303. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 29 (Gray & Starke, pt. 8)

I keep forgetting to say that, in regards to the recent post where I said that I leaned more towards the side of assimilation in Russia and that I didn't association much with Westerners, it really is true that I didn't associate much with Westerners.  In fact, I spoke Russian mostly with the other English teachers even, I think mostly because they felt most comfortable with that, although there were some English instructors that this wasn't so with, but they were mostly in other cities so I didn't see them as much.  So when I came to the States my English was halting and it always took a few days to get up to speed and return to the usual use of idioms and the like.

But I mostly hung out with believers, so it's not like I became worldly or something.  Not all my friends and acquaintances were Christians, but my impression was that the Russian Christians who knew me respected the way I was able to keep my Christian testimony in those relationships.  And the city I lived in was called by the local a "big village" where word really got around and since I was about the first permanent (more or less) foreigner there I'm sure word really got around pretty quickly about my doings.  So I just wanted to clarify what I meant by "assimilation."  I wasn't perfect, but it's not like I left the faith or something; rather, it just had to do with the amount of contact I had with the West.

I'm not sure how effective my approach was.  Eventually I felt sort of burned out, like the problems that I was as being related to dad's work were taking too much of a toll and I was too tired of swimming upstream.  Some things I'll never know about what kind of impact I had, which is often true, when you think about it.  We don't know what kind of impact we have on people and then we have a chance meeting or something and learn something surprising that we never knew or had long forgotten but was so important to the other person.  But I do know that the women's ministry group I led, which consisted of women who were not Christians who were just interested in God and the Bible and wanted to know more and came to learn.  These ladies ended out several of them going to different churches I had suggested to them, such as the Baptist church, I know for sure some went to.

I'll talk more about this when I get to my Russian experience, but this was something I know had impact on these women's lives.  And I never had to use any deception to do it.  And did I pay a price?  You betcha!  I had a political marriage, lost a child, probably was close to death myself... I paid a big price, and not to mention the price of how it affected my birth family.  But I had a clear conscience and I wouldn't have changed that for anything.

**

Yesterday the 2 long-awaited canvas photo enlargements came in and so I hung the pictures on the magnetic wall in the den (aka 2nd bedroom).  I could have used maybe a dozen more earth magnets though, so there's a spot over my desk in the corner that's blank, but I know what I'd put in there, so when I have a little extra money to get the magnets I'll fill that space in.  I also need to pick out the photos to have enlarged to 8x10s for the photo divider as I didn't have very many 8x10s for it.  That will have to wait until I get through this financial crunch too, although I guess I could select the pictures in the meantime.  I also had gotten two post card display racks from a store display store and that fits in too on one end of the wall (away from the desk by the door to the room).  I've had a post card collection (just of post cards of places I've been to and ones people have sent me and a few odd others) since I was a young child, so I have a reasonable collection.  It was a nice, if too brief, reprieve to work on this project.  I really am discouraged with everything going on in my life.

***

Sometimes it's my diversions that seem to get more attention, and the Scriptural discussion of deception seems to be one of those.  That was an important discussion, so I don't mind that it seemed to draw extra attention.  But let's get back to the text for now...

We're still in the main heading "ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE," but now we're in the sub-heading "Changing Organzational Culture."

To summarize part of the introduction, the authors are assuming in the sub-section of the chapter that the leadership knows what kind of change they want and the authors are providing recommendations based on that assumptions.  

Also, they incorporate some rewards system methodology into their recommendations - the carrot vs. the stick.  Without reading ahead, I'm thinking that the mission in Vienna can only do so much via "carrots" and that would be the usual warm fuzzy belongingness, but otherwise, there would be more sticks up their sleeves to work with (take away warm fuzzy belonginness, bring on unexplained but somehow patterned difficulties with one's work, social pressure, etc. - I know because I experienced these first hand).  The carrots already existed though, so I think that they would have to take away the carrots and pressure that way or add new problems, rather than add by carrots like offering a raise or departmental party or something.

***

"Add New Members... For this strategy to be effective, the new members must be either large enough in number or powerful enough in position to become the dominant culture.  Otherwise, they will simply be absorbed into the old culture." (p. 451)

I can't see how this would ever have worked shy of starting over completely from scratch with a whole new organization, and that would have been imposssible because you had all the major players in that part of the world there, by way of missions involved in one way or another in that collective effort.

But the other thing is that this is also how my feeble hopes against hopes that the mission might somehow come to the table with me so we could "talk straight" and discuss our differences with the hopes of coming to some kind of an agreement... was all wrong.  I was a peewee playing in the major leagues (that's baseball language for non-Americans or non-baseball officionados) and I was just 1 against a plethora.  That is I was one against ca. 60 staff, 300 including family members, ca. 20 missions, who-knows-how-many the 20 missions represents, and even some people with connections to the U.S. military!  Not only that, but they had smart, powerful people.  

And what did I have?  Well, I did have something, but not enough to be a force of change with them.  In fact, I never really tried anything like insubordination to try to change the organization - I hate to think what kind of wrath I could have faced if I'd tried that!  However, I wasn't politicized yet - that didn't happen until during my stay in Russia when I did that research at the University of Minnesota trying to figure out what was going on in my life - that's how I got all these articles.  My friend their, Joan, was an influence too because she had come into the peace movement, but I had long before been questionning these things on my own too.  Then in my doctoral program and my social movement research, then I became more politicized, but I wasn't yet when I wasn in Vienna, so I was just thinking of myself and the mission and I was thinking of how off the mark the mission was.  But I wasn't thinking of making it my mission to change the mission, like an activist might.  I wasn't there yet.  I was still the conservative daughter of my parents.

  ***

"Implement Culture Shock. A culture shock is an event that causes an organization to seriously examine its culture..." (p. 451)

The irony of this one is that the military chaplian-H.R. director (who didn't have any medical qualifications and never attempted any formal medical diagnosis processes) accused me of having "culture shock" after I was only there 5 months (about 2 years after I'd spent 7 years in Europe under a variety of capacities with no problems and ca. 5 months a couple years before that, when the real problem I was having was with the mission and had nothing to do with Austria).  

I'm not in much of a position to speak on whether or how the mission might use culture shock as an opportunity for organizational culture change, but I suspect there was some of that with the fall of Communism in the East Bloc and the restructuring of the organization to focus on different countries, perhaps opening different offices and/or adding (or dropping) missions they worked with.  Based on my experience with the mission I would expect this to all happen in a top-down fashion, especially change related to the fall of Communism in the East Bloc because thet was so close to where I was both geographically and chronologically, so I'm pretty certain that change at that point would have been top-down and perhaps guarded while there was uncertainty, especially with so many people and organizations involved.  There's no doubt that these political events would have affected the mission's culture though, but there was rumor of interest in China even while I was there, so if they were going to go into other "closed countries" they'd have to keep security for that part of the work even if things opened up in other countries.  Still, it would have to have affected the mission culture somehow, but the leadership would have to have been the one to translate what the political events would mean for the mission and how they would affect the mission's culture.  The farther you move away from there in time and geography, however, the less certain I can be as to how they might have handled such things.

***

"Change the Chief Executive.  In addition to its potential shock value, changing the CEO can have a major impact on organizational culture." (p. 451)

HAH! hah-hah! heh-heh... yeah, right.  That's a good one.  It's not like it was Detroit or something where you can just send in a new CEO to Ford or Chrysler to bail out one of our failing gas guzzler auto industry giants or something.  Maybe we could sent Mary Kay over to Vienna to use her pyramid skills in the mission... or how about Bill Gates!   That would really be shock value, for sure, like all the missionaries would have heart attacks from the shock.  No, I think the CEO wasn't something you could just change like that, although my old boss, who was the no. 2 man at the time is the head honcho now, but he was being groomed for the position, so there was no shock value there. 

I don't think this would work because the missions on the board - the member missions all send a representative to the board - would have to agree that a new director was needed and then agree on the new director, but although it's possible that they're not all 100% unified on everything they're probably a pretty ingrown bunch for the most part and there would probably have to be something pretty bad going on for them to want to more or less impeach the current director.  And if things were that bad, then they'd probably have to be doing some other remedial work at the mission to do clean up whatever mess the old director left behind.  But while I think that things were a mess ethically as I've described, by their standards things were pretty much going just great.  

***

"Involve members. Since changing culture involves not only changing behavior patterns but also underlying assumptions, values, and beliefs, participative mechanisms are more likely to be successful at the attitudinal level. Culture change can be 'forced' if necessary and if the dominant culture is powerful enough, but enforcement is often a costly strategy.  Individuals resent having their culture disrupted and will often resist attempts to make major changes.  Participation and the associated communication processes that accompany it can often assist in reducing the resistance.  In other words, overt acceptance is preferred over covert compliance." (p. 451)

Assuming the mission did go through a culture change, for example, after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe I think it would have included some of these preferred elements because it would have been working with trusted and proven members (unlike myself, who had already left anyway).  

However, if you consider socialization as a sort of one-person culture change, then my experience might better be described in mostly the negative examples, as 'forced', etc.  I think the other secretary who came a few months before me did have some resistance but she eventually succumbed, although I am not sure what her mental processes were as to how she experienced that.  But I didn't succumb because there were enough very specific elements that I had knowledge about that I disagreed on, so I wasn't so easy to sway because those convictions were pretty strong and I never (to this day) found anything to change my thinking on them.

I think, however, that I was pretty open to different cultures, especially when you consider that my undergraduate studies was European Studies and that I had spent some time abroad.  So it's not exactly accurate to say that I resented having my culture "disrupted", although being forced and smothered in it, was something I'd never experienced before, even living abroad, like renting a room from a German lady while studying German in East Germany, where I was with locals all day except for some other students in class.  

But not only was there the issue of the organizational culture being forced on me, but also the strength of it ("if the dominant culture is powerful enough").  The dominant culture of the mission was powerful because 1) the leadership would tolerate no competing culture (or deviant individual for that matter), 2) because the culture was practically all-pervasive; and 3) because 3) the culture had teeth - there were real and present punishments that could be meted out to the socially deviant.  Probably the typical punishment would be some kind of social rebuke, but this could range from mild to unified castigation or worse.

Needless to say in my case there wasn't any relevant organizational change communication process to participate in, which didn't help the resistance issue.  But I'm not sure that anyone else going through socialization would have had this either.  Sometimes in this blog, in case you're new to it, there are times when I've had to try to decide it there was something different about me if everything else seemed the same but the outcomes were different for me.  So in this case maybe it was my familiarity and experience with things Eastern European and missions in that part of the world.  So other new missionaries without that background might have deferred to the mission leaders, to their bosses or mentors and acquiesced more easily, wherease I had that background and had different ideas and beliefs about them.  So even though none of us where given a chance to be involved in, say (real) two way dialog about our socialization, which should have increased our resistance to change, to socialization, the others ended out acquiescing to the socialization, whereas I didn't, or at least I didn't completely.

So then, the last sentence in this paragraph seems to rephrase this making overt equal direct (bidirectional) communication and covert equal no communication.  In the case of socialization I changing it a bit from the case of organizational change.  In socialization the organizational is changing the individual to assimilate into the organization (although this is an oversimimplification of the process).  In this process I think overt would have real meaningful bidirectional communication whereas covert would have more unidirectional communication with maybe some bidirectional communication, but limited or forced bidirectional communication.  On the other hand, in organizational change, individuals will be more likely to have overt acceptance if they are actively a part of the change process by being a part of it and communicating it to others.  On the other hand, if they are not an active part of the change process they will be more likely to have only a covert compliance to the change.

In fact, as we will eventually see, at the end of my time in Vienna, the secretary who was to be my mentor told me a couple times a story, sort of a parable that made me think that they thought of me as not submitting inside.  So I would be like the person who had the covert compliance.  If you look at the typd of socialization I've described for covert compliance - unidirectional communication with maybe some bidirectional communication, but limited orforced bidirection communication, then it fits.  That is.  Did the mission ever want to sit down at the table to talk turkey with me?  Are you kidding?!  I'm not sure they ever talked turkey with anyone in these terms, with basic issues of operation under question.  Of course, they never really knew what my beefs were, either, though.  Maybe it's just as well they never asked to sit down at the table with me.  They never thought to take me seriously.  I guess it never crossed any of their minds to think that maybe a blonde might actually have a smart thought or something, although they did have a blond on the woman's team.  So maybe it was a bias against secretaries.  Or maybe it was a bias against daughter's of men who worked in star wars...

In any case, according to this author, it follows naturally that I should have resisted change based on the fact that I was not given adequate participation in the communication process.  (And if you count the meetings with my boss... I don't think those count... because we never discussed anything that I thought came close to any of my concerns.)

The other question is, of course, how come I resisted and no one else seemed to resist, or at least didn't resist very long?  Well, I've discussed this elsewhere, and my answer above as about all I want to add to that discussion here.  

***

"Managers should not expect major changes in cultures over short periods over short periods.  Cultures are complex phonomena that are the result of complex social processes occurring over time." (p. 451)

Since the informal organization in the Vienna mission was created and managed by the administration it probably would have been easier for them to change the mission's culture than many other organizational cultures.  Another factor is that high level of education where a good 2/3 of the staff have higher education (mostly Th.M.) degrees and several others had bachelor and other degrees, so this might have made it easier to change the culture too.  In addition, the organization was so close knit and security conscious that that tight social bond could have provided extra leverage for cultural change if need be.  Factors getting in the way of speedy change would be the number of missions involved and the geograhical dispersion of the workers.   The authors assume that the informal organization is an organic process, but in the Vienna mission it was more like a social engineering process.

***

This is the end of the chapter (besides a few closing remarks that I'm skipping), so next time we'll start a different article or chapter from my organizational behavior file.  I feel like this one has been helpful in bringing out some good ideas. 

302. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 28 (Gray & Starke, pt. 7)

This morning I've worked a bit more on the initial post-remodeling cleaning.  I worked on baseboards in the kitchen and hall until I felt my stamina wane.  I also got a load of laundry in.

A couple days ago when I was making those bars I mentioned I realized I couldn't find my large food processor and I've looked high and low for it.  I found all the accessories - the extra blades, etc. - but not the unit itself.  The accessories I kept in a drawer apart from the unit itself.  Then I got to wondering if there were any other appliances I was missing and I can't find the deep fat fryer either.  Those aren't small things and I took everything out of their boxes and there are only a limited number of places they could be so I suspect the workers stole them from me.  I'm really on a tight budget now and when you add this to the things they did wrong or incompletely that I'm now going to have to pay others to undo or complete this is really not good.  I don't know if I have enough to pull together to sue them though and I'm not really sure I'm up to that either.  The thing is that going in to this remodeling I wanted to have someone who would oversee the process because I am not well and I feel the interior decorator really didn't do that and she is just copping out saying all she did was refer them to me and she has no other responsibility than that.  I'm sure she and her company consulted lawyers to come up with that, but I'm planning to post bad reviews of her based on the kind of workers she refers.  I can't get the workers to come in and fix their work, especially the plumber/electrician, and the interior decorator isn't doing anything to go to bat for me at all.  And the interior decorator is with a large furniture company with many branches across the country.  I submitted a complaint complaint with pictures to the store and am waiting for a response from them too.

I'm waiting now for repair people to come to fix my new refrigerator as the ice maker isn't working.  It's under warranty, so there's no charge for me, though.  They're supposed to come before 1:00 and I have a 3:30 appointment with the new cardiologist.

But back to the text...

***

The next main heading is "ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE."

"Organizational cultures vary tremendously and can have a profound impact on the behavior and performance of an organization. In using the concept of organizational culture, emphasis is upon understanding the nature of a specific culture so that purposeful efforts can be made to change the culture to achieve organizational goals.  In this section we will define the concept, diagnose the defining characteristics of organizational culture, describe the effects that culture can have upon organizational performance, and make recommendations for changing organizational culture." (p. 445)

In the Vienna mission organizational culture was particularly complex and also particularly critical.  The complexity was due to the fact that the workers were on loan to the mission from some 15 or so missions, all with their own cultures, plus there were were a few other missions on the board that contribured in other ways to the functioning of the mission (such as currier service bringing textbooks to the students in Eastern Europe).  So each worker in the mission was caught in a web of their relations back home, their sending mission, the Vienna mission to which they were on loan, and perhaps the country they worked most closely with, if they were in a position that that was relevant for.  And the mission as an organization itself faced similar cultural anomalies and ties.  Departments within the organizatino might also have it's own uniue configuration as well.  The security issue, and the importance the mission and its various constituents put on security, made organizational culture particularly important as a security issue and a security tool, more than a productivity tool, I think.  That is, missionaries came to Vienna revved to produce and I doubt highly that productivity would have been much of an issue, other than perhaps directing the energy into effective channels, so I doubt you would have had to use organizational culture much for productivity reasons in the usual sense in the mission, yet I dare say that organizational culture was used (that is, did not just happen, but was intentionally used and encouraged by management) in the Vienna mission.  So there must have been a different reason, other than productivity, for its use.

***

The first sub-heading under this main heading is "Organizational Culture Defined."

"Organizational culture... can be defined at one level as 'the shared philosophies, ideologies, values, assumptions, beliefs, expectations, attitudes, and norms that knit (an organization together.' The key term in this definition is the word shared.  There are many values, assumptions, beliefs, etc. that exist in organizations that are not widely shared.  The ones that define the unique characteristics of the culture are therefore widely held and dominant... However, individuality is suppressed in very strong cultures as individual assumptions and values are subordinated to those of the stronger culture.  If intolerable confliect exists between the two value systems, the individual will likely leave the culture and find one that is more compatible with his or her value system." (p. 446)

Obviously (at least to me it's very obvious), the Vienna mission was a "very strong culture."  I think I couldn't really accept that the mission was so totally demanding until I started my master's studies in adult education and prepared to try to go to Russia for ministry that way.  Before that I was still emotionally holding on to and grappling with a tiny modicum of hope that maybe I was wrong.  But after that I finally accepted that no, I was right and I just had to move on and give up on them (and virtually all missions to that part of the world).

I have no idea what it's like now... I mean, obviously it's not the same for working in those countries, but the mission now works in Muslim countries or China, for example.  Does it still work under these same principles as when I was with it?  Of course, there's the issue of my dad that muddies everything, so we don't know if I just got "special" treatment because of his work.  Still I did see that other secretary seem to struggle and based on what I saw there it did seem like it was a total institution.   I would like to see the theological underpinnings for total institution organizational style in mission work.  They have enough theologians on staff, so surely they must have someone there who could write a thesis about that.  I'd like to see what kind of biblical gymnastics they have to go through to justify that.   It's probably right up there with their ends-justifies-the-means pragmatism (pardon my skepticism).

***

The next sub-heading is "Characteristics of Organizational Culture."  I've already said a lot about this elsewhere in this blog and this text doesn't really add anything new so I'm going to skip it.

The next sub-section, "Effect of Culture on Organizational Performance," promises to offer some new insight, however, on the Vienna mission.

"The impact that organizational culture will have on the organization is a function of three factors, direction, strength and pervasiveness.  Direction refers to the path indicated by the organizations's culture.  The direction may be the positive (that is the culture facilitates the accoplishment of the company's goals), or the direction may be negative (i.e., the culture hinders the attainment of goals)...


The pervasiveness or homogeneity of the culture is related to the degree to which a culture is characteristic of the organization.  Organizations typically have a number of subcultures within various divisions or departments.  If the organization is dividted into relatively autonomous units, these subcultures may be quite different and distinct.  Different subcultures can also exists within different occupational subcultures and the greater their strength, the less homogeneous the overall organizational culture will be.  Theis in turn reduces the impact that organizational culture will have on organizational performance.


The strength of the culture is defined by the pressure it can exert on organizational members.  Strength is largely affected by the length of time the culture has existed and turnover among members...  " (p. 448-449)

Direction is clear - organizational culture was a top to bottom affair.  Once the cultural machine was in place (and continually maintained via regular formal meetings and informal interactions with leadership) then appropriate others could take initiative within that framework to do cultural things (in keeping with the culture) but it was the leadership that were in charge and they were the ones who would make any corrections in the culture as needed, for whatever reasons.  It would have been at the highest leadership levels that the purposes and goals of organizational culture would have been set, although this could have been a somewhat ad hoc process where initially they just started with some kind of a mishmash of the policies used by the founding missions and then the culture evolved as needed and as other stakeholders became involved.  This is how I suspect the mission developed it's organizational culture, in broad-brush terms. 

Having said this, however, I think there are indoubtedly examples where culture was not exactly developed top-down.  However, it depends on what you mean by top-down.  For example, I'm not sure how the women's group got started, but chances are it was founded by a female high up on the food chain like a wife or wives of a leader / leaders within the mission.  Because of who she was the wife of, she was automatically in a high posotion as far as women go (especially when you don't count the womens ministry team, which consisted of 2 Th.M. -bearing instructors, one of which was a department head on par with any other department head). But if I had tried to start something like that I'd have been laughed out of town because I didn't have the appropriate standing, although someone in good standing and with power/influence after me might well have succeeded in doing what I couldn't.

Regarding pervasiveness and homogeneity, this was strong in the mission.  There were some differences mostly evident in the country teams and in the USA office (where textbook printing was done).   But there were a lot of things that brought us all together so we shared a lot (meetings, social events, etc.) as a group which tended to help reinforce commonalities and shared stories, I think.  We shared each other's joys, stories, and funny events and prayed about concerns and upcoming issues and trips.  But there was also a lot of working together across departments to that we really got to know first hand a little of what the different departments were like and were doing and that helped to mitigate any differences as well.

The country groups had to be able to work well within the country they specialized in and so they could tend to take on traits of that nationality sometimes, but I don't think that the administration would have tolerated that or any other kind of distinctiveness or diviciveness to get in the way of our unity, as that was very important to them.  They didn't like the individualism, but I don't think they liked groups to stick out any more than they liked individuals to stick out, so they had to make sure that everyone was unified under their umbrella (cultural and otherwise) and they just wouldn't tolerate any kind of non-unity, although they would tolerate some measured differences necessary to carry out the work, but these needed to be kept under the dominion of the large group unity.

The strength of the mission culture on individuals was great but not unlimited.  It was a total institution but there were some limits.  When we think of total institution we usually think of places like the military or prison.  Both of those places are hard to leave and have their members relatively isolated from society, although not all prisons and military situations are equality this way, of course.  The Vienna mission isolates its members more than many prisons and military situations, if you think about it.  I am talking about isolation first of all from what is known and familiar.  The missionaries were far from home in a land that spoke a language that more often than not the new missionary didn't know at all and they were completely dependent on the mission to help them get along in the new culture as well as in the new work.  But when you think about my experience where the mission actually censored my prayer letters, then there was also that kind of isolation and the pressure to attend the English-speaking church and things like that, so there were those kinds of pressures too that served to isolate the missionary into the world of the mission that the mission could control.

Also, even though it could isolate the missionary, and although there were a lot of ways it could exert pressure on the individual, there were limitations.  It couldn't use some of the things the military, prisons or even regular employers use, for example.  The military tribunal, solitary confinement and getting written up wouldn't work in the mission setting, especially for issues not directly work related or involving gross moral misbehavior, for example, which could be treated as regular human resource issues.  So they had to find other ways to exert pressure on ist members,  especially, I suppose, it's deviant members such as myself.

I guess I never really thought I would have to deal with such a mammoth organization (involving so many organizations!) with such an apparent definition of (socially) deviant.  I thought they would look to the Bible for a definition of "deviant", but then, as I've said before, I'm an idealist in the vein of St. Augustine in that I think given a choice as to which is ultimately the most "real," the physical world or the spiritual world, I'd have to say the spiritual, and that is where I'd try to take my guidance from, (especially in ministry!).  Pragmatists, on the other hand, are realists, and I've already shown how the mission was pragmatic (the ends justifies the means, one type or aspect of pragmatism), but it's a lot easier for me now so many years later to put this all together and see it so clearly.  Back then I was just shocked and couldn't believe that they really operated they way they seemed to be operating (although even then I was piecing some things together, but it was all very emotionally loaded  because of the consequences on my life, even though I was able to rationally think through and piece together some things).

So the thing is they had developed these views of (social) deviance (for within their group, which is what we've been talking about) and some of their values based on pragmatism (ends justifies the means) and they exerted pressure on me to accept their values, but I was an idealist and didn't agree with their values and their standard for deviance. I disagreed with their pragmatism because of my idealism and it's biblical roots, which says that what they were doing was wrong (discussed elsewhere).  I'll just say that a major part of the issue was their living a life of deception, which is completely antithetical to what God is about.  Since I don't think haven't documented that - that their kind of deception is antithetical to Scripture -  here are a couple verses to mull over:

Titus 1:2
In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began

Remember Peter being asked if he was one of the followers of the detained Jesus and him denying it 3 times (before the cock crowed)? Well, according to this Titus passage, this is something Jesus wouldn't have been caught d... well, wouldn't have done period.  Backtrack a bit to His questioning before the Sanhedron, where He was asked to comment on the popular belief that He was the "Son of God" what did He say? "You say that I am" and similar type answers upon repeated questioning.  He didn't lie like Peter did, right?  He wasn't deceptive and He didn't deny it, right?  Well, don't just take my word for it...

Luke 22

⁶⁶And as soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes came together, and led him into their council, saying,
 ⁶⁷Art thou the Christ? tell us. And he said unto them, If I tell you, ye will not believe:
 ⁶⁸And if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go.
 ⁶⁹Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God.
 ⁷⁰Then said they all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye say that I am.
 ⁷¹And they said, What need we any further witness? for we ourselves have heard of his own mouth.

Here Jesus addresses the attitudes of His questioners and when He finally answers their question they understand that He is saying that He is the Son of God.  It was enough to condemn Him and send Him to the cross... 

The detractor would undoubtedly point out that Jesus' mission was different from ours (He had to die for our sins), but the fact remains that His ethic should not be different from ours, at least I am not aware that we have any (Scriptural!) mandate to deceive for the sake of ministry. 



John 18

¹⁹The high priest then asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his doctrine.
 ²⁰Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. 

You could say that Jesus worked in the then equivalent of a "closed country" in as much as He'd have had a difficult time applying for a missionary visa there.  Chances are the Jews would have nixed it.  He didn't have to apply for a visa, however, because he was a born native (i.e., ethnic native), but He suffered for the truth, as in paying the ultimate price for it.  But He never waivered as far as the message or what the truth was.  Sure He used parables, but if the purpose of using parables was to protect Him from harm He did a pretty crummy job of it and I think some workers at the Vienna mission could have helped him out there it that was something He was concerned about.  But maybe it wasn't something He wasn't concerned about.  Just maybe.

That being said, however, Jesus knew all along that the Jewish leaders didn't particularly like him (how many diatribes can you find in the Gospels against the pharasees and sadducees, for example?), sometimes He eluded capture when it wasn't "His time" yet, but everyone always knew who He was and what He was about and He was always open in He ministry.   He never pretended to be something He wasn't nor pretended not to be something He was.

Let's take a peek at a few other Scripture passages dealing with deception.



Proverbs 27

 ⁶Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

This is how I felt when I got a post card from the mission management a few months a few months after leaving the mission.  I hadn't heard from anyone else since returning home.  It felt like the "kiss of an enemy" and deceitful, very hypocritical.  I think I still have that post card.

Romans 3

 ⁹What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;
 ¹⁰As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
 ¹¹There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
 ¹²They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
 ¹³Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
 ¹⁴Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
 ¹⁵Their feet are swift to shed blood:
 ¹⁶Destruction and misery are in their ways:
 ¹⁷And the way of peace have they not known:
 ¹⁸There is no fear of God before their eyes.
 ¹⁹Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
 ²⁰Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
 ²¹But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
 ²²Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
 ²³For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 

So the point here (i.e., the reason I'm using this passage) is that deceit is part of the sinful nature, the old self (for the Christian viewpoint), and something that we should have left behind and not be involved with any more.  No one is excluded from this description, so the only issue is whether, as a Christian, you are currently still in this lifestyle or if you've left it behind (or how totally you've left it behind).

 II Cor. 4

²But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 

This the Apostle Paul speaking about himself and his coworkers.


Here we have three different things as negatives:
1. dishonesty
2. walking in craftiness
3. handling the word of God deceitfully

The dishonesty comes about in specific lies, I think, whether it be to the supporters (remember the censored prayer letters - is that dishonesty?) or to border guards or to missionary kids' teachers.  Walking in craftiness to me makes me think of a lifestyle built around deceit, which the mission had, complete with social controls, mission-approved narratives, etc. And, to justify some of the mission's methods, values, etc. and in counseling team members it may have been guilty of handling the word of God deceitfully as a tool to use for their ends. (I've discussed this latter issue in some detail elsewhere in this blog).

In contrast, there are three positives:
1. manifestation of the truth
2. commending ourselves to every man's conscience...
3. doing this in the sight of God

Two and three might be one thing,with two parts; I could take it that way too.  First of all you have to start with the truth.  There's no getting around that, if you don't have the truth, if you're not dealing with and expressing the truth then you might as well stop there and you're up in the negatives list.  There's no way around that one.

Then you are open with the truth an let individual's conscience discern whether you are above board, whether you are indeed manifesting truth or not.  This means the individuals have to have freedom to make these kinds of discernment; they can't be in the kind of emotional bondage that I found in the Vienna mission.  There really wasn't freedom there to disagree or come to the decision that they were wrong.

Then, like it or not, this is all done in the sight of God and He is going to be the ultimate judge of whether or not I am truthful, the Vienna mission is, was, and has been truthful, the, etc. We can't do much about this, because it's going to happen and it is happening even right now as I right this and whenever it is that you read this.

Which side are you on?  Which side do you want to be on?  As for me and my house (that would be me and me alone because I'm single), I will serve the Lord... and I will do my best, living in the Spirit, to walk according to the second list.  

***

This has been a long, long post, at least regarding how long it's taken to write it. I started before going to my doctor appointment and now it's 11:40 p.m.!  Of course, I haven't been working at it the whole time, but I have put a lot of time in it nevertheless.   I didn't start off planning to go off in the deceit Scripture tangent, but there it is, and it's a worthwhile addition, I think, to the blog, to the subject at hand.

Goodnight.

P.S. I revised this a bit the next morning 2/9/112

301. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 27 (Gray & Starke, pt. 6)

I spent most of the day working on putting together a complaint, with the photos for documentation, regarding problems with work done on my condo.  I thought I'd just spend the morning on that and taking photos of the condo for my Facebook page (one friend especially had requested them).  So it was sort of frustrating to spend so much time on that, but I needed to get it done.  Then by the time I got back from getting a few groceries it was already 5:00.

I've been trying to figure out why my robotic vacuum hasn't been running long so I was on the phone and e-mail about that a bit in the early evening and worked on my potted plants on the balcony and also did some cooking.  I made a German potato salad and also some "chocolate-chip macadamia nut bars with shortbread crust."  They're both new recipes and both keepers, which is nice.  It's inevitable that sometimes when I try a new recipe it's not the greatest but these two are both really good.

***

I found my sermon notes, but then pastor e-mailed me his notes too, so I'd like to revisit the tentmaking issue to add to what I said last time.

So basically he used pronouns and developed it from there, as ways to and not to relate to the city (in his sermon) or (in the case of tentmaking) the country people.  Since he was thinking of a church specifically (i.e., our church) we have to change it a bit to fit tentmaking.

Church IN the city - focus just on what happens inside the church, the programs.  I suppose tentmaking could get too much into programs, but somehow I don't thinking that's the main concern.

Church AGAINST the city - it's bad and irredeemable; take a stand for Jesus... Now this is where tentmaking would come in.  That is, this is the tentmaker's stance against the host state if nothing else, which is why they are willing to use deception (why don't they just come straight out and apply for a missionary visa?).

Church OF the city - assimilation, becoming like the city.  I don't think that this is generally the issue either, although it could be in particular cases.  Out of these three poor choices, I would have been the closest to this one in Russia, mostly because I didn't have much contact with Westerners.


Then Pastor says we should live FOR the city.  We should not work for our own sakes (which would be to assimilate) nor for the tribe's sake (which would be to disdain the city) but for the city's sake.  Remember, we're in a city here, and pastor was preaching to us regarding how we should be and minister in the city where we live, but we might subsitute "city" for "country" in the case of tentmaking.

This is really good and really important and I don't know how to stress it adequately.  The thing is that how can you go somewhere using deception, which right away shows lack of respect and perhaps disdain, and expect to have a flourishing ministry?  Maybe it's possible that you can be used anyway, but unless you can picture God using deception and disdain I think those are probably sins.

***

Okay, this next section is 2 pages long, which is lucky for me because it's already 1 a.m. and I have a long day tomorrow.

The section title is "PROBLEMS WITH THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION."  This section is mainly irrelevant because the mission administration had such a tight grip on things that problems weren't allowed and if problems did crop up they would have been snuffed out or at least quarantined pretty quickly.

The first sub-section is "Social Costs."  This section deals with there being too much social interaction on the job.  I never was aware of this being a problem.  There was a certain amount of this going on, but I never knew of it being a problem or interfering with anyone's work or being abused or such.  Everyone was conscientious about their work and I wasn't aware of any slackers.

The next sub-section is "Resistance to Change." In the case of the Vienna mission, I don't think that the informal organization was the biggest issue for resistance to change.  Rather, I think it was more a problem of getting all the various and widely dispersed parties on board for change to happen, depending on what the change was.  For example, if it was a very major change, it could involve all the 20 some missions, workers living in the East Bloc countries and the US printing office, or even translators in the East Bloc countries.  Since the informal organization was the brain child of the administration I don't think that it would have been much of an issue regarding resistance to change.

The final sub-section is a little more interesting for my purposes and is titled "Staffing Inflexibility."

"...The requirements of the informal organization are factors such as personality, social background, or other status attributes.  If a particular individual does not fit into the existing social organization, productivity will likely suffer.  In short, there are two types of requirements for effective staffing, techincal and social." (p. 445

I suppose you might guess who it was that maybe didn't fit into the existing social organization... Before I arrived in Vienna I had no idea that that would be the case, that I wouldn't fit into the social organization.  But it's very clear that the work I was given was way less than what I could have done, so my productivity alone was under par, although I think my standards were probably much higher than the mission administration's standards for me.  However, the mission also had to divert attention to me since I was not progressing along a normal path (although I'm not sure how they wanted me to progress - I just know my actual path wasn't normal by any standard), so that might have decreased productivity for certain individuals who had to attend to me.

This text, though, is talking about someone who does not fit into a social organization.  There were several ways I did not fit into the mission, but I think that it's possible to say that this is one way I did not fit in.  This is especially true if you consider my primary identity group, the secretaries, which I didn't identify with enough.  I think that fitting into that group was probably a key to fitting into the whole organization because that pegged me as far as who and what I was and by not fitting in well enough I became sort of a mystery that they didn't maybe know what to do with, socially speaking, because I needed a social home - a social group - to fit in to.  I hadn't really thought of it quite like this until now, but it's possible that there was some of this type of thinking going on there regarding me.

***

That's it for tonight.  Next time we'll start in on organizatonal culture.  That should be fun.  I have two doctor's appointments tomorrow.  One is the allergy doctor and he should check if there's anything to this neverending moderate chest congestion and then the other is the neurologist and I'll find out about the results of my lumbar MRI.  My legs are worse today but they were pretty good the past few days until today again.  When they're bad it's tiring to walk because it takes so much effort to walk.

300. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 26 (Gray & Starke, pt. 5)

I'm almost ready for church, but one thing I want to write before I forget is that the "Stateside" (U.S.) offices/branches/representatives of the mission and member missions did have bona fide standard formal organizations.  So it was just the Vienna office (and the "in-country" - i.e., East European - resident missionaries) that didn't have what you'd expect in a normal formal organization.  However, that being said, if a mission specialized in "closed countries" chances are even their "home offices" had some of this going on, but not to the level found in Vienna.  That is because they would have to have at least a certain amount of transparency for government tax purposed (I.R.S.) and they couldn't get away in the USA with the measures they used in Vienna even if they wanted to maintain strict security there too; social mores wouldn't accept it and it would raise too many eyebrows in society at large (if word got out) if not in the Christian community.

***

Okay, I'm writing this now after church (the preceding was written before church).  Unfortunately, I lost my sermon notes, but I asked pastor for his notes.  But in the meantime I think I can remember at least a primary issue regarding tentmaking, and then I'll revisit it when he sends me his notes.

I've written about tentmaking before and there's a keyword for it, so you can pull up the previous discussions on it.

The main text today was Jeremiah 29:4-14.  The the primary take-away from that text is that we are supposed to pray for and work for the success of the land we are strangers/pilgrims in, although we are to live according to the values of our heavenly citizenship and not the values of our earthly residence.

I could say this better if I had my notes in front of me, but the issue just hit me as he was saying all this that tentmakers - what modern missions call tentmakers, I mean - generally would not be living according to this principle.  That is they would not be praying for and working for the success of the land they go to work in.  Not hardly!  Rather, they are more likely to pray for the demise of the country or regime or country.  So this is another issue I could add to my tentmaking article.

For the reader who is not aware of this, "tentmaking" in the last 100 years or so has come to mean someone who uses a profession to get into a country that otherwise won't let religious workers in.  So these missionary-tentmakers use deception in hiding their missionary intentions even when they might have an intricate and even sizable mission agency backing them, even if only very surruptitiously.  So it can be quite an underworld of these missionaries and more or less invisable organizations - at least they're invisible within the country, or have some other persona in the country.  In this kind of a setup they're more or less an antithesis to the government, something contrary to the government, even illegal.  How hidden this all might be would depend on the country, of course, but the very fact that it exists like this at all really irks me as being not a biblical way of doing things at all.

I spoke with pastor about this after the service and at least he did seem in agreement about the tentmaking application of his sermon, although he was thinking more in terms of local outreach.  If I were healthier it would be easier to be more involved in ministry, but then I'd be working too.  Maybe we'll figure out some way I can do something reasonably within my limitations.  My faith in Christianity is gaining a glimmer of hope through this church.  So often I've felt like I'm just a oddball or a voice in the wilderness where all these churches are wilderness to me.  I don't think pastor thinks that way though.  He's not disillusioned like I am.  I'd really like to meet Jacques Ellul though.  I should read more of him, I think.

***

The next sub-heading in our text under the main heading "CONCEPTS OF THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION" is "Communication Systems." 

I have become convinced that communication is super critical and the first job where I'm living now is a fantastic example of that.  When I was brought here for an interview (I'm a librarian) and during a group interview with the entire cataloging department I directed a question to the department head about her approach to departmental communications.  She said she didn't really have one that it wasn't really that important and she just made sure everyone knew what they needed to.  Whoa!! Red lights went off big time in my head and when I got back home I mulled that one over big time.  No communication system?  C'mon! You can't be serious!  Well, let's see what this text has to say about that, before I go on and on about my job here... basically I think that informal communication leaves the door open for more manipulation and formal communication, and that's exactly how she operated.  When she did call meetings it was ad hoc and unpredictable.

***

"We have previously described the informal communication system known as the grapevine.  It is important to view this system within the context of power and status systems, as the three together constitute the major social processes that are characteristic of informal organizations.


The general principles of informal communication systems closely parallel the concepts discussed in power and status systems.  In other words, interpersonal communication tends to follow established status hierarchies, and communication content is influenced by power relationships." (p. 443)

I decided to break this section up because it would be too much to discuss at once.  So, just to reiterate what is stated in the text, the grapevine, power and status systems are what comprise the informal organization.

Status:  how the group values the individual, based on such things as demographics, skills, knowledge, congeniality, or whatever the group values (or disdains, for a lower status)

Power: the ability of a person to influence others in the group; there are different kinds of power

Grapevine: status affects flow, but power relationships affect content of communication.

So going back to Vienna, when I first arrived there I was (as I've said before) overwhelmed by the welcome I received, so I felt valued, but I don't think I let it get to my head, especially since there soon came to be glaring inconsistencies in my treatment.  Since I wasn't given any work to do, and only computer manuals to read, I felt my skills were underappreciated and that this was intentional (even then I thought it was intentional because I'd offered to take a computer class and the North American office of my sending mission had passed my offer on to Vienna, who had responded that it wasn't necessary, that I could learn on the job.)  So I felt of moderate status as the secretary of the vice president, but of very low status based on the work itself.

Regarding power, I had no idea I'd come to Vienna being so powerless because in other circles I was reasonably accepted as competent and versed in work in Eastern Europe so now to come there as a career missionary and be in a position where I felt like I had almost no power was difficult.  The main area I might have had some power was socially by initiating social events, but as far as anything in the office I felt powerless almost the whole time and certainly in the beginning, although in the beginning I was trying to watch and figure things out too.

So now on to the grapevine.  Where would I have fit in the grapevine?  The thing is that in Vienna the grapevine had another aspect to it and that was the issue of trust.  If you weren't a trusted member, (i.e., one of the initiated) than you probably weren't even part of the grapevine, or maybe just part of it for certain inconsequential or non-security issues.  But I also think that the grapevine could be used there for disinformation and misinformation as needed, and that would have to come from management, I'm sure and probably just travel down carefully guarded communication paths.  I think I was a victim of this kind of thing at the end of my time in Vienna though.  But than are we dealing with the formal or informal organization if it comes from management?

I think the status thing, now that I think of it, was part of what really killed me emotionally.  It was like they never really cared that I got a B.A. in European Studies with a minor in Russian, did a short-term ministry with Russian emigres in the States one summer, spent 2 years in Bible School, did a short-term ministry in Eastern Europe one summer, volunteered at a research center, studied German in West Berlin and did some things in Eastern Europe, visited a ministry team in Hamburg, etc.  They didn't care that I was serious about this work and ministry and they really didn't give a rip about it or about me.  I was a big 0 on their status rung and it didn't feel like there was anything I could do to change that.

But then if you go home people probably think that, oh well, she's a woman anyway and she'll just get married and settle down and forget this all happened and everything will be okay.

Didn't they understand that this was my life?  I gave everything for this and this is what I wanted to do and that's why after I returned home a year later I turned around home and I went back to school and I was able to go back to Russia (still the USSR then ) without any mission to tell me I'm a big 0.

So what happened then?  I met with politics.  Thanks, dad.  Star wars trumps missions any day, doesn't it, now?  My dad was a program planner & "controller" at Boeing.

That's my life in a nutshell.  Let's continue.

***

"Although power and status systems are first established through communication as the social system evolves, once the system is in operation, communication tends to be the result of status differences rather than the cause of them.  Subordinates, for example, communicate differently to managers than to peers, both because the manager is in a position to exercise authority and power and because the manager has higher status than the subordinate. " (p. 443-444)

I think that since I was never firmly established in a position in the mission they probably had to do a fair amount of the "establishing." Exceptions, however, to this would be when I was temporarily filling in for someone or in the position before I left the mission, in which cases they wouldn't really have needed to establish me per say although maybe what they would have done would have been something like pseudo-establishing or something.

Another thing is that I'm generally not very intimidated by authorities and if I really want to I'll come up and talk to someone even if they might otherwise be thought of as having great authority.  I mean, really, look at what I'm doing with this blog - I'm taking on some pretty great minds - so I can't be too timid, right?  (Although, that doesn't mean I might not be in person.)

Here are examples of my not being timid.

One time when I was living in northern Indiana a few years back I attended a church and I believe in the separation of church and state because I think it corrupts the church and biases the state to that it doesn't serve everyone equally as it should (that's a nutshell version of why I believe this).  So I sit down in the pew and open the bulletin and what should I see but an insert from the state version of the Moral Majority.  Other than that I liked the church, so after the service when everyone shakes the pastor's hands as they leave I asked him about this and we ended out having a bit of a talk about it and I think I maybe got him thinking more about it in ways he hadn't before.  It sounded like he just used the flyers because everyone else did too kind of thing.

Also, in Russia one time I was curious about the central office of the Znanie, the adult education organization.  I had finished my adult education master's degree while living in Russia and had attended and given a presentation in Moscow at a conference, so I wanted to see the headquarters.  When I got there I was actually invited to meet the director and had a chance to sit and chat with him about adult education in Russia.

Similarly, when I was living in Seoul, South Korea about 10 years ago now I was trying to find an adult education program there - that is where they trained professionals.  In my search I met some very interesting people.  I joined ASPBAE and had to have a local current member vouch for me so I met a director of a women's shelter, but her membership had lapsed, so then I met a woman who had created these literacy programs for women all over the country.  And so much more... I even went to the Seoul National University of Education, their top education school and spoke with some leadership there and got some leads.  Very fascinating, let me tell you.

So I'm just telling you that I'm not timid and I don't care whether you're President Obama or someone living on the street.  But, of course, if a communication system doesn't operate like that then I could be asking for trouble.

Ostensibly, communication was very open in the Vienna mission, the administration had open doors, etc.  But there was a limit to that and there were certain things what were communicated to certain people, and undoubtedly along certain channels.  Since I was never really an insider, however, I can't really say much, about how that operated.  Whenever I learned anything of substance I think it mainly came from my boss' boss' secretary, who I believe was supposed to be my mentor.  And I'm not talking just about work-related information but stuff like how it's hard for my boss's wife to be home all day and it would be nice if I became friends with her and things like that.   That could have come from my boss (maybe worded a little differently) or another secretary or even my boss' wife herself (say by taking the initiative to get to know me), but it didn't.  And I think that how it happened was generally the way things were planned and it was a test too as to how I would react, what I would do, etc.  My boss didn't give me that much new to do, other than letters to write or maybe preparing for something new he had coming up, so mostly it was him telling me he didn't know what to do with a secretary and his boss' boss' secretary telling me everything.  So that was the main communication channel, via the secretary, and communication with my boss was some work and some bonding (described elsewhere).

So although the social system was fully evolved (although it was constantly changing) when I arrived, I never really assimilated into it, so communication had to serve the purpose to assimilate me.

In addition, I'm not very status conscious and not liking some of the things I saw in Vienna I wasn't going to let myself be fully assimilated, although I did try to respect the aspects of status that I could reasonably respect.  But the fact that I made an independent determination about some aspects of the mission meant that I rejected aspects of their authority which would have been intolerable to them, I think.  However, I'm not sure they knew I was thinking like this, questioning their authority (in as much as I felt like they were asking for comprehensive trust that only God deserves).  If I had told them some of the things I've written in this blog (and that I was thinking at that time) I would have been sent home as soon as they found out about it or as soon as they could arrange a viable cause - insanity, most likely.  That's why I stayed quiet, since I didn't want to go through again what I went through some 5 months after I arrived in Vienna.

***

This is all for now and I think it's a lot.  We have about 10 pages left of this chapter.  My computer is jumping around a lot.  I think it's because of some tab(s) open, but I'm not sure which.  sometimes when I type it skips the typing and I try to catch it, so hopefully I've caught them all.

299. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 25 (Gray & Starke, pt. 4)

It's the pits having all these maladies, but some are worse than others and different ones are worse or better at different times too.  At least I got my concerns about my blood tests assuaged, but the hematologist did see enough credance in my concerns that she ordered the abnormal tests repeated in a few weeks.  So basically, nothing too serious, but worth keeping an eye on.

Meanwhile, my legs are most definitely not doing well and my combined with my head (headache) I'm not doing that great.  I sort of hobble around, but I have to rest a lot and am hampered in how much I can get done in a day.  It helps, though, that I have things to do that are seated, like write in this blog, because then I feel more productive.

As we speak split pea soup is cooking in the slow cooker for after church tomorrow (it's "souper bowl Sunday" at many churches in the USA where people stay after church and share meals of soup and also bring in cans and dried food for food pantries for the needy).

The grocery store had bone-in ham on sale so I had to cut up the ham too to get the right amount of meat and ham for the soup and then do something with the rest of the ham.  Some of it I'll freeze, but I haven't done so yet, but the rest of it I decided to use in a sort of savory steamed custard dish I found in an old Frugal Gourmet cookbook I have.  The recipe is for single servings and I made the first one tonight.  It's very nice and light, sort of Asian with the green onions and sesame oil in it.  So that's what I'll be having for dinner for the next week.

Back to the text...

***

This next sub-heading under the main heading "CONCEPTS OF THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION" is "Influence Systems."

"In the comparison of informal and formal organization discussed earlier, it was mentioned that, whereas the formal organization describes formal rights and authority relationships, in the informal organization no formal authority exists.  Instead, individuals exert influence upon one another." (p. 440)

In general, that is in most organizations, I'm sure this is true, but I've already described how in the Vienna mission the formal rights and authority relationships were not consistently upheld, at least not in my case, and as such this is a false statement as pertains to the Vienna mission.  That is, the formal "rights" and "authority relationships" of the formal organization were not consistently upheld, and as such the very existence of these "rights" and the nature of these "authority relationships" should be brought into question.  I've discussed this too much elsewhere to go into great detail on it here, other than to just note that these issues existed.

It might be worth considering whether individuals exerted inflluence upon one another in all spheres - raising the question then of where and what role the formal organization did play if the informal organization was so all-pervasive.


***

"In other words, while the formal organization is concerned with the right to influence behavior, the informal organization involves the ability to influence behavior.  The distinction suggests that the holder of a formal position may not necessarily be able to influence others and also that individuals without authority may have influence." (p. 440)

Now if what I said in an earlier post is true that the mission leadership seemed to be the ones who created the informal organization, than this quote is not all that meaningful.  That is, the formal organization would have the right AND the ability to influence behavior because the formal organization leadership created the informal organization and they were part of the informal organization too and so whether they themselves directly or they had someone else indirectly the influencing, they were still in charge and had the ability to influence via the informal organization one way or the other (directly or indirectly).  So, for example, if they wanted to influence me but as a formal organization they were unable to, they might choose to try to indirectly influence me and it might be hard for me to pinpoint what was going on even if this was going on.

However, there may be a bit of truth in this quote as far as Vienna mission is concerned.  That is, the mission director, although at first he worked reasonably closely with me, being as he was my boss' boss, was somewhat limited in how he personally could influence me because there were certain social rules governing behavior that limited his ability to influence me. Even my boss and his family had some limitation, because it wasn't as if they were going to hobnob with me all the time.  So it was more likely that the singles and/or the secretaries were going to be the ones to influence me in any significant way.  Also, they needed to get to know me and they didn't really know me and there wasn't really anyone there to get to know me, who could be my peer, but these were the kinds of people who would be most likely to influence me.

So on one hand the mission leadership had both the ability and the right to influence, but in specific instances they might not necessarily have the the ability, or maybe not all leaders could influence just anyone.  Or perhaps they couldn't influence in all spheres.

The thing with me was that I wasn't yet an insider and I think that one a person was an insider then the leadership could influence virtually anyone.  I'm not sure if I might have been influenced by them, but not not based on the kind of logic they wanted, which was, if I understand correctly, blind trust.

***

"Influence as a Social Process.  To possess influence means to be able to determine or affect the behavior of others.  In contrast to authority, which is vested in the position an individual occupies, influence arises out of the social contract that exists between individuals." (p. 440)

Influence in this sense was very strong in the mission because of the strong bond that developed through the need to trust your colleagues, especially  on ministry trips in Eastern Europe (this was before the fall of the Iron Curtain, remember).  In this case members grew to trust each other and could influence each other as needed but those with more experience, knowledge, seniority, etc. would be deferred to more, especially when decisions needed to be made and in similar situations.  Usually this did follow the formal organizational plan, but the relations were generally as friend to friend, more akin to an informal organization.

Also, I think the mission leadership probably knew about this and worked to increase their influence over the workers.  They tried to be accessible, they pitched in and helped with everyday things and expressed interest in what everyone was doing, and things like that.  I think it was a genuine interest, but they also used it and similar techniques to increase their level of influence.  But they also wanted, I think, to make sure that security was tight, and they wanted to make sure that everyone was happy and that things were going well too.   These were all security-type concerns, but they probably also just wanted to make sure they were on top of things to be leading well.  But security was a big deal, so that would have been a major reason for this kind of activity on their part.

***

"Power and Influence Systems.  Influence in the informal organization is called power (as distinguished from authority). The exercise of power involves the exerting of influence over others without the formal right of authority.


... To understand how power operates in organizations, it is necessary to understand the potential sources of power.  What is it that allows one person to influence another, even though no formal right to do so exists?


1. Reward power exists when person A has the ability to control the rewards that person B receives...


2. Punishment power is the opposite of reward power in that person A can exert influence over person B if A has the ability to determine punishments for B...


3. Referent power exists when person B is influenced by person A because B admires A and wishes to be like A.  This form of power tends to be very effective since it involves a psychological commitment on B's part...


4. Expert power exists when person B is influenced by person A because A possesses some special or expert knowledge that B needs...


5. Legitimate power exists when person B believes that person A has the 'right' to influence him and that, because of shared norms and values, B  feels an obligation to accept this influence." (p. 440-441)

It's questionable whether there was not right to exert influential power in the Vienna mission since the informal organization was apparently put in place by the formal organization, so the formal organization could grant the right to its own brain child to exert whatsoever influential power it wanted.  Very convenient, if you ask me.  Sort of like playing God.

Be that as it may, when we go through these 5 types of power we should keep in mind that we're not talking about your average informal organization here, but an informal organization that has the blessing of the administration and is most likely at least in part a great puppet of the administration.

With this in mind, then, what kind of reward power would an individual have had in the Vienna mission?  Examples might have included, friendship, recognition, belongingness, etc.  But it should be noted that these could be perceived by the recipient as rewards, yet meant as tests or information gathering assignments (to try to figure you out).  In this case you might think this is an informal organization relationship, and the administration wants you to think it is, but it's not strictly speaking an unplanned, innocent example of reward power.

Punishment power.  Now if you have a party and "neglect" to invite the party gossip and the next thing you know you're being ostracized by everyone, you may be a victim of this punishment power.

However, at the end of my time in Vienna virtually everyone was ignoring me and I wasn't invited to anything and... well, I won't go into the details now.  There wasn't a single individual or even a few people that I can pinpoint that I maybe offended that might have led to my being treated like that, like the office gossip stated above, so I assume it was from the administration - from the formal organization.  So the formal organization was issuing an edict that was something usually along the lines of what wen in an informal organization - the ostracizing.   In fact, the authors give "ostracism from the group" as an example of "punishment power" in that paragraph.  See what I mean about the formal organization in the Vienna mission and the informal organization?  The formal organization wasn't more than a shell, really.  Maybe like a spy front organization.

3. Referent power.  I think the mission leadership might have wanted me to have this kind of relationship with the secretaries, especially perhaps my boss' boss' secretary.  I've already written about that at length elsewhere.  I think she was a very good secretary - much better than I was for sure, but I wasn't a professional secretary, either.  But career-wise we didn't mesh and there probably wasn't really anyone there who could have had the kind of referent power with me that they seemed to want, if I understood things correctly, which I'm not at all sure I did.

4. Expert power.  There were certainly a lot of experts in Vienna, but the thing was that I had some expertise too and I had enough that I could stand on my own 2 feet and come to my own conclusions about some things and not just take someone else's word for it - such as what it was like in Eastern Europe, for example, and what ministry there required, and what some of the theological and biblical issues were.  I felt I was disrespected and I felt there were too many things that went against my values and beliefs, based just on what I could see and piece together.  I'm sure they never expected to have someone, especially someone without a Th.M. come and stand up to them, but then they never knew the depth of my disagreements with them either, because I was scared to verbalize my thoughts.

5. Legitimate power.  I think it's possible that I am the only one that has ever been a part of the mission that has ever doubted the legitimacy of their power.  It took a long time to come to that conclusion because I didn't want to admit to it,  but in the end when I couldn't get away from the fact that they seemed to just want total submission and I thought only God deserved that and so based on that I think their power is illegitimate.  I'm using the present tense, because I don't expect they've changed.

***

The other thing I will say in closing about this topic tonight is that at a regular job in the formal organization you have a lot of rewards and punishments like raises, bonuses, reprimends, warnings, etc.  However, in the mission, as with many  Christian missions, at least nondenominational missions, you don't have those kinds of things set up.   So control mechanisms are going to take place more through the informal organizational setting anyway, except for exceptional situations.  So that part of the Vienna mission can also be explained by virtue of it being a nondenomination mission (or, more accurately, a nondenominational collective effort of some 20 missions at that time).  However, the fact that the ministry was focused on "closed countries" added a different twist to it than might have been found in some other missions working in other parts of the world.

I text presents an interesting backdrop on understanding my experiences with the Vienna mission, but it will be interesting to go back and try to bring everything together eventually fronm the various texts.  Just to refresh everyone, I'm trying to make sense of my life, because I've had some pretty traumatic events and my experiences with the Vienna mission was actually one of the worst of these. 

298. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 24 (Gray & Starke, pt. 3)

I'm sorry about the sudden break in posts, but these things happen in life... my health is a roller coaster, and you just witnessed an example of this.


I think I mentioned having a lightheaded experience on my way to physical therapy a couple weeks ago which ended out being a high pulse and heard rate and raised concern because of my history of supraventricular tachycardia (rapid heart beat).  Then I had a couple incidents of erratic heart beat, but I was the only one to catch them on my oxymeter because by the time professional medical people were involved it had stopped, although the second time my heard rate was still ca. 115 or so, which is high for me as a resting heart rate.

The first time it happened I went to my primary care doctor and I brought my oxymeter and we did verify that mine is accurate (it's new and fr a reputable company).  So then when it happened again the next day at about the same time I decided to call 911 (emergency) and they took me to the hospital and they ended out admitting me for 24 hour surveillance and I had a heart monitor.

Well, the other thing was that I was supposed to be hosting a couple coming through town for church and a lot of people were away at a conference and we're not a large church, so this was a problem.  I thought I'd be out by Saturday night, but by late Saturday afternoon when the cardiologist still hadn't come by and my discharge was dependent on his say so, I resigned myself to another night in the hospital.

Another couple, who'd just hosted a bunch of people for a wedding and had their house all upended and even had the door off the hook for the guest room for some project that needed to be done, came by to get the key to my condo from me at the hospital so that the guests could get in and I tried to think of what they needed to know.  I didn't have everything ready for them, but fortunately, they were very laid back.  At least the place was mostly clean.

When I left the hospital I really felt vulnerable.  I think that's a good word to describe how I felt.  It's not just that everything seems to go wrong, because not everything does - some things don't.  But it's like I have absolutely no control over anything.  No matter how hard I try, that's what it seems like.  That's how I felt when I got home from the hospital.  I wanted to be a good hostess.

Then I got another shock.  When I saw my primary care doctor the first time I had the erratic heart beat the nurse, in reviewing my meds as recorded in my chart listed ultram (a narcotic pain medicine) and I corrected her and said I haven't been on that for quite some time now (since last summer).  I thought she corrected it then, but when I was in the hospital (and it's my primary care doctor that admits me) in the first round of meds they tried to give me ultram!  I told the nurse I do not take ultram!  (Really and truly, I am NOT a "drug seeker"!).  That didn't happen again.  But I wanted to get my medical records because I might have appointments with doctors who might be interested in some of the information.  It turns out I was also interested in some of the information.  Here's from my Laboratory Tests  in the emergency room (before I was admitted) at 16:05

Toxicology:
Urine Opiates Screen (2000 CUTOFF)                              None Detected
Ur Barbiturates Screen (200 CUTOFF)                              None Detected
Ur Amphetemine Screen (1000 CUTOFF)                         None Detected
Ur  Benzodiazepines Scrn (200 CUTOFF)                          None Detected
Urine Cocaine Screen (300 CUTOFF)                                 None Detected
U Cannabinoids Screen (50 CUTOFF)                                None Detected

I just hope it wasn't my primary care doctor that ordered those tests.  If it was, maybe she should have added ultram to the list.

 I had made an appointment with the cardiologist who did my cardiac ablation in 2007, and when I made the appointment I asked if they take my insurance now and they said they'd deal with that later, which surprised me, but this week they called to say the don't take my insurance so I would either have to pay out of pocket or if I wanted to pick a doctor under my insurance I could run some of those doctors by my old doctor to see who he might recommend.  So I e-mailed the list of about 15 or so doctors late yesterday afternoon and am waiting for a response.  I hope there's someone there he likes.  

***

Anyway, I've been trying to get back in gear since my 36 hour stint in the hospital, but I sort of feel like I've been through the wringer and my medical conditions just keep multiplying.  One thing I've been doing, though is continuing to work on the settling in process, so that's been sort of a positive concrete diversion to keep my mind off serious things (like health, family and mom).  I learned how to use "Mint" my robotic vacuum.  It actually sweeps and mops, but it does a pretty good job and then it frees me up from that task, or at least much of it, which is nice.

Tomorrow they're finally supposed to pack up and take the defective book case/cabinet (it has glass doors) to be fixed.  I also had to call Samsung because my refrigerator ice maker isn't working and repairmen are supposed to come for that tomorrow too.  I just remembered, though, that they didn't call to confirm and I forgot to call them when they didn't call.  I hope they still come.

Even though I'm really burned out but I'm doing my best to find strength, peace, meaning and joy even in the midst of trials.  I'm used to picking myself up and dusting myself off and continuing on - heaven knows I've done it enough.

***

There's still some 15 pages, approximately, of text left, so I probably won't finish.    This next main chapter section is "CONCEPTS OF THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION."   The first sub-section we're going to look at is "Status."

"Status is the rank or relative position of an individual in a group...


A certain status attribute is valued if two conditions are met: the attribute must be perceived by the relevant group as being scarce and desirable. " (p. 436)

What attributes might have been perceived as being scarce and desirable to the Vienna mission?  I think education - a certain kind of theological education - would be right up there near the top.  Experience, especially if accompanied by education, might be valued, but not as much as education, I don't think. Teaching and leadership skills might also have been valued.

***

"Status itself can be of two varieties, ascribed and achieved.  Ascribed status is that social position occupied because of attributes inherent in the individual, such as race, sex, and age, while achieved status is the position a person attains through personal choice, such as education, skills, or marital status. In both formal and informal organizations, the actual status of a person is the result of an interaction of ascribed and achieved status, with the effect of each determined by the relative weight given each by the group." (p. 437)

In the Vienna mission we were all Caucasian, so race was not an issue.  But the issue there was gender, and roles within the mission were clearly divided along gendered lines.  For example, all the textbook writers were males, all the secretaries were females, all the layout staff were females, all the h.r. administration were males, all the senior administration (including h.r.) were males.  The only female instructors were in the women's ministry team.  If you needed help moving, men did it; if you needed a babysitter, the gals did it, etc., etc.  The mission was so divided along gender lines that basically, whether you were male or female, you could just look at half the mission and see what your ministry opportunities might be because that half that matched your gender would give you an idea of your options.

***

Some of the authors' discussion on status is interesting, but I'm not sure I want to quote the whole large section(s).

The first topic is about status symbols, such as the proverbial corner office that everyone covets.  In the Vienna mission the administration had their offices on the second floor, everyone, including the two secretaries had their own offices (with a view).  But the women's ministry team was also up on the second floor.

On one hand the idea of status symbol in a Christian mission seems like an oxymoron (at least to me it does), but when you consider the other things going on there and that they did want to maintain their authority and control over things (for security's sake, etc.), then it's not so surprising after all.  It wasn't the kind of thing that the administration just gloated in for it's own sake, having such great office locations, for example. But on the other hand, the fact that they had those offices and others didn't served as a reminder of who was in charge and where the buck stopped.  I'm probably making more of the offices than I should, but that was just one thing among many that under-gird that way of thinking about the administration.

The text also discusses status symbols in the informal organization, but, as I've said before, the informal organization in the Vienna mission, was really created by the administration.  But since the organization was run virtually completely by men (the women's ministry team had a say in the administrative meetings), the informal women's monthly meetings, which was run largely by wives of the instructors, was one opportunity for women to be in leadership positions and run their own program.  In this women's world of the Vienna mission I think there were some somewhat different views on status.

For example, in that world, it was not only where your office was, what your position was, and how long you'd been with the mission, but also who your husband was and who you worked for and what your relationship was like to your boss' wife or to certain other wives or female staff members.  So among the women, especially when you included the wives in the mix, you might come up with a different status system than if you were just considering the office workers alone.  The men wouldn't have had to deal with that, because all the adult males were working at the office; it was only adult females that might be at-home wives & mothers.  If a male worker had a secretary he would have had a vested interest in seeing to it that his secretary and his wife got along, I think, though.

***

"Why Is Status Important? Status is important in organizations because it satisfies the basic human need for personal identification... When individuals behave in a manner significantly different from what is expected, social sanctions may be used to bring behavior in line with expectations: or, if the behavior does not change, social interactions may cease." (p. 439, bold in original)

It's hard to know where to begin with this one.  In principle, I should have wanted to identify with the Vienna mission and gain some kind of status in it.  But that's assuming that the mission was something other than what I seem to have found it to be.  Practically the whole time I was with the mission I had a hard time identifying with the mission, although I always could identify with its stated purpose.   The things I witnessed and experienced in the mission that I disagreed with and even gave me great concern were greater than my need for personal identification or status in the mission.

However, this being said, I think giving these things up were part of the great internal struggle the continued the first year or so after my return home to the States.  It was a very difficult thing for me to hold my own, and I did keep hoping that they weren't so bad as it seemed and I'd be able to talk with them and they'd make concessions and we'd straighten things out.  But the way things were I couldn't identify with them, at least not as much as they'd have liked.

As to the sanctions, etc.  The thing is, and I've mentioned this before, I often had trouble figuring out exactly what they wanted.  I mean, I don't want to hear something like "unconditional trust," because that only goes to God.  So I'm looking for concrete things that they wanted me to do or not do.  And I don't think that if you looked at me that I did anything that was really amiss for a missionary.  No one ever said I complained, did bad work, had a bad attitude, was lazy, led a raucous lifestyle, whatever.  I was hospitable, friendly, sociable, took initiative at work, etc.  So what did I do wrong?  The only thing(s) I could possibly have done wrong would have been something regarding security, such as being my father's daughter, for example (he was working as a program manager in the strategic defense initiative - star wars).  So, maybe they just didn't want me there in the first place because of him.  That's not the only possibility, but it's a promising theory.  In any case, I definitely did something wrong because I was most certainly sanctioned and social interactions did cease towards the end of my stay in Vienna.  So the issue then is what I did wrong, because I most certainly did something wrong.

***

I'm tired and I think I'll stop here.  I went to Home Depot this afternoon to try to figure out a way I can connect my outdoor hose to my shower.  All my other faucets, etc. are not the types to connect anything too now that I got all new plumbing fixtures (except in that shower).  I have indoor hoses, but they all have permanently attached sprayers and they're 50 feet (ca. 16 meters)  long which is like 10 feet (3 meters) or so too short.  So the workers at the store helped me, but the connecting piece is a little too wide for the shower head, although the hose fits perfectly on the other end of it.  So I have an Oxygenator showerhead (which I took off for doing this) which fine but came with instructions as to what to do if it didn't fit, so I'm going to see if there's anything there I can use to help me get this piece to fit.  The things is that often enough I shouldn't be lifting heavy things because of back problems so if I can water my plants on my balcony with a hose rather than a watering pot it would make things a lot easier for me... if I can ever get this thing to work...