I still need to try to schedule the pick up for the book case too to get those door repaired. I can't get through to them and they're not returning my calls.
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The next text I'm going to use as a sounding board is a chapter from the following book:
Gray, J.L. & Starke, F.A.(1988). Organizational Behavior: Concepts and Applications. Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing.
The chapter is:
12. The Informal Organization and Organizational Culture (p. 423-457)
I find "informal" quite interesting as it pertains to organizations. There exist several of these "informal" issues, including "informal organization," "informal power" and "informal communication." Generally speaking, in my mind the more you of these informal issues you have in a context the more red flags I see... but that's now and I was naive about any of this when I went to Vienna in 1987. So this is a case of "if I'd known then what I know now I would have/wouldn't have done X." But since when do we live in a conditional perfect world? A lot of us might like to at times, but that's just not the way things work. So we chalk things up to experience, try to learn from the past and move on, more or less, right?
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"Examples of behavior in the informal organization are many and varied:1. A production worker may restrict output to conform to the norm of the work group.
2. Management may plan an important announcement for employees, only to find out that the message was leaked earlier through the grapevine.
3. The manager or a department may find that the leader of the company baseball team appears to exert more influence during the baseball season than the line managers.
4. A potentially conflict-laden meeting proceeds very rationally since most of the disagreements on issues were worked out the nigh before over a few drinks." (p. 425)
None of these specific examples would have happened at the mission in Vienna (1. restricting output? come on! 2. leaking anything in that paranoid secrecy fortress? Hah! 3. baseball team? I don't think so! 4. Conflict-laden? And these people are still on staff? Don't they know conflict is not allowed?)
But the point is that people do and say things that aren't strictly reflected in the organizational mission or vision statements, rules and regulations, etc. In the case of the Vienna mission, it would probably be most helpful to say that the informal organization might be what goes on that is not in the public eye. I think this is a pretty valid way to look at it because all the written rules, etc. (except maybe regarding the details about working "in country" - in the Communist East Bloc countries - this was the late 1980s) were potential p.r. tools to show how wonderful and above board the organization was. It could always pull out any of these as needed to demonstrate it's lily whiteness, but this did nothing, of course to address what this chapter calls the informal organization and culture, which went largely undocumented... mostly on purpose, and very conveniently so. This way if anyone had an accusation against the mission they could say "prove it" and it would be very difficult to come up with documentation... and they know it.
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"In general, the informal organization emerges because the formal structure does not satisfy all employee and organizational needs. The exact form the informal organization will take thus depends on the specific deficiencies in the formal structure and in employee need satisfaction. It is important to remember that managers do not have a choice as to whether or not the informal organization will develop: informal relationships will be formed within any formal structure." (p. 426-427)This makes it sound as if managers don't particularly want informal structure, but in the Vienna mission it seemed just the opposite that they wanted to construct a sort of informal underworld what wouldn't necessarily be evident to outsiders and that wouldn't be part of the formal documentation. On the other hand, the leadership had developed a social control atmosphere that reinforced through positive affirmation or negative rebuke how one spent one's free time and who one associated with. These are broadbrush assertions, but I think I've gone into more detail about them elsewhere. Basically, the mission members were so conditioned en masse that they'd pretty much all together confirm or invalidate you depending on whether or not you sought informal social relations other than those intended by the mission leadership.
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Next the authors discus the difference between job demands and role demands. Job demands are generally what's written down in a job description, but there may be other role demands above and beyond that, such as to get a raise, or for a profession, etc.
The role demands on me included befriending my boss's wife and sort of becoming a big sister to one of their daughters who they were afraid was becoming worldly (she was a pre-teen at that time). I did it and I don't remember complaining, but I did feel like I was being stuffed into a stereotypical mold and not given any chance to use my skills or knowledge. I did like spending time with the daughter, but I didn't like how it was thrust on me, any more than I liked the thought of the secretaries being my main identity group.
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"Ideally, the goals of the informal organization are in perfect agreement with those of the formal organization. In actual practice this is almost never the case, partly due to the fact that workers have individual goals that are seldom in complete agreement with formal organization goals." (p. 428)In the case of the Vienna mission, the goals of the formal and the informal organization mesh very nicely, I'm sure, because the leadership, unlike in most organizations, created both, and doesn't allow other competing informal organizations. If the mission wouldn't allow me, just one person, I can't even imagine how it would react if an non--assimilated (or only partially assimilated) informal organization That would REALLY be interesting.
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"The formal organization equates authority with influence: in other words, if individuals have been given authority, they are assumed to have influence. In contrast, influence processes in the informal organization occur by approval from the relevant group, not by the organizational decree. Generally, the individual with the most influence is the person who is most able to satisfy the needs of the group. This may or may not be the appointed (formal) leader." (p. 428)
So in the Vienna mission you had the usual formal organization, but then you had the formal organization-appointed informal organization, so you can guess who might be the leadership in the informal organization... Well, just in case you're having trouble with it, I'll tell you, the formal organizational leadership appointed themselves to be the leadership of the informal organization too. Quite clever of them, no? So then they had double the power, formal and informal.
How could they get away with this though? I think they could get away with this by being the ones with inside knowledge. Also, department leadership recognized them as leaders, so then those under them would follow suit. Often at group meetings the top leadership would banter back and forth with this or that department head, often with a light-hearted tone. They also could be sometimes very humble and sometimes quite firm and authoritative and sometimes very approachable so knowing when to be what helped clinch them as informal leaders also.
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"In Chapter 10 we discussed how control (e.g., rules, policies, procedures, etc.) are inherent in the design of formal organizations... In the informal organization, standards of behavior, referred to as norms, are similarly communicated to members through social processes. Because the informal organization is a social organization, norms are oriented toward controlling social behaviors, and sanctions are directed at those who violate them." (p. 429)
I've discussed these a fair amount, but I wanted to bring this up here in the context of the informal organization. The thing is that what was happening to me in Vienna might have been largely happening in the informal organization, but the thing was that the informal organization was in actuality under the control of the management, so it's not like it was some accidental free-standing set of unfortunate experiences I had with them. That would be naive at best to think. However, the mission could try to make it look like the were just some accidental free-standing set of unfortunate experiences I had with them (if they acknowledged that the events occurred.) So it's a very handy set up they had there, don't you agree?
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"One of the major functions of hierarchical lines of authority in formal structures is to identify the correct channels of communication. Therefore, lines of authority can also be viewed as lines of communication... Informally, however, this is seldom happens. The informal organization devises its own channel of communication (the grapevine) for both social and organizational communicational purposes. The grapevine carries whatever information the informal organization needs and, although it is selective and often carries inaccurate or distorted information, it is generally faster than formal channels of communication." (p. 429)
In Vienna I must admit that it was through the secretaries (and sometimes others) that I often got the most helpful information during off hours regarding various tidbits that would help me understand that's going on there. So that would be a kind of grapevine, I guess. And I do think that that kind of thing was pretty wide spread. However, I think that the accuracy was pretty high because they got used to requiring high accuracy in their line of work.
One thing about having so much informal communication was that it could be hard to pin down formal rules and the like. So then you basically had nothing to stand on and you were at their mercy. Another thing was that the management could manipulate information if they wanted to, which would work for those who didn't yet know whatever information was being manipulated.
This would be another incentive to be part of the informal organization - in order to keep "in the loop". In my experience, other formal meetings, etc. couldn't provide the information I could have gained from the informal sources.
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I hope this comes out okay. I'm really tired. I drove to the south end of town to get my pictures this afternoon and they were all ready, including the ones at Michael's near me. My legs are getting worse and the numbness is creeping up my legs; it's not up past my knees. I still have some feeling, but less and my legs don't move well, so I need to get prepared to start getting rides to places. My glasses weren't ready yet today, although they were down near where I was today.
When I got home I hung all the pictures in the living room. It looks a lot better now. There are still 2 more pictures to hang, but one needs a frame and I'm not spending any more money on house things right now (except maybe potting soil!).
