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We're still in the section of Katz's article titled "Motivational Patterns: Consequances and Conditions," but we're starting off in the sub-section "Instrumental system rewards."
"It is important to distinguish between rewards which are administered in relation to individual effort and performance and the system rewards which accrue to people by virtue of their membership in the system." (p. 137)
This section winds through a somewhat involved argument regarding the affects of various individual and aggregate reward systems on productivity, motivation, turnover and recruitment. I won't discuss all of it here, but some it is does raise some interesting thoughts about the mission as it was when I was working with it.
For example, if potential theologian-missionaries back home got wind of the effective work being done and the professionalism of how it was being carried out, these things might interest them in working with the mission, or at least taking a teaching trip with the mission to try it out. The effectiveness and professionalism would be among the "rewards" that would interest them and the professional theologian-missionaries on staff.
However, as Katz also mentions, providing rewards, say a staff fitness center, wouldn't necessarily translate into increased work productivity, although it might result in easier recruitment and also allow them to set higher work standards because the workers would be willing to work harder because of the better work amenities.
In Vienna the system rewards might be things like the monthly women's meetings, the semi-annual retreat, the monthly all-staff meeting, the monthly newsletter, the monthly birthday party, etc.
The individual rewards varied widely depending on the individual and the individual's position. I'll try to take a stab at what my rewards might have been, although this was a moving target (i.e., fluctuated during my tenure with the mission). When I first arrived in Vienna, my individual rewards probably included having an office to myself next to my boss, having an apartment to myself, and being allowed to attend the Austrian church. Just before I left Vienna the only thing I had left was the apartment as I was working in the reception area and attending and English speaking church, which I'd started attending because I'd gotten tired of swimming upstream against the mission.
So it is clear that the system wasn't rewarding me (understatement), which is a clue that maybe they didn't really want to retain me, because rewards are given to retain people, right? And according to this author, rewards are also given to increase productivity, so the mission was not concerned about productivity either when it came to dealing with me. In fact, from the very beginning, it seems that productivity was not important to them (remember the computer manuals?)
And that's not even looking at whether they were punishing me or not.
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The next sub-heading is "Conditions conducive to effective system rewards""We have just described one of the essential conditions for making system rewards effective in calling attention to the need to make the system as attractive as competing systems which are realistic alternatives for the individual." (p. 139)
What Katz is saying here is that the systemic and individual rewards should make the individual think that this organization is better than some other competing organization. Now think about my experience with the Vienna mission. How likely do you think it is that I might have thought about leaving for another better mission?
Well, you're probably thinking that there is a very great chance, and on one hand you're very right, but on the other hand you're very wrong. The thing is, and you might not have read all 293 posts leading up to this one to know this, but I was aware of a great number of the other missions working in the East Bloc countries and there were some 20 or so working with the group I was was with in Vienna and I'd written a letter to some 30+ before deciding on my sending mission and I'd gotten some very disturbing answers (rather paranoid, etc.), so I was thinking at this point that the whole lot of missions to this part of the world was a rotten lot and not to be trusted - that they were all in bed together, more or less. There were a very few that I thought weren't bad, but they weren't working in the areas I was interested in. Child Evangelism Fellowship is one group I highly respect and at no time had any questions about, I even went on a vacation trip with one of their workers from Vienna to Istanbul and I had a good friend that worked in east Asia too.
But on the other hand, I did start looking for other options outside of the mission, like other fields of work even because I began to see that there was no way either me or the mission was going to compromise and come the end of my 2 year term we were going our separate ways. I wasn't going to broach them on the issues and they weren't going to come to me either, so it was a mutual standoff, and maybe a mutual distrust, if they distrusted me, which I'm not sure about.
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"The critical point, then, is that system rewards have a logic of their own. Since they accrue to people by virtue of their membership or length of service in an organization, they will be perceived as inequitable if they are not uniformly administered." (p. 139)The system rewards, as far as I can remember right now were generally equitably available, but the last few months of my stay in Vienna, my social exclusion might be seen as possibly system reward being inequitably withheld. Also, information could be divulged or withheld in a similar manner.
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We're skipping the sub-heading "Conditions conducive to effective individual instrumental rewards" (mostly applies to factories) and jumping to the sub-heading is "Intrinsic job satisfaction."
"The motivational pathway to high productivity and to high-quality production can be reached through the development of intrinsic job satisfaction. The man who finds the type of work he delights n doing is the man who will not worry about the fact that the role requires a given amount of production of a certain quality. His gratifications accrue from accomplishment, from the expression of his own abilities, from the exercise of his own decisions." (p. 141)
I think this could have been me in Vienna if I'd been given work that was truly meaningful and if I'd been trusted to take some initiative in my professional training. But I wasn't. Even the time I went on the women's ministry trip they didn't seem to really trust me and I felt like they were just testing me out and I didn't have much freedom of expression.
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The next sub-heading is "Conditions conducive to arousal of intrinsic job satisfaction.""If intrinsic job satisfaction or identification with the work is to be aroused and maximized, then the job itself must provide sufficient variety, sufficient complexity, sufficient challenge, and sufficient skill to engage the abilities of the worker. If there is one confirmed finding in all the studies of worker morale and satisfaction, it is the correlation between variety and challenge of the job and the gratification which accrue to workers (Morse, 1953)." (p. 141-142)
In Vienna I never really had any variety. In Dallas, working in the office I was kept busy, but it wasn't a lot of variety. As a secretary in Vienna there was a bit of variety but I wasn't ever very busy and didn't have a lot of responsibility because I wasn't in the position long enough to own it, and in the reception position in Vienna I did take some initiative, but it wasn't a lot of variety there either. Considering what I was capable of, these positions were all pretty boring for the most part, although I tried to make the most of them and focus on learning them and trying to make the position better, if I had the opportunity.
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The next sub-section is titled "Internaliation of organizational goals and values.""The pattern of motivation association with value expression and self-identification has great potentialities for the internalization of the goals of subsystems and of the total system, and thus for the activation of behavior not prescribed by specific roles... The internalization of organizational objectives is generally confined to the upper echelons or to the officer personnel. In voluntary organizations it extends into some of the rank-and-file, and in fact most voluntary organizations need a core of dedicated people - who are generally referred to as the dedicated damn fools." (p. 143).
If there were 40 people working in the Vienna mission, then there were 39 "damn fools" because I was the only one who didn't subscribe lock, stock and barrel to their "organizational goals and values." That is, I subscribed to their publicly available goals and values, but not to their internal values, in as much as they appear to differ from the public values. Right now it feels good to now have gone along with the crowd, because I don't particularly like the moniker "damn fools."
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Next the author describes two types of partial internalization, which is says is more common than the full internalization described above. Incidentally, the Vienna mission generally wanted full identification, but in the area of theology, it had to allow some license in minor areas. Theologically the mission had to take into account the 20 some missions working together and also the believers in the various countries and their theologies.
"The first [type of partial internalization] has to do with some general organizational purposes which are not unique to the organization. A scientist may have internalized some of the research values of his profession but not necessarily of the specific institution to which he is attached...
A second type of partial internalization concerns the values and goals of a sub-system of the organization. It is often easier for the person to take over the values of his own unit." (p. 143)
These both could have happened in Vienna, but I can't speak to them because I wasn't privvy to that information and it would have to have been someone closer to those departments to say for sure whether or not these happened or not. If either of these did happen, the first type would most likely have involved the instructors, probably the country groups, although possibly the textbook writers too. Any of the departments could have been "guilty" of the second type because the departments did become like second families and had their own insular life more or less apart from the rest or in addition to the whole group relations. I think there was an effort on the part of the leadership, though, to not let any group become too detached and independent. Still it's possible that this second type of internalization could have been a risk at the very least.
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I'm still not done with this article, but I need to do some other things, so I'll pick up where I left off when I come back.