Before moving on, there was something I forgot to comment on in the last bit of text, and that was the part about getting "special counseling with the police chaplain." In Vienna it was military reserve chaplain/mission H.R. director. In any case, you can see that there is a question of loyalty regarding chaplains in such institutions: was s/he primarily serving the employer (police academy, military) or God? It seems difficult to equally serve both, although it could have fluctuated depending on the situation. Of course, theology could be worked out so that serving your country is serving God. I have materials about this, so we'll get to this in more detail later at some point. I just want to point out these things when we come to them.
Continuing from where we left off earlier...
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"As will be discussed in the following sections, most organizations are principally concerned with acquainting the participant with the role demands and observing the resulting behavior. Little attention is normally paid to the individual's underlying motivation or his general value structure. On the other hand, some organizations (e.g., total institutions) are characterized by the attention they pay to such latent characteristics as values and motivation..." p. 72.
I think I discussed already how the Vienna mission could be viewed as a total institution (eventually I'll go back and verify that assumption), so, as you can imagine, my "underlying motivations" and "general value structure" seemed to be rather important to the leadership.
In a way I can sort of see how any mission could be seen as a total institution no matter where they were because the workers are generally uprooted to a new location and more interdependent on one another than if they were all back home working together. But the situation in Vienna probably had even more impetus to be concerned for such inward workings of my conscience because of the political context of our mission field.
Still, no one warned me that having one's own opinions would be tantamount to treason or insubordination (or both?). But I think in Vienna it was not just conformity that mattered, but also complete transparency. Both of these, in my mind, required a certain level of trust and, besides, I wasn't prone to changing my views based on coercion. You can already see that under the circumstances I wouldn't make a very good socialization candidate.
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"...[A]dult socialization settings can be viewed as lying on a continuum from those concerned primarily with overt behavior to those concerned with all facets of the general socialization equation." (p. 72)
Do I need to say explicitly where the Vienna mission lay on this continuum? I'm sure you guessed, but just for the record, they were on the far end of the "all facets of the general socialization equation".
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"Successful organizational socialization to Caplow provides the individual with: (1) new self-images, (2) new involvements, (3) new values, and (4) new accomplishments." p. 75.
New self-images? new values? Okay, I can see having new involvements and accomplishments; that part seems clear and I don't have a problem with them, assuming that the involvements and accomplishments are ethical and all that good stuff.
I'm going to take the "new values" point first. I didn't expect to have my values toyed with, especially in a Christian mission. After all, I agreed with the theology and the work itself, including the rationale behind it, etc. But there was a whole underworld going on there that in hindsight I might have earlier caught bits of in my previous short-term mission work to people from that same part of the world. But I really had no idea of how pervasive and fundamental these values were to much of the work in that part of the world, including the Vienna mission. I was definitely flown a curve ball on this one.
Regarding self-image, I think this is relevant here too because I think workers were supposed to develop more of a group-centered self-image, where your image of yourself was more integrally tied to the group. I didn't like this either because once that happens, it seemed to me, then basically you're at the mercy of the group.
Now you'd think that this would be no big deal for a missionary joining with the mission, but when this was taken together with all the other stuff going on and a lot of it in the information power and informal communication levels, which is where things can become manipulative and less straight forward, I found this demand untenable.
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"Hence, adult socialization consists largely of the person turning himself into the kind of individual the situation necessitates." (p. 75)
The phrase "the situation necessitates" can be viewed on many levels, or at least two in my situation. On one level, it could mean what the organization required of me in order to succeed in it. But on another level, it could mean what the ministry itself necessitates. What I mean by this is what the mission did and how it operated may or may not have been necessary to actually accomplish what it wanted to do. This is just looking at it pragmatically - what would work or not work - and doesn't even touch on the ethics involved.
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"Operationally, this means the individual develops a specific set of beliefs that link his activities to the valued rewards in his situation. The perceived attainment of these rewards demonstrate to the person his competence upon which his self-concepts are ultimately based." (p. 76)
I don't have too much trouble with this. As a Christian, though, these values and self-concepts should not contradict Biblical teaching, and the person's most fundamental self-concept, I think, should transcend work, so that the work-related values and self-concept form only a part of the individual's overall values and self-concept, and might even just be cordoned off as only affecting his/her work life. I do have problems, though, when this involves felt unethical behavior and thinking and when it is more all-encompassing.
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"The importance of this initial set of experiences in determining how both the individual and the organization will view one's career cannot be understated.
Thus, the organizational socialization process - emphasizing the transfer of knowledge, abilities and motivations - necessarily involves the creation of expectations regarding careers." (p. 77)
I'm not sure what is meant here by "initial experiences" (the first week? month? year?), but it didn't take long (a few months) for my experiences to take a dramatic plunge for the worst. After that I'm not sure what their career expectations were for me, and I think I began to react to things more than hold specific career goals, although, I did still have some hope of a career and didn't give up hope completely for a long time (it sure seemed like a long time to me, anyway).
As to the "transfer of knowledge, abilities and motivation" I don't think there was that much focus on knowledge in my experience; in fact, the one main area of knowledge was, to my mind, ultimately more an experience of learning submission and the like. I'll talk about that when I return to my chronology. So knowledge was virtually irrelevant in my socialization in Vienna. I did learn some skills specific to their work, although I don't think it was the most important thing. What really mattered was "motivation" and the whole realm of related subjectivities that involved.
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This ends part I of this chapter, and I'm going to leave off for now.
My vision has fluctuate a fair amount the last year and none of my glasses are working well for doing this so I'm sitting in a position that the neurosurgeon would chide me for. I'm trying to sit up with good posture, but it's hard not to crane my neck. I see the optometrist March 8, but I can't see my ophthalmologist because they don't take my insurance any more. I didn't want to see my optometrist any sooner because she's a ways away and although I'm gradually getting out more it's a bit of a trek, so I wanted to wait until I thought I was up to it. The stenosis seems to have had affects in my head as well as lower down, so it's like most of my central nervous system was affected by it.
One other thing I wanted to say is that even though I did this study on socialization (that's how I got all these articles, chapters, etc.), it wasn't always clear that socialization was the aim. But if there was something else going on I may never know to what extent different goals were at play. The issue here is that I think organizational socialization assumes an effort by the organization to integrate the individual newcomer. If there was something other than this going on it would not have been part of any socialization efforts there might have been.
