Meanwhile, my legs are most definitely not doing well and my combined with my head (headache) I'm not doing that great. I sort of hobble around, but I have to rest a lot and am hampered in how much I can get done in a day. It helps, though, that I have things to do that are seated, like write in this blog, because then I feel more productive.
As we speak split pea soup is cooking in the slow cooker for after church tomorrow (it's "souper bowl Sunday" at many churches in the USA where people stay after church and share meals of soup and also bring in cans and dried food for food pantries for the needy).
The grocery store had bone-in ham on sale so I had to cut up the ham too to get the right amount of meat and ham for the soup and then do something with the rest of the ham. Some of it I'll freeze, but I haven't done so yet, but the rest of it I decided to use in a sort of savory steamed custard dish I found in an old Frugal Gourmet cookbook I have. The recipe is for single servings and I made the first one tonight. It's very nice and light, sort of Asian with the green onions and sesame oil in it. So that's what I'll be having for dinner for the next week.
Back to the text...
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This next sub-heading under the main heading "CONCEPTS OF THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION" is "Influence Systems."
"In the comparison of informal and formal organization discussed earlier, it was mentioned that, whereas the formal organization describes formal rights and authority relationships, in the informal organization no formal authority exists. Instead, individuals exert influence upon one another." (p. 440)
In general, that is in most organizations, I'm sure this is true, but I've already described how in the Vienna mission the formal rights and authority relationships were not consistently upheld, at least not in my case, and as such this is a false statement as pertains to the Vienna mission. That is, the formal "rights" and "authority relationships" of the formal organization were not consistently upheld, and as such the very existence of these "rights" and the nature of these "authority relationships" should be brought into question. I've discussed this too much elsewhere to go into great detail on it here, other than to just note that these issues existed.
It might be worth considering whether individuals exerted inflluence upon one another in all spheres - raising the question then of where and what role the formal organization did play if the informal organization was so all-pervasive.
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"In other words, while the formal organization is concerned with the right to influence behavior, the informal organization involves the ability to influence behavior. The distinction suggests that the holder of a formal position may not necessarily be able to influence others and also that individuals without authority may have influence." (p. 440)
Now if what I said in an earlier post is true that the mission leadership seemed to be the ones who created the informal organization, than this quote is not all that meaningful. That is, the formal organization would have the right AND the ability to influence behavior because the formal organization leadership created the informal organization and they were part of the informal organization too and so whether they themselves directly or they had someone else indirectly the influencing, they were still in charge and had the ability to influence via the informal organization one way or the other (directly or indirectly). So, for example, if they wanted to influence me but as a formal organization they were unable to, they might choose to try to indirectly influence me and it might be hard for me to pinpoint what was going on even if this was going on.
However, there may be a bit of truth in this quote as far as Vienna mission is concerned. That is, the mission director, although at first he worked reasonably closely with me, being as he was my boss' boss, was somewhat limited in how he personally could influence me because there were certain social rules governing behavior that limited his ability to influence me. Even my boss and his family had some limitation, because it wasn't as if they were going to hobnob with me all the time. So it was more likely that the singles and/or the secretaries were going to be the ones to influence me in any significant way. Also, they needed to get to know me and they didn't really know me and there wasn't really anyone there to get to know me, who could be my peer, but these were the kinds of people who would be most likely to influence me.
So on one hand the mission leadership had both the ability and the right to influence, but in specific instances they might not necessarily have the the ability, or maybe not all leaders could influence just anyone. Or perhaps they couldn't influence in all spheres.
The thing with me was that I wasn't yet an insider and I think that one a person was an insider then the leadership could influence virtually anyone. I'm not sure if I might have been influenced by them, but not not based on the kind of logic they wanted, which was, if I understand correctly, blind trust.
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"Influence as a Social Process. To possess influence means to be able to determine or affect the behavior of others. In contrast to authority, which is vested in the position an individual occupies, influence arises out of the social contract that exists between individuals." (p. 440)
Influence in this sense was very strong in the mission because of the strong bond that developed through the need to trust your colleagues, especially on ministry trips in Eastern Europe (this was before the fall of the Iron Curtain, remember). In this case members grew to trust each other and could influence each other as needed but those with more experience, knowledge, seniority, etc. would be deferred to more, especially when decisions needed to be made and in similar situations. Usually this did follow the formal organizational plan, but the relations were generally as friend to friend, more akin to an informal organization.
Also, I think the mission leadership probably knew about this and worked to increase their influence over the workers. They tried to be accessible, they pitched in and helped with everyday things and expressed interest in what everyone was doing, and things like that. I think it was a genuine interest, but they also used it and similar techniques to increase their level of influence. But they also wanted, I think, to make sure that security was tight, and they wanted to make sure that everyone was happy and that things were going well too. These were all security-type concerns, but they probably also just wanted to make sure they were on top of things to be leading well. But security was a big deal, so that would have been a major reason for this kind of activity on their part.
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"Power and Influence Systems. Influence in the informal organization is called power (as distinguished from authority). The exercise of power involves the exerting of influence over others without the formal right of authority.
... To understand how power operates in organizations, it is necessary to understand the potential sources of power. What is it that allows one person to influence another, even though no formal right to do so exists?
1. Reward power exists when person A has the ability to control the rewards that person B receives...
2. Punishment power is the opposite of reward power in that person A can exert influence over person B if A has the ability to determine punishments for B...
3. Referent power exists when person B is influenced by person A because B admires A and wishes to be like A. This form of power tends to be very effective since it involves a psychological commitment on B's part...
4. Expert power exists when person B is influenced by person A because A possesses some special or expert knowledge that B needs...
5. Legitimate power exists when person B believes that person A has the 'right' to influence him and that, because of shared norms and values, B feels an obligation to accept this influence." (p. 440-441)
It's questionable whether there was not right to exert influential power in the Vienna mission since the informal organization was apparently put in place by the formal organization, so the formal organization could grant the right to its own brain child to exert whatsoever influential power it wanted. Very convenient, if you ask me. Sort of like playing God.
Be that as it may, when we go through these 5 types of power we should keep in mind that we're not talking about your average informal organization here, but an informal organization that has the blessing of the administration and is most likely at least in part a great puppet of the administration.
With this in mind, then, what kind of reward power would an individual have had in the Vienna mission? Examples might have included, friendship, recognition, belongingness, etc. But it should be noted that these could be perceived by the recipient as rewards, yet meant as tests or information gathering assignments (to try to figure you out). In this case you might think this is an informal organization relationship, and the administration wants you to think it is, but it's not strictly speaking an unplanned, innocent example of reward power.
Punishment power. Now if you have a party and "neglect" to invite the party gossip and the next thing you know you're being ostracized by everyone, you may be a victim of this punishment power.
However, at the end of my time in Vienna virtually everyone was ignoring me and I wasn't invited to anything and... well, I won't go into the details now. There wasn't a single individual or even a few people that I can pinpoint that I maybe offended that might have led to my being treated like that, like the office gossip stated above, so I assume it was from the administration - from the formal organization. So the formal organization was issuing an edict that was something usually along the lines of what wen in an informal organization - the ostracizing. In fact, the authors give "ostracism from the group" as an example of "punishment power" in that paragraph. See what I mean about the formal organization in the Vienna mission and the informal organization? The formal organization wasn't more than a shell, really. Maybe like a spy front organization.
3. Referent power. I think the mission leadership might have wanted me to have this kind of relationship with the secretaries, especially perhaps my boss' boss' secretary. I've already written about that at length elsewhere. I think she was a very good secretary - much better than I was for sure, but I wasn't a professional secretary, either. But career-wise we didn't mesh and there probably wasn't really anyone there who could have had the kind of referent power with me that they seemed to want, if I understood things correctly, which I'm not at all sure I did.
4. Expert power. There were certainly a lot of experts in Vienna, but the thing was that I had some expertise too and I had enough that I could stand on my own 2 feet and come to my own conclusions about some things and not just take someone else's word for it - such as what it was like in Eastern Europe, for example, and what ministry there required, and what some of the theological and biblical issues were. I felt I was disrespected and I felt there were too many things that went against my values and beliefs, based just on what I could see and piece together. I'm sure they never expected to have someone, especially someone without a Th.M. come and stand up to them, but then they never knew the depth of my disagreements with them either, because I was scared to verbalize my thoughts.
5. Legitimate power. I think it's possible that I am the only one that has ever been a part of the mission that has ever doubted the legitimacy of their power. It took a long time to come to that conclusion because I didn't want to admit to it, but in the end when I couldn't get away from the fact that they seemed to just want total submission and I thought only God deserved that and so based on that I think their power is illegitimate. I'm using the present tense, because I don't expect they've changed.
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The other thing I will say in closing about this topic tonight is that at a regular job in the formal organization you have a lot of rewards and punishments like raises, bonuses, reprimends, warnings, etc. However, in the mission, as with many Christian missions, at least nondenominational missions, you don't have those kinds of things set up. So control mechanisms are going to take place more through the informal organizational setting anyway, except for exceptional situations. So that part of the Vienna mission can also be explained by virtue of it being a nondenomination mission (or, more accurately, a nondenominational collective effort of some 20 missions at that time). However, the fact that the ministry was focused on "closed countries" added a different twist to it than might have been found in some other missions working in other parts of the world.I text presents an interesting backdrop on understanding my experiences with the Vienna mission, but it will be interesting to go back and try to bring everything together eventually fronm the various texts. Just to refresh everyone, I'm trying to make sense of my life, because I've had some pretty traumatic events and my experiences with the Vienna mission was actually one of the worst of these.
