When I said I was naive (in the last post), I didn't mean to imply that I wasn't equally naive about everything. I think it's pretty safe to say that I was very naive about anything military-related. Part of that was because I just wasn't interested in those things. So when I eventually developed somewhat of an interest in historical things, neither military nor political history were among the areas of history I was interested in. Rather, I was interested in social history, the history of how people lived and their cultures, and also the history of ideas. Even so, although I have done some reading over the years on various historical issues and times, I wouldn't say it's been an overriding interest of mine, even in the social history and history of ideas realms.
So this lack of knowledge and interest in anything military provided the appropriate void needed to support and intensify my naivety in anything military-related that might have had an effect on my life. I still am not interested in this subject, except as it might affect me, and greatly resent that military-related concerns (i.e., via my relationship to my dad) might have had any effect on my life. That response, of course, is also naive. I think that I'm a citizen of the USA and have the same rights as anyone in this country and I never took on a position (like being employed by the CIA) that might have resulted in an abdication of certain rights by virtue of the demands of my job description. No, if there was any abdication of my rights it was done by dad by virtue of his job. (Although I don't think he ever wanted or intended me to be affected that way; it's just that I picked a profession that probably resulted in this happening to me.)
So I was and am very naive regarding military and national security issues (although somewhat less now than I used to be). I don't think I was as naive regarding mission work in Warsaw Pact countries, but there was a certain amount of naivety. Regarding the missions working in that part of the world I was fairly naive in my thinking that they were more pristine and godly (i.e., biblically based) than they actually were. I didn't think that they had become so corrupted by the milieu in which they worked; but I think I was very wrong about this. On the other hand, I don't think I was so naive about the actual mission field itself, meaning that I think I had a reasonably accurate grasp of the risks and concerns of Christian work there and what it was like for the Christians living in these countries. Of course, I didn't take into account possible interference because of dad's work, however. But I still think I'm right that the mission in Vienna went too far in becoming obsessed with security issues to the point of taking on a nature that seemed quite unchristianlike.
So I had selective naivety about military things, my rights, dad's work, and East European mission organizations. It's when I was forced to face head-on the naivety of my thinking (via traumatic personal experiences), that I underwent serious soul searching and reconsideration of some of my values and outlook on life. I have also often been naive regarding relations with men, meaning I have sometimes been too quick to believe men or otherwise not show as much discretion as I should have.
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Returning to my adult education background, perhaps Jack Mezirow's learning cycle fits how my values and beliefs changed during these "head-on" crisis events in my life. Here is a list of the progression he theorizes adults go through in learning:
"1. A disorienting dilemma
2. Self-examination
3. Critical assessment and a sense of alienation
4. Relating discontent to the experiences of others
5. Exploring options for new ways of acting
6. Building confidence in new ways of behaving
7. Planning a course of action
8. Acquiring knowledge in order to implement plans
9. Experimenting with new roles
10. Reintegration into society"
(This is list is taken from Jarvis, P. (1995). Adult & Continuing Education: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, p. 94-95.)
The steps that would have been difficult for me in many of these situations were numbers 4 and 10. Number 4 was difficult because there usually wasn't anyone readily available for me to connect with in this way (i.e., my experiences seemed to be somewhat unique). And number 10 was difficult in that I tended to end out with learning that didn't fit easily into society, and the more of these kinds of results I had the more difficult it because to reintegrate into society. What I mean is that I might go through one of these crisis learning cycles and end out with conclusions that weren't necessarily popular. Then I'd go through another of these cycles and end out with another less popular conclusion, and so in this way the circle of people I thought I could relate to shrunk with each of these cycles. But other than numbers 4 and 10 this is a pretty good model for the soul searching and meaning seeking I went through at various intersections of my life.
Also, it might be helpful to mention that how I went through this process illustrates how I am basically an idealist by way of philosophical orientation. I think that this quote (from The Catholic Encyclopdia) from St. Augustine, pretty well fits how I see things too:
"In this sense St. Augustine developed the Platonic teaching, and in his philosophy is idealism in the genuine meaning of the term. From him comes the definition of ideas which Christian philosophy has since retained: "Ideas are certain original forms of things, their archetypes, permanent and incommunicable, which are contained in the Divine intelligence. And though they neither begin to be nor cease, yet upon them are patterned the manifold things of the world that come into being and pass away. Upon these ideas only the rational soul can fix its gaze, endowed as it is with the faculty which is its peculiar excellence, i.e. mind and reason [mente ac ratione], a power, as it were, of intellectual vision; and for such intuition that soul only is qualified which is pure and holy, i.e., whose eye is normal, clear, and well adjusted to the things which it would fain behold" (De diversis quaest., Q. xlvi, in P.L., XL, 30)"
In addition, I believe that the Bible is the clearest and most direct way God reveals these "ideas", although Scripture says that they can also be seen in creation (nature) and in His people (Christians). [The latter source, it should be said however, is be tainted by willful disobedience to God, since Christians can still sin.]
Because of this mindset, it may have been my experiences that led to the crises, but it was generally Scripture, rather than the world around me, that played the leading role in how I resolved the crisis. It would be misleading to say that it played as overriding a role in this process as it should have for an ideological purist. But I think it's safe to say that this Augustinian idealism describes how I view life in general. Perhaps this philosophical perspective might have even been another Greek tragedy-style character flaw, as it would have prevented me, for example, from letting the mission have the extensive authority in my life that it seemed to want (and that it presumably got from everyone else).
I think I'd been made aware of this philosophical bent in an undergraduate philosophy class, but it was not until a graduate course in philosophy of adult education that I began to think more about the implications of this perspective and also learned that it was not a common stance any more. I think I was the only one in the class who was self-identified as an idealist and the professor reinforced that by stating that few considered themselves idealists now (that was 1990).
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Returning to the text under discussion... Buchanan now starts to explain the study itself. Out of 500 questionnaires sent out to employees of 3 large corporations and 5 large U.S. federal agencies, 279 were returned. The respondents were divided into the 3 groups in the introduction: 1st year managers, 2nd through 4th year managers, and 5th year and beyond managers. Questions were developed to reflect the commitment factors predicted to be the most important for each group.
The experience measures consisted of 13 scales, each with 4 or 5 items in them (Cronbach's alpha is provided, but I'm omitting it for the sake of brevity (!):
"(1) Role clarity... Has the organization made it clear to me what I am expected to do?
(2) Peer group cohesion... Are the people with whom I work friendly and close-knit or aloof and distant?
(3) Group attitudes toward organization... Do the people I work with express mostly positive or mostly negative attitudes toward the organization?
(4) Expectations realization... Have I found what I expected to find since coming to work for this organization?
(5) Reality shock... Am I disappointed as a result of the contrast between what I expected and what I found?
(6) First-year job challenge... Was the work I was given to do during my first year challenging and interesting or routine and dull?
(7) Loyalty conflicts... Has the organization tried to influence me to adopt values or practices I find personally repugnant?
(8) Personal importance... Is it generally accepted by those who matter that my work is important to the organization?
(9) Self-image reinforcement... Do people accept me for what I am here? Do I feel free to be myself?
(10) Fear of failure... How often am I reminded that my job and chances for promotion depend on how well I perform?
(11) Organizational commitment norms... Are managers like myself expected to be personally committed to the organization?
(12) Work commitment norms... Are managers like myself expected to have a strong personal commitment to the work they do?
(13) Organizational dependability... Has the organization always done the things it said it would do for me?" (p. 539-540)
I've dealt already with a lot of these, but I'll just briefly state my answer to each of these 13 experience scale questions.
1. Role clarity. My role was not clear at all in Vienna. That is, even at times when the work itself was laid out clearly, I knew I was being watched not so much for my work but other (mostly unspoken things) that were expected of me.
2. Peer group cohesion. That would have to be the secretaries. There weren't a lot of secretaries and we were a bit of a motley bunch in many ways. Two were professional executive secretaries (from pre-mission days), one came fresh out of high school, and then there was me. Before this I'd been referring to the secretaries (as a reference group) all lumped together, but this question does bring out a different kink in that aspect of my experience. One of the secretaries (my boss's boss's secretary) was the most far along in the socialization process, the other professional secretary is the one from Alaska and she had arrived on the scene just a few months before me and, I think, took a while to really become fully socialized and integrated, or so it seemed to me. My boss's boss's secretary seemed to be the main go-to person as far as role models and taking responsibility for guiding me along as a secretary was concerned.
3. Group attitudes toward organization. Everyone had an extremely positive attitude, almost to a fault, about the organization, which goes along with what I mean about dissent not being tolerated and almost a sort of a brainwashed feeling about it. The secretary from Alaska, during her struggles to adapt wasn't like that, until she became socialized into the mission.
4. Expectations realization. No, I had not found what I had expected to find before coming to Vienna. At this point I'm not going to say any more about this; I've already said a lot about it elsewhere, and more details will come out in the chronology.
5. Reality shock. If I need to answer this, then this must be about the first post you've read in this blog. I was supremely, excessively and mindbogglingly disappointed as a result of the contrast between what I expected and what I found when I arrived in Vienna.
6. First-year job challenge. My work was routine and dull.
7. Loyalty conflicts. Yes, it did, except the wording of the question does not adequately reflect the forcefulness used in the organization's attempts to get me to to adopt values and practices I found repugnant. Repugnant is a good word, however.
8. Personal importance. This is another useful question that might bring out something a bit new. The mission leaders, to a fault, including in a post card to me some 6 months after I'd left the mission told me not infrequently how my work was so important to the mission. But for the most part I wasn't doing diddly squat! I mean, how important can it be to the mission, for example, that I'm spending a couple months reading software manuals that I didn't need to read because I couldn't have taken a class to learn the software before I got there even, and at least they could give me something else that looked more remotely useful. I might have been a secretary, but I wasn't stupid. The divide between what I was doing at any given time and the contrived flattery could have put the Grand Canyon to shame.
9. Self-image reinforcement. No and no! The Vienna mission seemed to not know me, or if they did I couldn't tell, and probably no one else could either. And I didn't feel free to be myself because the mission was dead set on its image of me becoming reality and that seemed to be nonnegotiable. I felt pretty much like there wasn't much that the mission liked about me because it was so set on changing practically everything about me. At least that's how I felt. This probably contributed to my difficult time the year after I left Vienna.
10. Fear of failure. This is all wrong. My experience in Vienna was that, after about 5 months there, my job was tenuous and contingent, but the contingency was most adamantly NOT having anything to do with "how well I perform." Rather, it was more contingent to something akin to an "attitude adjustment", meaning (as far as I'm concerned) selling my soul to them. It eventually felt like mind control, like they wanted to know why I did thus and so and what I was thinking when I did such and such, and until they got a grasp on my mental processes they weren't going to be happy. That might sound overdone, but that really is how I felt, and I hope I can pull together enough details of my time in Vienna to help you understand. (I mean presenting the details when I get to the chronology.)
11. Organizational commitment norms. Everybody, manager or not, was expected to be committed to the Vienna mission above pretty much anything else while with the mission.
12. Work commitment norms. Because of the nature of the work, I don't think this was an issue. Everyone felt the importance of the work, which they would have spent all of deputation conveying to others before even arriving in Vienna.
13. Organizational dependability. The mission didn't do what it said it would because I didn't end out, really ever, working as the secretary of the assistant director. That is, the few months that I was technically in the position I only nominally played the role of what someone would usually think such a position would entail. I did a lot of filler stuff, mostly. That's not to say I didn't do anything meaningful at all, but it was the exception rather than the rule.
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Next time I'll respond to some aspects of the results of this study.
