I chose this file because it deals with a broad range of issues pertinent to my situation. I may have to stop half-way through my Vienna experience to go through another file, though.
I don't know about you, but I'd never heard of "High-Reliability Firms" until I began this research. Since I was trying to make sense of my situation I started with keywords and then followed leads to other literature that seemed pertinent, and that led me to "High-Reliability Firms" among other things. Since I'm assuming you probably don't know any more than I did (although this may not be true for all readers) about this, I'm starting with an article from the file that helps define it.
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Roberts, Karlene H., Rousseau, Denise M., La Porte, Todd R. (1994) The culture of high reliability: quantitative and qualitative assessment aboard nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The Journal of High Technology Management Research, v(1), p. 141-161.
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"At least two features differentiate high reliability organizations (HROs) from other organizations. First, the goal of process reliability equals or supersedes the goal of product reliability. Most organizations focus on product or outcome reliability, subordinating process reliability to it. HROs focus on process reliability without it, performance reliability is impossible to obtain. Second, HROs are expected to perform at high tempo for sustained periods of time and to maintain the ability to do so repeatedly (e.g., air traffic control). When danger threatens they often cannot stop performing until the danger passes, the error rectified, or the broken part fixed." (p. 141-142).
That's it in a nutshell, but I'm not going to comment yet. There will be some similarities with the mission in Vienna, but I suspect my dad was not unfamiliar with this kind of setting either.
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"... [A]n important ingredient in the operation of 'excellent' organizations is their cultures. In HROs, numerous strategies are specified for insuring safe, reliable performance such as training, leadership, control functions, and rewards and punishments. Yet, not everything can be specified. Acculturation to operational norms is the process through which organizations transmit these more unspecified aspects (e.g., acceptable and unacceptable behavior). In today's vernacular, culture replaces the informal organization... as the conveyor of behavioral requisites." (p. 142)
Remember that in doing this research I was trying to make sense of my life and some things that had happened, particularly starting with Vienna. We're going to learn more about some of these different components as we go along here. Acculturation / socialization happens in most companies to one degree or another, but I think that the Vienna mission was run according to a philosophy similar to that of an HRO, in which acculturation takes on a whole new urgency and can possibly be used to include more of a person's life than in other types of organizations.
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"Cultures yield predictable behavior patterns facilitating control in organizations. Though control is accomplished by cultural mechanisms, anthropologists... and group psychoanalysts... argue that control is a result rather than a primary purpose of culture." (p. 143)
I've already discussed control in the context of brainwashing and cults, but this is another approach to it, another dimension, if you will. In Vienna, though, I felt like control was a major (if not the primary) purpose of culture.
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The references to technology in this next quote are not particularly relevant for the Vienna setting, but if you replace technology with hazards connected with working in the East Bloc there is a fairly good fit:
"HROs are not only charged with reducing hazards, they are also asked to reduce the larger public's fears, by managing hazardous operations at very low risk. Operators and their management face two kinds of pressures:
a) task demands based on comprehension of the technology, its risks, and the scope of possible catastrophes,
b) sociopolitical demands based on member perceptions and anticipations of consequences of failure from the social (e.g., work group, managerial) and political (e.g., public scrutiny) systems of which they are a part.
Demands rooted in the technology are addressed by managing operational requirements. Sociopolitically-based demands are addressed through political behavior, deference to authority, and approval seeking." (p. 143)
So here you have it, the explicit and the implicit, hard power and soft power. "The public" here could be supporters and churches back home, for example. If you take a risk management approach to missions in Eastern Europe (or other closed countries) then you end out with something like this, something like what I experienced in Vienna. But it still begs the question as to whether it is a biblical approach. I hold that it isn't, which I've already made clear in other places in this blog.
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"[T]he predominant cultures of HROs should yield two distinct types of cultural content:
1. Elements promoting the security of the members by prescribing task-related behaviors, dominated by values and norms of perfectionism and criticism or opposition, that support the technology by focusing member attention upon detail, critiquing information systems and decision making with consideration of worst case scenarios and data quality, enforcing detailed plans and procedures regarding appropriate sequences of actions in response to problems. We label these Task/security cultures.
2. Elements promoting member security by prescribing interpersonal behaviors protecting individual vulnerabilities to the larger socio-political system in which high reliability technology is embedded. Winning the trust and support of fellow operators can involve more than just performing tasks safely and correctly. Members may find it easier to trust someone who appears to care about the work group and accept its conventions. Norms and values supporting self-protection in relation to others, seeking approval, behaving conventionally, and dependently, attempt to foster inclusion and make interpersonal relations safer, more secure and predictable. We term these Self-Protection cultures." (p. 143-144)
In the Vienna context, the "Country Heads" (i.e., heads of the teams working in specific countries) and their teams would be in the first culture, I think, what these authors term "Task/security cultures". Although I made a few mission trips, I was mostly in the second group, a Self-Protection culture part of the work. I knew before ever getting to Vienna that there was what is called a "high culture" and a "low culture". In societal cultures "high culture" would be dance, music, literature, things like that. "Low culture" is the norms, values, traditions, etc. For the most part I did not accept the "low culture" norms of the mission in Vienna, and you can see how that might be problematic for me. I hope you've gotten enough from my posts to realize that I probably never ever would have accepted their "low culture" as I don't to this day.
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This methodology of this study included the administering of the Organizational Culture Inventory to approximately a thousand staff in a range of positions on 2 US nuclear aircraft carriers. This instrument was used to analyze the cultures according to this model of the two types of cultures in HROs. Most of the discussion and results aren't too relevant to my Vienna experience, but here's something worth discussing:
"Self-protection norms are significantly related to conflicting and low clarity of expectations, high accommodation (having to behave differently than one would normally), low satisfaction and recommendation (of this organization to a person similar to one's self), and low commitment to one's squadron." (p. 155)
I think this is very interesting, but I'm not sure I'd say that even though I think the "self-protection culture," as described here, was strong in Vienna. Perhaps this paradigm isn't a perfect one for my situation.
I would say that while this technology-centered HRO (albeit in a military setting) may have some similarities to Vienna, I think that espionage settings might fill in where the HRO paradigm, as described here, isn't a complete match.
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The next source is chapters in an edited book:
Belenk, G. (Ed.). (1987). Contemporary Studies in Combat Psychiatry. NY, NY: Greenwood Press.
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[Chapter] 4 An Investigation into the Value of Unit Cohesion in Peacetime, by Frederick J. Manning and Larry H. Ingraham.
In discussing the findings of their study of cohesion in 20 U.S. battalions the authors have this to say:
"Not only does the group member's commitment to the norms of the formal organization depend upon identification with the leaders, in the 'link-pin' fashion described previously, but persons who are made to feel like valued members of a group will feel far more attraction to the group than those who do not have much social worth. We would argue from this that building cohesion requires interaction beyond the work setting, where rank and duties so clearly delimit 'worth'" (p. 64)
I think there was a certain amount of this in Vienna, although I specify that identification especially to one's immediate superiors, but then also to those farther up the organization. The link to those in the immediate proximity to one's position in Vienna seemed particularly necessary in their way of doing things.
The part in this text about needing "interaction beyond the work setting" was certainly true in Vienna, but I would say it a lot strong vis a vis Vienna. Not only was simple interaction necessary, but pretty much complete and total involvement. It was as if if there was a part of your life that wasn't immediately a part of or for the benefit of the mission then it must be a deterrent to cohesion, which was close to absolute, or it was a potential deterrent by means of instilling distrust because of having a personal life not otherwise a part of the mission.
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[Chapter] 8. Psychodynamic Considerations in the Adaptation to Combat, by Jon A. Shaw.
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"A successful adaptation would represent an individual who is able to achieve sufficient mastery over the stress of combat so that he is able to function effectively in a combat situation. An unsuccessful adaptation is characterized by the psychological failure of the soldier to function in combat... Everyone has a breaking point, a point of heightened vulnerability...
Stress refers to an external stimulus impacting on the individual's nervous system in such a way as to evoke neuroendocrine and neurophysiological responses of arousal. The individual experiences stress internally as 'anxiety.'...
The stressful experience can best be defined as a process of adaptation, involving a dynamic interaction between the individual, his biological resiliency, his repertoire of defenses and coping behaviors, and the specific environmental stresses." (p. 117-118)
I don't want to say a lot about this yet, but this came into play in Vienna. I was told that a lot of the guys (there were more men than women that traveled, especially as a major part of their work... this was, after all, an evangelical mission, and as such was what some would term sexist) jogged as a way to deal with their stress, and I also picked up jogging there. I did more jogging there than I did at any other time in my life. I felt (and still do) like most of my stress, however, was artificially induced by the mission, but we'll get to that later.
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"We know that individuals who are most resistant to stress often have a cognitive flexibility which enables them to cope with change. They experience stress not as a threat but as a challenge to be mastered." (p. 124)
At this point in my life I must be pretty high on the cognitive flexibility scale, having gone through so many tumultuous changes of various kinds in my life. I had some flexibility at the time I was in Vienna, but not near what I have now. I hope I've learned something along the way at least.
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"The principles of treatment in combat psychiatry are well known and have been sufficiently stated to be known to virtually all practitioners in military psychiatry. These are usually referred to as: (1) proximity, (2) immediacy, and (3) expectancy. This essentially means that the individual soldier is treated as far forward as possible, as quickly as possible, with the expectancy that the soldier will return to his combat unit expeditiously. It is impossible to stress sufficiently enough the power of expectancy as the guiding therapeutic principle." (p. 130)
After returning home from Vienna devastated my journal that year shows how in the midst of my struggling through to make sense of things, I practically from the get go began trying to figure out another way to reach my dream of ministry in the USSR. Within a year I had started on a master's degree program towards that end.
Having that renewed vision and determination with concomitant reaffirming successes along the way did a lot towards helping me feel grounded. But I still felt isolated because I didn't think others understood what happened and the significance of it, and I still feel that way about it, although the distance from it in years now has decreased the importance of it. But it did put a strain on a lot of relationships. There are just too many things that I feel like people in the main can't really understand or don't care to take the time to understand. You have to admit, I'm a pretty complex person.
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[chapter] 14 Combat Motivation, by Anthony Kellett
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"Group formation is notably rapid in armies. From the first, the recruit is confronted with a strange, stressful, new environment which prompts him to associate himself with others in the same predicament." (p. 207)
I feel like this was true for the Vienna mission too. I think, after boot camp, that military recruits join pre-existing units, which would be more like how it was in Vienna, since it wasn't like there was a whole cohort of us together starting boot camp at the same time. We all came individually. But the experience really was a sort of baptism by fire. I don't think I felt an adequate sense of the "strange, stressful, new environment" to be prompted to associate "with others in the same predicament." t wasn't that I didn't want to associate at all with them, but I didn't have a felt need to limit my extracurricular life to socializing with them.
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"'Cohesion' denotes the feelings of belonging and solidarity that largely occur at the primary group level... and results from sustained interactions, both formal and informal, among group members on the basis of common experiences, interdependence, and shared goals and values. 'Esprit' denotes feelings of pride, unity of purpose, and adherence to an ideal represented by the unit, and it generally applies to larger units, having more formal boundaries, than the primary group." (p. 208)
I don't think I ever had "feelings of belonging and solidarity" in Vienna. The closest I came was probably at the very beginning, sort of the honeymoon stage, but it never went past that, I don't think, and eventually eroded altogether, to where, at the end, I was actually being isolated.
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I think that's all for tonight. Good night.
~ Meg
