (1) the functions of cognition and behavior in adaptation to the environment and (2) the role of individual differences in the capacity to adapt.  Functionalism, then, offers another orientation to answering the question Gestalt psychologists hypothesized that people apprehend and create order because they have no choice.  Functionalists proposed that order is apprehended and created so people can function adaptively in their world.  In considering this question of adaptation, however, there were two forms the hypothesis took - adaptation as a generalized phenomenon and individual differences in adaptation." (p. 451)

I guess I hadn't really thought of Gestalt in relation to these types of situations as being a mandatory situation, where the person is driven to understand his/her new surroundings.  If this is the case, then as much as I would like to have understood the mission, I wasn't driven enough to overcome the ethical obstacles which seemed to block my path to enlightenment and true understanding of the mission.  So Gestalt was not a sufficient theory to explain my attitude towards these things.  In any case, the phrase in this paragraph "because they have no choice" automatically knocks me out of Gestalt territory, because I did have a choice, and I used it, as hard as it might have been.

Turning now to functionalism - and we're just starting in on this - I should say that I'm a little bit Eastern in that I don't believe that action is everything.  There is also something to being and there is also something to conscience.  So, while I certainly did want to function in the mission, I also wanted to maintain a clear conscience, and I had thought through a lot of ethical issues, including studying Scripture on it, auditing a theology class by Joseph Ton (a Romanian Baptist pastor on exhile at the time from in the USA).  So I was not exactly green in the field, and I had some knowledge and experience behind me, maybe more than the mission realized.  I was told I'd be a secretary and I was committed to functioning well as a secretary and I understood that missionary work involved more than just doing your job, but I didn't realize I'd be pressed in from all sized, so that even those I wrote letters to would be censored.

I tried to adapt to thing I felt I either agreed with or at least didn't disagree with.  But in the end I adapted to some things, like giving up my Austrian activities, out of sheer exhaustian from fighting against them, standing against them.  So that was my adapting.  What was wrong with my Austrian activities?  Nothing.  Had I ever done anything that had compromised their security in my Austrian activities?  I doubt it, although there were a couple unusual situations that were a bit out of the norm. One probably was an Austrian intelligence checking me out, although I can't be sure.  The other had the potential of being an issue, but I don't think it was, and that was when I took, a Russian tutor class for a while.  The tutor could potentially have been a problem but I have no certain indication he was, so he might not have been either.

So why did the mission treat me so badly, especially at the end of my time with them, when it was, by that time, so clear that nothing I had done by way of work with the Austrians had been a security problem?  Why, then, would they have kept pressuring me to stop my involvement with the Austrians?  Basically, it felt like they just wanted complete control over me.

Functionalism.  Functionalism for what?  To be a secretary?  I tried to be a secretary, but they kept moving me around.  Adapt to my environment.  What environment?  The Austrian office or the North American office? 

I think I have a very good capacity to adapt, which is why I was able to hang on so well.  Actually, I've not put it that way before, but put it as "a very good tolerance for ambiguity."  But my tolerance for ambiguity was taxed really past the limits there with the Vienna mission, and it was the mission, and nothing to do with the country of Vienna.  A capacity to adapt might not be exactly the same thing as tolerance for ambiguity, but I think they go together frequently.

The thing for me, of course, though, was that I could only adapt as far as (1) I understood and (2) I agreed with morally.  So no matter how funtional something might be, if I didn't understand what was going on (which I guess would be the part 1 of functionalism) and I didn't agree with it once I did understand it, then I wasn't going to do it unless I was somehow forced to do it, which is what happened with some behaviors at the end of my time with the mission that I'd held out on for a long time; I finally caved in.

So both functionalism and Gestalt are limited by my ethical beliefs that affected my time in Vienna.

***

"Adaptation as general phenomenon. Functionalists would say that people have a fundamental need or desire for information about the status of their behavior vis a vis their environment.  They seek information so that they can adapt to, or be in homeostatic balance with, their environment." (P. 451)

I do not remember having too much need for feeback for at least a couple reasons.  First of all, my initial job responsibility was to study software manuals (this was 1987 remember) for a few weeks.  This does not require much feedback.

Then also right off the back I was blown away with 1) more of a welcome than I expected while at the same time 2) discrepencies and things that were dishonest, which taken together put me early on on my guard so that I was more interested in watching and trying to figure out what was going on than in in how I was doing.

Maybe I should have asked how I was doing more, but I didn't.  To me asking how I was doing would have been an act of vulnerability, but the watching and trying to figure things out I was doing was more aking to putting my guard up, so these two acts would have been incompatible, I think.  If I had sought information regarding the status of my behavior vis a vis the environment at the Vienna mission, I would have done it through observation, rather than verbally.

***

This is in the sub-section "Individual differences."

"[P]erformance equals ability and a climate which stresses the display of individual differences. Dunnette (1973, p. 25) concludes similarly that 'An employer's goal, quite simply, should be to do everything he can to assure ('allow') each employee to give full expression to his abilities, skills and aptitudes.'" (p. 457; initial part is in italics in original)

The Vienna mission was not particularly interested in this.  It was first and foremost interested in security.  After that none of this other stuff was guaranteed, but it's possible you might land it fortuitously (or God willing).

So the thing is that at the mission you most definitely had people there who were intelligent and talented, so they had the "ability" part of the equation covered.  (Of course, it depends on what position you put them in, but I know of no one, at least when I was with the mission - with the possible exception of me - who was in a position they were not qualified for.  I wasn't a professional secretary; I'd just worked temp jobs and typed about 40 wpm. at the time.)

Climate.  As far as I could tell everyone liked the work climate at the mission and felt it was conducive for their work.  So I was the odd woman out there.  I didn't like it because of the ethical differences.  Otherwise, it was definitely very friendly (when they wanted to be, that is; otherwise, they cold also be very unfriendly when they wanted to be, too). 

In the Vienna mission, I don't think they were particularly interested in assuring "full expression..."  They just wanted people who could get the work done, do a good job, be reliable, and keep the security. A little individuality and creativity might be okay, such as for quality lesson planning, problem solving, etc.  I'm assuming that based on how they treated me is how they might treat others, that they like people to pretty much tow the line, so there might be a limit as to how much expression a person could give his or her abilities, skills or aptitudes, and how s/he expressed them.  Presumably, however, if the person had fully internalized the missions norms and values this might not be too much of a problem.  They knew the limits of what was okay and what wasn't, they'd come to terms with it and maybe even found ways to be challenged within the mission's norms. But still, it does mean that this aspect of functionalism doesn't completely fit the Vienna mission completely, because there would be a limit to the expression of one's gifts that the mission might accept.  This was, I think, because of the security issue and the need or desire for control.

I should also say that it might not be accurate to be assuming that my experience is a good comparison with others' if my experience at the mission is tainted by affects from my dad's work in star wars.

***

So, what is it?  It's not quite Gestalt, and it's not quite functionalism.  My experience in Vienna and my adjustment to working at the mission there seems to have been not quite either, but something else.  At least we have socialization to fall back on, but it would have been nice to have such a nich high brown word like Gestalt or functionalism.  But it just wasn't meant to be, I guess.

I tried though.  I think that's all I'm going to use from that article, so next time we'll start a new one.

345. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 69 (Schneider, pt. 1)

I just got a notice from my Internet/Cable/Landline Phone provider notifying me that recently someone else was granted permission to pay my bills.  Well hooray!  Who wouldn't mind that?

Well, the thing is, that in this case I think they mean that now I was granted the right to pay my own bills because they still have may name spelled wrong and they thing that I'm this other person with the name spelled the other way.  This is causing me all kinds of grief and I've spent hours and hours trying to gain access to the Internet. Now I have it, with the wrong name, but it bugs me to have that wrong name.  And I can't change my user name, so if I were to send people an e-mail from that account everyone would point out that my name is spelled wrong... I have to actually physically go to one of their offices, undoubtedly with i.d. to prove that I am who I say I am with the correct spelling.  What a mess.  As if I didn't have anything else to do with my time.

***

Anyway, you'll be glad to hear I did well in physical therapy today, but now well enough to be released.  I'm supposed to get a new script from my neurologist.  We're working on torso and arms, mostly one day and legs and balance more the next, although I do the treadmill 10 minutes every day.  Today at the end she wanted me to do an exercise where I was supposed to be kneeling, but I can't kneel well, because my right knee has a killer spot where my rheumatoid arthritis has set up shop big time, so I can't even kneel on a very soft pillow on that knee without sharp pangs.  But she quickly came up with an alternate exercise for the same purpose.

The other big news is that I spent about $500 on supplements and over the counter medicines that I take.  The supplements I get at Vitamin Shoppe and I try to stock up during their semi-annual store brand sale.  It really saves me money and helps me know how to budget better than just having to wait for some ad hoc sale and not knowing how much you'll end out spending.  This way I pretty much know and it's a good deal.  It's a lot of money, but the ones I take really do help and I know that when I've run out of certain ones I can really tell, so they help me be functional.

***

This next text is:

Schneider, Benjamin. (1975). Organizational climates: an essay. Personnel Psychology, 4, 447-479.

***

The first quote is in the first section after the introduction, "The Nature and Function of Climate Perceptions."

"Much climate research has been accomplished on the basis of some infrequently specified assumptions.  These assumptions may be stated as follows: (1) humans attempt to apprehend order in their environment and to create order through thought; (2) humans apprehend and/or attempt to create order in their environment so they can effectively adapt their behavior to their work environment.  Broadly speaking, the first assumption is associated with the Gestalt school of psychology while the second assumption is representatative of the kinds of questions associated with the school of Functionalism." (p. 447)

I'm not going to address the two schools of thought yet, because that's addressed more later in the article, so I'm sure I'll pick another text to comment on in that regard.  So I'll just limit my comments to the first half of the text here, but I wanted to include the whole paragraph so you'd see where we're going here.

Let's say that I'm the human plopped in the new context needing to apprehend.  Coming to the Vienna mission I most definitely did try to do #1, but I often found it incredibly difficult.  At some point I just sort of quit trying and just sort of stuck to what I knew and what I was supposed to do.  The things was that, in my opinion, to outsiders, things could look chaotic, but to those who understand what's going on it's not chaotic.  That was a security trait in my opinion.  Since I was not completely trusted (at certain times more than others maybe though), I might have been treated somewhat like an outsider.

I think I did this also, but maybe somewhat less than the first one, because I got stuck on the first one.  It was difficult for me to to the second one with the first one weas so messed up.  My attempts to create order in my workplace were pretty minor, I think, and only involved my work space.

***

The next section: "Gestalt Psychology"

"The major contribution of Gestalt psychology was its emphasis on the organization of perceptions; the whole bing something special and not definable by its simple examination or some of the parts..." (p. 448)

 In folk parlance, this is otherwise defined as "the whole is greater than the parts."

It is no wonder that I might have bent more towards the first way to apprehend the Vienna mission, because I tend to prefer taking on major issues with the big picture first, and then moving in towards the details.  So, I suppose that might look a bit like taking a Gestalt take.  The only thing, is that, for me, the Gestalt is not the end all, but I just prefer starting with the big picture and then once I feel reasonably confident with that then I'll start filling in the details, like painting broad brush first and then details after.

As far as the my experience with the Vienna mission was concerned, I think there were a few times while I was with them that I felt like I sort of understood them and could fill in enough details to start to feel a little bit more comfortable with them, although that doesn't mean I ever agreed with the things I've discussed here that I disagreed with them about.  These were times, though, that they gave me interesting work to do, so those issues sort of got put on the back burner.  But those assignments were always temporary and I'd go back to my regular work and nothing would change.  Maybe they thought I'd change or something, I don't know.  Maybe they didn't know what to make of me.  So, if I generally like to try to start with the big picture and then fill in the details, in the Vienna mission, I had a hard time figuring out the big picture enough to fill in the details.

I should explain something here.  That sounds a little funny and you might be thinking, "Then how can you write this?!"  The thing is, that the stuff I'm writing is not the kind of information that would help me actually survive in the organization.  That's the kind of information I needed.  The kind of information I'm writing about here in this blog is more the kind of stuff that I really disagree with - because that's what stuck with me and why I had so much trouble submitting and why I didn't want to be open and vulnerable.  (I know my limitations and I'm not that stupid.)  So I needed a specific kind of details that would help me function in that environment and I didn't find it; maybe it didn't exist.  Or maybe the details I found worked just great for that purpose for other people but with my conscious and thinking processes they didn't work that way. 

***

The author has gone on in some detail to discuss apprehending meaningfulness and behaving meaningfulness as the two major parts of Gestalt psychology and ends with this:

"...[W]e may conclude that people (a) apprehend order in their work worlds based on perceived and inferred cues, and (b) behave in ways that fit the order they apprehend." (p. 451)

I've discussed (a) quite a bit, but I might add that I think that there might have been perhaps more social engineered cues in the Vienna mission because of the whole security system, which was a lot more than they like to let on because it's even a protection to have people not know and, besides, they're masters of deception anyway, so it'll be a cinch to deny it.

I think (b) is mostly relevant during the socialization process.  I think that this could also be true if someone moves to a new position in the mission as well.  Missionaries internalize the values and norms and they learn from each other as they go along as well.  More seasoned missionaries give tips and mentor newer missionaries.  I might have been the only one to have been so contrary, I don't know.  I never did anything wrong, though.  It's just that I didn't break down and completely submit.  I insisted on keeping my free will.  I think that's the only thing I did wrong, basically.  So that's why I say I only give that kind of submission to God.  Nevertheless,
I guess I didn't behave according to their order, if that's a part of their order.  But that's not a part of God's order, so I'm not sorry.

***

The next section is "Functionalism" so we'll discuss that next time.

344. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 68 (Saffold, pt. 2; Woodruff, pt. 1)

I really shouldn't start writing these late at night, but I did prep it yesterday.

I'm picking up here in a section titled "Use of Contectual Rather than Modal Analysis."

***

"In the culture literature there is frequent reference to culture's impact on at least the following seven critical performance-related processes.


Climate Formation.  Ashforth (1985) pointed out that culture determines both what features of organizational settings are considered relevant by members and also the standards used to evaluate these features." (p. 552)

In the Vienna mission it seemed like just about everything was "relevant" or potentially "relevant."  But the standard had to do with security, so it was like something could be a "person of interest" in police parlance.  But just about everything that was non-mission was a potential security threat.  Since they even had internal security control (such as the "need to know" manner of running things, where you only had access to information pertinent to your work), outsiders were all the more kept at bay.  So that's the climate formation.

***

"Behavioral Control. Culture regulates behavior implicitly and most effectively (Faux, 1982).  It can control perceptual and emotional processes that are beyond the reach of standard control systems (Pfeffer, 1981), help to socialize new members (Pascale, 1984), and in removing those who do not fit (Sathe, 1983)." (p. 552)

The mission did indeed use culture to redulate behavior in this way.  Since there was virtually no functioning written policies, then culture and the informal organization had to fill in the gap.  Personally, I really hate those kinds of organizational situations because those are exacty they types of situations where you're most likely to find manipulation and all kinds of junk going on where there's no real guidelines to fall back on.  If the culture is acting in tandem with a substantial, healthy and robust formal organization and organizational policies, then that might be a different matter, but in the Vienna mission that was most definitely not the case.  Culture was pretty much all we had, although my mentors helped some, mostly with technical things work-related but also with tips about the mission and getting settled in.  I think, the tips could have been considered culturel-related.

***

That was all I wanted to take from that article so I thought I'd do one other very short one right now:

Woodruff, Michael J. (1991, Oct.). Understanding - and combatting - groupthink. Supervisory Management, 36, p. 8

***

"Want to make a stupid decision? It's easier if you have help.  Just gather four or five like-minded colleagues together in an atmosphere that values getting things done, and you're on your way...


What is Groupthink?
Groupthink is a process of rationalization that sets in when members of a team begin to think alike.  It can be fostered by managers who do not tolerate dissent, or it can develop under leaders who offer their employees so much encouragement and praise that pretty soon everyone begins to underestimate the seriousness of potential problems." (p. 8)

In the Vienna mission, however, they had a different way to reach groupthink, and that was by way of fear and learning deception for security's sake.  I didn't agree with them and look how they treated me!  There was absolutely no room for dissent at all.  So you had to learn groupthink very early on in order to survive there, let alone prosper.

I'm not sure about the stupid decision part as applies to the mission.  The main decisions, of course were not entrusted to the rank and file, so any of their groupthink issues would not have affected those decisions.  The director, assistand director (my boss), the North American office director and all the other board members (representatives from member missions) would have been the ones making the big decisions.  It's possible they might have had some group think in as much as there was some incestuousness among the missions since the world of East European missions was not that large and the major players tended to know each other and bump into each other or affect each other here and there.  But I doubt it was as much groupthink as in the Vienna mission.

So the missionaries in the mission have so much of a groupthink mentality that they couldn't make a decision about anything major about the mision because they have so much groupthink.  That's a pretty broad statement and I expect that some of the senior folk at the mission could probably have made a pretty good decision and maybe they could think for themselves all right.  It's hard for me to imagine how they could live with the conflict between God's word and the lifestyle of the mission of deception.  That is, if they could think for themselves but still stay at the mission and seem to be at peace and fully cooperate with the mission, how can they do this and get around this conflict?

In any case though there was a group think at the mission where they were all in union all one bit happy family and I suppose it's a good think then that they didn't have responsibility to large decisions, because the groupthink mentality might not have been so advantageous as far as wise decision-making is concerned.

343. Organizatonal Behavior, Pt. 67 (Saffold, pt. 1)

The next text is:

Saffold, Guy S., III. (1988). Culture traits, strengths, and organizational performance: moving beyond "strong" culture. Academy of Management Review, 13(4), 546-558.

***

"Some scholars have claimed that positive cultural traits boost performance in proportion to the strength of their manifestation.  This view has been called the strong culture hypothesis (Dennison, 1984)...


Strong culture firms are said to generate an almost tangible social force field of energy (Mitroff & Kilmann, 1984) that 'empowers' employees (Pascale, 1985) and drives the organization toward superior performance." (p. 546-547)

Did the Vienna mission administration and board think in terms of strong culture intentionally?  I'm not sure, and I could go either way with it.  They were definitely thinking in terms of security, but I'm not sure if they were thinking in terms of strong culture like this, but it's possible.  But even if they didn't intentionally plan a "strong culture" in this sense doesn't mean it wasn't there, and we'll see later that there's another term that we've dealt with before that also fits them.


For the Vienna mission, they needed 100% reliability, trustworthiness, and bonding, so they built a culture heavy on that, but subtle, too - not necessarily, in your face.  The bonding and trustworthiness was reciprocal so there were a lot of warm fuzzies and everyone, as a result liked being there and this could have generated what Mitroff & Kilmann called the "almost tangible social force field of energy."

***

"Strong cultures have been defined as homogeneous..., stable and more intense...., thick and widely shared..., cohesive and tight-knit..., characterized by congruent rule-based expectations..., fully articulated and highly differentiated..., coherent." (p. 548)

To me, that is from my perspective - based on my experience of the mission, the Vienna mission was very homogeneous and the leadership sought to make sure that all the departments maintained strong central cultural bonds with the core so that we all shared that main culture.  I was the sole individual where there was position change by a full time missionary so there was a lot of stability.  It was intense, because it often involved 24/7 attention.

The culture was cohesive and tight-knit largely, I think, because of the security issue, where they had certain limitations regarding their relations with outsiders, so they gravitated towards eath other.  As to "congruent rule-based expectations," this one is a little stickier, because, these kinds of things were generally, I think, understood once you were socialized and an insider, otherwise, for people like me, they could be unclear or even seem to be a moving target.  In any case, the rules, as such, weren't written down in black and white (because any rules that were written down didn't matter, as I learned early on, so the rules that did matter were something else not written down).

The mission was articulated and differentiated and information was also, so that information was only available to individuals on a tighly secured need to know basis.  The home office information was generally pretty guarded, but different individuals from different departments did go on trips for different teams.  They just generally (with a few exceptions) couldn't cover for each other in their office positions.

Based on this, it seems that the Vienna mission seems to fit the descriptions of a strong culture.

***

"But if cultural controls multiply too greatly, resistance is likely to develop, causing performance to decrease.  Total institutions... are extreme examples of this trend, and they may be similar in significant respects to strong culture organizations where 'nothing is too trivial' to be subjected to cultural manipulation..." (p. 549)

This is in the context of a discussion of how strong culture might be formed in organizations.  I already discussed in this blog how the Vienna mission was a total institution, so it's interesting how this subject is brought up here.  I assume that when the Vienna mission started up, it had a bunch of people that understood how work in Eastern Europe was done (according to the 5 founding missions) so they could hit the ground running at a total institution and no one would bat an eyelash over it.  There would be no "causing performance to decrease," for example, as this text suggests.  As a matter of fact, the early missionaries may well have thrown themselves on the pyre fully expecting nothing to be be too trivial 'to be subjected to cultural manipulation.'  I, on the other hand, did not come with that attitude, never did have that attitude, still do not have that attitude, and do not think that attitude is biblical, and do not think there is a biblical justification for this kind of thing.

***

"Shared meanings can even manifest themselves as shared delusions ... or group think..." (p. 549)

It seems beyond question that the Vienna mission folk had shared meanings.  They especially had shared meanings of the East Bloc countries.  I think that's the main one.  They also had a shared meaning of the Christians in the East Bloc countries. But they also had a shared meaning of who they (the mission) were.  It was a shared meaning because it was sort of convoluted and not, I think, a straight forward meaning.  So it was a manufactured shared meaning.

So the big one is the shared meaning of the East Bloc countries.  I might be here a while.  To begin with, I should say that we weren't told about monstrosities of Communism, except that we just knew we had to protect out student in the countries we were working and the missionaries that worked regularly in those countries especially knew first hand what was going on, so we didn't need a lot of propaganda and the like.  But since were a couple decades away from when this all happened, I'll quote some literature that presents the tenor of the thinking of the day.

From

Beresford, Brian. (1978). The House that Lenin Built. North America: European Christian Mission: [United Kingdom].

Here's from the chapter, "The Essence of Communism."

"The departure point of Communism theory is a metaphysical world view which has no use for God whatsoever and in which man is the measure of all things.  Atheism is the basis on which all Communist theory rests; it is not just a by-product of Communism, it is the very essence of Communism." (p. 15)

You have to remember that I was with the Vienna mission in the late 1980s and that was the hay day of the Moral Majority, who thought Evangelical Christians should pretty much run America.  And they were at the same time also more or less hysterical over anything to do with Communists, so adding atheism to the mix would just fuel the fire.  But I agree with the author, and I think this is not very controversial, what he says here.  There is, however, a liberation theology that unites Christianity and Communism, but I I'm just going to acknowledge it and move on.  I have no reason to doubt that the mission leadership believed this also, but we never discussed in specifically, except my sending mission in candidate's school.

Also, you will note that this is written by someone in my sending mission, although I didn't know the person (I might have met him, but I don't remember). 

***

In this next text, you'll see how the author grants a special status to the Soviet Union in its wickedness.

"Nowhere does the essence of communism come out more clearly than n the attitude of the Soviet State towards the Church.  In this respect it so closely resembles the attitude adopted by the Roman State towards the Early Church that this can hardly be a coincidence.  One cannot help wonderly whether the Soviet System is not basically the old paganism reappearing under a new guise.  The following comparison of how the Church has fared under both systems serves to illustrate the analysis under both systems serves to illustrate the analysis offered in the previous chapter." (p. 23)

The previous chapter discussed how the Soviet Communists had counter points to the Christians (e.g., something to offer instead of heaven).  The only reason I can think of for wanting us to see that the Soviet Union compares to Rome in its treatment of Christians is because everyone already agrees that Rome treated the early believers notoriously badly.  So if Mr. Bereford can prove that the Soviets treat believers similarly than we should be convinced that the Soviets are in the same category of Christian haters as the Romans.   So it's apparently important to Mr. Bereford that we know that, right?  That's how the Vienna mission thought, too, in my opinion, and that's the kind of thing you might include in your newsletters and deputation speeches, although it wouldn't be the main highlight, because you'd be talking mainly about what you do and what the mission does, but you might need to talk about the countries themselves too, and this is the kind of information you might share, with the Vienna mission's blessings I might add.  [I think the mission thought that way because it would fit their security push.  I don't remember hearing a lot of talk about Communist ideology per se however, though.]

I won't go through all the various comparisons between the Soviet Union and Rome.

Here's another one, written by a former professor of mine:

Hill, Kent R. (1989). The Puzzle of the Soviet Church. An Inside Look at Christianity and Glasnost. Oregon: Multnomah.

I'm in chapter 4 "Marxism and Religion," beginning with the section, "Are Marxism and Chrstianity Reconcilable?"

"On the basis of a serious study of Marx's specific views on religion, one must conclude that, in their core beliefs, Marxism and Christianity are irreconcilable.  To some, such a statement indicates a kind of knee-jerk intolerence, an absence of ecumenism, and hostility to pluralism... It is only necessary that a scholar take seriously the basic tenets of the orthodox statements of each position and then apply faithfully the 'law of noncontradiction" to decide whether those basic commitments are compatible with each other or not.


It is not a matter of ideology, it is a question of logic. If one system believes in God, and the other considers belief in a transcendent being wishful thinking, then there is a disagreement.  If one system asserts that human beings are inclined to evil and in need of God's divine help to overcome their inclinations, while the other system holds that human beings are basically good and capable of moving towards perfection in their own strength, then there is a basic disagreement.  If one system views human beings as a complex mix of spiritual and material components, while the other sees only material and economic factors at work, then again you have a fundamental disagreement.


Does this mean that a Marxist and a Christian cannot dialog together?  Of course they can.  There is nothing wrong with Marxist/Christian dialogue if what is meant by this is an honest and civil attempt to discover the common ground and differences which do, in fact, exist." (p. 77-78)

I'm including this because I really agree with this and this.  The Vienna mission would too in principle.  HOWEVER... at a different time, in a different place, because they were so security conscience that they didn't want anyone talking to any Communist unless they absolutely had to, such as if the border patrol asked them a question they absolutely had to answer.  Otherwise, stay away from anyone who could maybe, possibly in any chance be Communist.  Dialog is a no go. Uh-uh, no way, no sir.

See, that's the fear thing.  That's because they didn't trust God and they didn't know the Bible as well as they should.  It's too bad Peter Deyneka, Sr. wasn't around (he might've been dead by then - last I knew around 1984 he was in a nursing home) and give them one of his "much prayer, much power" sermons.  He would have told them, yes he would have, and he might have even had some black people shouting Amen! Preach it brother! As to the Bible...

2 Timothy 1:7

New King James Version (NKJV)

⁷ For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Forget the fear stuff - leave it behind; be wise, take reasonable precautions and trust God, but don't make fear your god, your prison.

They wanted me to fit into their narrow-minded security-obsessed world. There's no way.  I couldn't fit, I wouldn't fit, sorry.


I have other books, but some of it is hard to take exerpts out of. And the thing is that I think that a lot of the shared meanings were through the stories that missionaries told each other regarding their work and also their mission newsletters which they sent to each other, so that the different missions knew what each other were doing and so they developed a shared meaning regarding the mission field through what in library science we might call "gray literature."   A lot of them I don't know and couldn't have known because I never became an insider.

But I hope you get a bit of an idea.  I have to go because it's 4:00 and I haven't had lunch and I have physical therapy in an hour and I have to leave in 15 minutes.

***

I'm writing this the next day, having taken a second look at what I wrote.   I can't say whether or not the folk at the Vienna mission were deluded or had delusions, per se, although we all can in one way or another in the sort of every day sense.  If looked at that way, rather than in the lunatic way, they might have had some, perhaps.

From the standpoint of a secular person, it might not have been completely so delusional to take the security precautions they did.  After all, what they were doing was a real threat to Communist ideology and I did have information that one of the key missions working with us was probably receiving money from the CIA (for other work, not what we were doing there) and we did have two US military chaplains working with us.  So there would certainly be lots of reasons for the East Bloc governments to not like what we were doing and take active interest in pursuing us if they found out about us.

And it was true that this was the only place on the planet where there were so many missionaries from different missions together so if something happened all of the missions represented could be put at risk not just us (not to mention the people in the countries we worked with).  So I don't tend to think the mission was delusional.

I do tend to think that they have little faith that they don't know God and they didn't know the Bible well enough because they had gone so far as to use deception for security and the Bible clearly forbids that, so in such a case they lost their faith in God and put their faith instead in deception and in man's machinations.

So their shared meaning warped this whole thing so that they were somehow able to justify doing these things and new people could make that leap which is the kind of thing they had to grapple with - "can I accept this thing?  or can I not?" If they verbalize their doubts then someone will conveniently guide them through the process that will make it all clear to them until they are convinced that it is all okay and they can live with it and they can internalize the new norms and values of the group.  I never verbalized my doubts.  Instead, I verbalized that I had a lot of stress, so they sent me back to the States.  It's possible that not everyone grappled with it, I don't know. It's not as if this kind of thinking is rampant in churches back home, or that they probably came prepared for that kind of thing.  The thing is that you had to get into a regular ongoing deception mindset because you had to be in a constant security alert, and that meant deception; security virtually meant deception.    So you had to get used to the idea to becoming a deception machine.  I'm sure they don't tell the seminary graduates that before they get to Vienna.  But that's not the kind of shared meaning you might expect from a Christian mission under normal circumstances.

That's more or less a good part of why I couldn't submit to them.  It's not the only reason, but it's a significant part of why.

337. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 61 (Graham, pt. 7)

My migraine has been rather bad the past couple days, but I'll comment on the text and hopefully it'll come sense...

This section is "Organizational Loyalty" and it refers to the same figure discussed in the text I used last time.

"In Fig. 2b, organizational social rights are shown paired with organizational loyalty.  The logic underlying this proposition is that for whom an organization guarantees greater socioeconomic benefits are most likely to return the favor, that is to engage in behavior that protects the organization, enhances its reputation, and serves the whole rather than the parochial interests specific parts."(p. 260)

So basically this is saying that organizational loyalty on the part of the employee is formally recognized by the employer organization and the employee's social rights correspond to his/her level of organizational loyalty.  To refresh our memories, referring back to earlier portions of this text, "organizational social rights" include things like "claims to economic resources in the form of wage and salary income, bonuses, current fringe benefits, and pension contributions; social status symbols, such as office size and location, private dining facilities, etc." (p. 256)

Economic resources, for the most part wouldn't particularly be fitting in a faith mission setting, but certainly there were status symbols, as I mentioned earlier when I discussed this text.  But the thing here is, did organizational loyalty seem to correspond to organizational social rights in the Vienna mission?

I would say that at the beginning this is definitely so.  That is, you had to pass the socialization test to meet the minimum entry level of organizational loyalty to have any organizational social rights at all.  Even once you were hired, you didn't have any organizational social rights until you passed that hudle.  Or if you had any such rights, it was only on the assumption that you would pass that test, so you might have been given those rights  as an advance payment on that assumption.  That's what I think, based on my experience of the mission and what I observed.there.

The thing was though that the organization was limited how much benefit it could bestow on those who grew exceedingly in organizationaly loyalty.  This was begause it wasn't a regular employer nor a corporation.  I think there probably was a cap on loyalty, so that a boss could not be superceded, for example.  I'm not sure how this would have been handled though.  But I have a hard time imagining any of the department heads having a junior member that surpassed them in organizational loyalty (and I'm thinking of specific people).

The one area that may have allowed for this, however, is the information organization, but I doubt it, because this is too serious of an issue to relagate to the information organization.  This  is the kind of thing that could make individuals strong enough in the organization with no official power, so they could end out being an alternate voice, which is most adamately NOT something the mission would have tolerated.

***

"Proposition 5: As organizational social rights increase, so does organizational loyalty." (p. 261)

It's too bad this proposition doesn't say anything about what happens when social rights decrease, as they seemed to do with my case, although at times they seemed to increase a bit.  Here's my hypothesis, if you don't mind humoring me a bit:  As organizational social rights decrease, so does organizational loyalty.  There is a direct one to one negative relationship, or at least there should be.  If there are any social scientists out there who would like to test this hypothesis out, I'd be more than curious to find out the results.  I suspect, however, you'll have to work with a small sample, so it'll end out being a qualitative study.  You can prove me wrong there, however.

In my case, I was very loyal to ministry in Eastern Europe, and I started out very excited about the work of the Vienna mission (although not about the secretarial position).   Then they proceeded to show me the underbelly of the beast, if you will, and I continued to be loyal to ministry in Eastern Europe (which is why I ended out there again in the 1990s), but I was in shock, I guess, among other emotions and lost my loyalty, but felt loyalty to a faith mission system, wherein one goes around to all these churches and raises funds to go to the mission field for a certain length of time.  So I felt strapped to the Vienna mission, I think by that, and just being in shock and refusing to thinking that things were as bad as they really  were and that all these intelligent people really were caught up in this thing.  So I wasn't loyal as the mission would have wanted me to be, but there was some kind of loyalty that kept me there.  There was confusion, too.  Since I was an outsider and they didn't have written rules really, I didn't always really understand what was going on, especially towards the end, when it got worse.  I think they did it on purpose so I wouldn't be able to tell others about what it was like there. Like what I'm doing on this blog.

***

"Proposition 7. Strong relational ties to the organization are associated with an increase in interpersonal helping behavior directed at others in the organization." (p. 261)

 I can't see any reason to question that this was was clearly and very predominantly a part of the Vienna mission psyche and mutual internal relations.

I do have a question, however regarding the phrase "are associated with an increase in interpersonal helping behavior...".   Does this mean that the author is hypothesizing a correlation between the helping behavior and the strong relational ties?  It doesn't seem that the wording indicates that she is hypothesizing a cause-effect relationship.  It could be that she is using the "helping behavior" as the behavior to be measured, relagating "strong relational ties" to the "otherwise directly unmeasurable" pile.  But it seems that there have been other such concepts in this article, so, I find this theory untenable. 

It seems to me that the author (probably out of uncertainty regarding the relationship between the issues in question) used the phrase "associated with" to indicate correlation.  In this case, There is some kind of relationship between the two items, but just not cause-effect (probably).

This is all nice and good, but what does it have to do with the Vienna mission?  Everyone in the mission was expected to have strong relational ties to the organization.  Of course, the higher you got up the mission the more ties you might have, but even at the lowest levels members had, I think, pretty much just as strong ties, just not as many ties and ties on their level of the mission (i.e., lower down).  And everyone was involved in helping behavior, except that the more you moved up the socializational ladder (and it was a short ladder), the more kinds of helping behavior you could do, because you'd have access to more ways to help.  So helping could even be viewed as a privilige to be earned or, conversely, you could be disallowed from helping if you were in the outs somehow.  In that case taking the privilege away was a sort of punishment.

I'm speaking from my experience and how I viewed the mission during my stay there.  Others might have viewed things differently.

***

I'm going to end here, because I need to get on with my day.  Next time we'll continue with "Organizational Participation."

330. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 54 (Smircich, pt. 7)

Yesterday on my way down the hall of the hospital where I have physical therapy two nurses stopped me and asked if I was all right and walked me to the physical therapy center.  I didn't realize I looked like I felt as bad as I felt.  After a while you sort of just get used to feeling bad.  And I had just realized too that I had forgotten to pick up the new script for physical therapy, so it was a double whammy I didn't need.  Once I got to the Rehab center (another name for the physical therapy center) and had time to sit and wait for my session, since I was about 15 minutes early, I figured out it was probably mainly the migraine that was the culprit this time, although my g.i. maladies and my poorly functioning legs didn't help matters either.  But if my migraine was really that bad, that meant it was time to seriously consider the Botox option.  It's hard for me to keep track of all this and I really need to see my primary care doctor.  I'd really like to just fall in her lap and say, "I'm all yours, do your magic."  Maybe that's putting a little too much pressure on her though.  I'd really like to do that though.  I'm pretty frazzled, although I really do do my best.  I'm sorry, but I know my health issue affect my blog.

Speaking of which... I've been working on Easter cards.  I've been experiencing crises the last 3 Christmases (don't tell me you're surprised! c'mon!  it's my life!  what did you expect?  get real!) So I finally decided it looked like maybe I might be able to take a shot at getting out Easter cards.  I think I didn't order enough so I might have to either pare down my list or go out and buy more cards.  The thing is, though, that it's hard to find Christian Easter cards and I ordered these through a mail order company.  So I probably would jusr order another box of cards.

Right now I'm writing to one of my Russian friends who hasn't heard from me in eons and if you think my migraine affects my English you should see my Russian!  Oh, man, I just can't hardly write Russian letters - that's bukvi - as in alphabet letters.  Uzhas! Kashmar!  Katastroph! Okay, maybe I'm overdoing it just a bit, but it's pretty hard to deal with.  I'm at least able to think in Russian reasonably well.  It's just that I can't get my words down on paper.  So it might be easier to record an audio message and send it along with the card thereby sidestepping the writing problem altogether, except for signing the card and addressing the envelope, of course.  But no, I have to do things the hard way.  I wonder if she has a computer.... She most likely does at work if nothing else.

But back to the text...

***

The next and last perspectives we're going to look at are "Structural and Psychodynamic Perspectives."

"Culture may also be regarded as the expression of unconscuous psychological processes.  This view of culture forms the foundation of the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss.  It is also present in the work of organization theorists who are developing psychodynamic approaches to organizational analysis... From this point of view, organizational forms and practices are understood as projections of unconscious processes and are analyzed with referece to the dynamic interplay between out-of-awareness processes and their conscious manifestation." (p. 351)

This is just an introduction so I'm not going to say much here, but first of all remember that we're discussing "root metaphors," so here the root metaphor for organizational culture is that it is psychodymanic or that it is an expression of unconscious psychological processes.

I think that the Vienna mission would, to a great extent have liked this definition because it might not have liked people to think too much about it's culture and be overly conscious of the nuances of it as I was prone to be, or they might find issues that might not sit too well with them.  They were theologians, after all, and if they really knew and understood what was going on or they decided that the reasoning behind something was less than sufficient, then they could become dissatisfied or even, heaven forbid, start digging even further for answers to questions they might have.

So I can see that the Vienna mission top leadership might well have liked this perspective - keeping everything tucked nice and neatly in the unconscious realm.   But let's move on and see what else we can learn about this perspective.

***

"According to Levi-Strauss, the 'structures' [as in 'structural anthropology' - my note] solve problems, problems with symbols, ideas or categories, problems with the application of these symbols, ideas and categories in the social world, and problems with the applications of the applications...

If this approach to culture were applied to the study of organizations we could ask, What problems are solved by such persistent patterns in organizational arrangements as hierarchy.?...

From this perspective most organizational analysis would be criticized for being too limited in scope." (p. 352)

This is disappointing.  It looks like this perspective has practically nothing to do with the individual (except as a part of the whole), but looks mainly at the whole, the organization en toto.  So it looks at how the organization as a whole, addresses symbols and the like.

Let's move on and see if there's any potential for recovery of this perspective for helpfulness to me.

***

"The organization theorists working from the psychodynamic perspective and contributing to the development of a transformational organization theory share a concern for reconstituting social science inquiry so that it embraces a more complex vision of human nature, one that integrates unconscious processes with the more obvious concious processes.  Basic to this work is the belief in 'the existence of a deep underlying structure built into the ordering capacities of the mind, and  (the suggestion) that it is these capacities in which the 'psychic unity of mankind' consists." (p. 353).

So, if the structural anthropology perspective isn't a very good fit or very helpful in explaining my Vienna experiences, maybe the psychodyamic perspective is somehowat more helpful.

So let's dissect this a bit.  The basic activity here (besides sharing a concern "for reconstituting....") is the development of transformational organizational theory.   So theorists want their theory to influence the broader transformation organizational theory.  That is they want  "deep underling structure to build into the ordering capacities of the mind... intregrated with the more obvious conscious processes to be part of the transformational organizational theory.

Now, I think that this is something the Vienna mission administration could have lived with.  Based on my interactions with the top management (both in the USA and in Vienna, including the H.R. director), I think they would not be completely inept at using this method. 

I hope you get the picture here.  In addition to organizational change you also have routine personnel, management, and socialization processes.  In any case, the organization consisted of individuals with unconscious processes and "the more obvious conscious processes."  These needed to be integrated with each other... and integrated with the group... and it was management's responsibility to see that they were integrated.  In the case of the Vienna mission, which was a total institution, pretty much 100% conformity was expected.

For those who passed socialization and were fully accepted into the group, these then socialized others, etc., they internalized the group values and norms (which doesn't necessarily happen in all regular jobs).  But in the Vienna mission case, the individuals in the mission came to embody the "psychic unity," if you will, (along with requisite norms and values) that bound them to the mission.

Can you see how the Vienna mission might have been interested in this and may have used and / or even misused it?  Since they had virtually no oversight (I've addressed that issue more than once - see keyword accountability), it would have been very easy for them to abuse this.  And if you think all those seminarians on staff would have held them accountable, you are very, very naive, indeed.  (See keywoord accountability.)

***

That's all I'm going to discuss in this article.  All that's left of it is the conclusion, but there's nothing new there, so we'll start a new article next time.

329. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 53 (Smircich, pt. 6)

I have to go to physical therapy in a bit, so I'll see how much I can write now before I leave.

I messed up my finances this month, so I'm going to have to be more careful.  I really am gradually reigning things in, but the thing is that I'm trying to repurchase the things that were stolen from me, so that's messing things up.  I feel like the robbers are winning by ending out with the upper hand and me the loser.  That might be a stupid way of thinking, but that's the way I feel.  But then I bought some other things too.  For example, I bought a little folding seat that I can keep in the car and when I'm going to have to sit in line long I can put in in my purse and set it up and sit on it, which is very practical with my legs the way they are, so that really isn't a splurge, but something very necessary for my health.  And then I got a couple bonnets that you can put on and massage your head to use to "wash" your hair which should be very handy in the event I have another operation, which is very likely knowing me and it's been very difficult to wash my own hair and I never have anyone to help me do that, so I really need these.

Still, there werer some things that I didn't need as much as these...

Anyway,  I'd better get to the text.

***

The next section is titled "A Symbolic Perspective."

I think  anthropologists would really have had their work cut out for them at the Vienna mission on this one and I realy, really, REALLY would like to read a anthropologist's report from the symbolic perspective. 

"Anthropologists such as Hallowell... and Geertz... treat societies, or cultures, as systems of shared symbols and meanings. They see the anthropologist's task as interpreting the 'themes' of culture - those postulates or understandings, declared or implicit, tacitly approved or openly prompted, that orient and stimulate social activity..." (p. 350)

The keys to unlocking the understanding - my understanding, for example, of what was going on, was those pesky shared symbols and meanings.  And what's with the "themes" of culture anyway? How on earth was I supposed to figure that one out without understanding the shared symbols and meanings?  The declared and openly prompted symbols and meanings I could handle, but that's like saying I graduated from kindergarten, I think.  Whoopee!

 So I desserved a gold star and a nice little pat on the head, but that's about it and then I'd be puzzled about everything else and pretty much out of step with the other things, or hit and miss, guessing right simetimes.  Or I just gave up and marched to a different drummer disagreeing with their basic premises anyway in many cases.  And since I wasn't going to give them them them the total submission they seemed to want from their members, we were at a stalemate anyway.


In this case, I might have appreciated the insights of a symbolic anthropologist, but the mission would have liked the insights of an interrogator who could get tinto my head to let them know what I was really thinking.  They would  have like that, I'm sure.

[For those of you new to this blog some of this might not make a lot of sense, because it refers to some things I've already written about in several posts.  Sorry...]

***

"When this symbolic perspective is applied to organizational analysis, an organization, like a culture, is conceived as a pattern of symbolic discourse.  It thus needs interpreting... "reading" ... or "deciphering"..., in order to be understood.  To interpret an organization, a researcher focuses first on the way experience becomes meaningful for those in a setting. This is done by regard for the figure-ground relationships they maintain through their processes of attention, naming, and other patterns of action." (p. 350)

In a way, that is informally, I was doing this kind of thing when I realized the mission wasn't what I expected it to be.  When I said I did as I was told and  didn't complain but sort of just observed and tried to make out what was going on, this is the kind of thing I  mean.  I was drawing on my European Studies background but also my understanding of East European missions, which, although it wasn't as great as I thought it was, was substantial.

I didn't know all these anthropological terms when I was in Vienna though, although I've learned a bit about them since returning from Russia and my interest in qualitative research methods. 

***

Smircich describes  a few studies that use this approach, but these is one in particular that seems relevant:

"Van Maanen was concerned with how people decipher organizations so that they can behave appropriately.  This interest led him to focus on the process through which neophytes, in this case, police academy graduates, learned the meaning system maintained by their occupational group.


The focus of this form of organizational analysis is on how individuals interpret and understand their experience and how these interpretations and understandings related to actions. With this orientation, the very concept of organization is problematic, for the researcher seeks to examine the basic processes by which groups of people come to share interpetations and meanings for experience that allow the possibility of organized activity. The research agenda here is to document the creation and maintenance through symbolic action." (p. 351)

So I'm the police academy graduate.  So the big question is, how did I learn the meaning system of the Vienna mission?  If you've read this blog very long you probably know that I decided not too far into my tenure with the mission that I didn't agree with certain fairly key aspects of their "meaning" (i.e., values, etc.), so I didn't really "learn" them (as in "accept").

Moving right along, then, it might help to try to understand how I interpreted and understood my experience with the mission and how these interpretations and understandings related to actions.  I'm not sure if interpret and understood are two different concepts, but I'm going to just treat them as one to avid belaboring the point.  I think I understood the mission on different levels and different faces too and you had to know which one you were dealing with at any given moment.  Often it was clear by the context or the people involved, though.  But not always.  And then I didn't really undersand all the rules so I got things mixed up too.  There was the mission family face.  There was the external church face.  There was the external supporter face.  There was the external East Europe face.  There was the external East Eurupe teaching face.  There was the security threat face.  etc.  The thing was that each of these had protocols because they were potential security threats (as was anything, really).  So being socialized was like walking a field of landmines. 

So then what happens to those who don't come to share interpretations and meanings for experience that allow the possibility of organized activity? I guess presumably organized activity would be thwarted or at the very least be made difficult.  In the case of the Viennna mission it was impossible really because if I didn't share virtually ALL of their values (which I already said I didn't) I was a security threat in their system and the fact that they werer a total system to boot was an added problem.

***

That's it for the symbolic perspective.  we'll look at another perspective next time.