Katz, Daniel (1964). The motivational basis of organizational behavior, Behavior Science, 9, 131-146.
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"The basic problem to which I shall address myself is how people are tied into social and organizational structures to that they become effective functioning units of social systems. What is the nature of their involvement in a system or their commitment to it?... [W]e need to cope with such organizational realities as the attracting of people into organizations, holding them within the system, insuring reliable role performance, and in addition stimulating actions which are generally facilitative of organizational accomplishment. The material and psychic returns to organizational members thus constitute major determints, not only of the level of effectiveness of organizational functioning, but of the very existence of the organization." (p. 131)
Presumably the missionaries would come to Vienna with some kind of altruistic motivation, but there would be some range and variation as to the exact configuration this could take, such as how much one knew about the ministry before coming, which could affect (or not) the commitment to the work, what one thought of the Eastern European context of the work, the level of commitment to the ministry type (seminary), etc. And, of course, the role of the missionary in the organization would play a part as well in this configuration. So to say that they came with altruistic motivations might have been true, but not very helpful in the mix of things. A lot more could be learned by digging deeper into the specifics of the motivation that workers brought with them.
In the Vienna mission, sinceit was a total institution and they tolerated close to zero deviance, this issue of commitment and motivation would have been of critical importance to the leadership and if they perceived a flagging of these (commitment or motivation) in any of their members they would have been quick to address the issue so that it could be fixed and also not spread to others. In my opinion, appropriate levels, expressions and definitions of commitment and motivation would have been provided by the mission leadership, and the inductee and other members learned these by example, trial and error, and other ways. I think that new members' initial motivations were brought under scrutiny as part of the socialization process (which included concerns with attitudes) and the mission approved, disapproved, tweaked or changed as needed the initial motivations. This may or may not have happened consciously and overtly, where the new inductee realized that his/her motivations were changing, for example.
The phrase "actions which are generally facilitated of organizational accomplishment" is, as far as I'm concerned, very loaded and open to discussion and disagreement. If that weren't so, half of this blog would not have been written. That is, the mission had ideas of what actions were needed to do the job other than what I think were biblical. I can't say whether or not they would have been able to accomplish exactly what they did if they had followed biblical mandates - chances are things would have ended out a lot different, but perhap they could have accomplished a lot more even if they'd trusted God and set up a ministry under His aegis. But as things were, the mission saw actions as minimallly facilitating organizational accomplishment that were totally submissive to them and in keeping with their paranoid security norms which basically meant they ran or kept tabs on your whole life (at least while you were outside North America or your home country). After you met those requirements, then you could go on to become a more productive member, but you had to meet those more basic requirement first... at least that was my experience.
Mission members didn't really expect, as far as I was aware, material returns. However, it could have been that some of the theologians could have thought that the experience gained there might later on have benefited them elsewhere in their career. The one person I'm thinking of that maybe thought like this was the head of textbook writing; I was under the impression that eventually they'd have all the textbooks completed (except they might need to keep translating them to new languages and having images made that were appropriate for that new geographical context, etc.). So that director might have thought of his position as whittling down and his experience there as being helpful for other positions elsewhere. I didn't know him that well, but that was sort of an impression I had of him that this could have been possible.
Otherwise, everyone got "psychic returns," which is a very inadequate term to describe the sincere spiritual motivation held by these people. It's possible that there was also bit of anti-Communism (i.e., political) motivation that fired people up, and that, along with some right-wing politics thrown in, was enough for the management to get away with its extreme paranoid ends-justifies-the-means security measures. So you had the usual nonprofit altruism feel-good-for-doing-good motivation, the spiritual motivation for obedience to God, and perhaps a bit of politics thrown in.
The spiritual motivation issue might bear some elaboration as, in the world of management, these things would get broken down for the interest of recruitment, productivity, staff morale, retention, etc. Not that the Vienna mission was particularly interested in these things, but I'm just saying... just in case. I'm not going to go in to great detail here because it's not extremely relevant, I think to my case, but it's not completely irrelevant either. This is just to give you an idea of the diversity of people at the mission, where there was otherwise homogeneity in many measures.
Spiritual motivation is a personal thing and I think that often individuals have a difficult time self-identifying such things. For example, the radio interview when I was asked why I wanted to work with Russian emigrants... But then I was tired (I'd spend the night before up writing a peper for a class) and I also hadn't spent a year going around to churches telling them why I was called to work with Russian emigrants either (in contrast with the missionaries in Vienna). So this can be a deeply personal experiential thing on one hand, but it can also be something more objectively tied to a specific event (a conversation, a sermon, a commitment call) or to a Scripture passage or passages, or some other similar specific influence. Here are some examples of what I mean, written as if missionaries were saying them:
- I felt the call to be a missionary as a teenager and my pastors and professors confirmed my gift of teaching and I want to serve the Lord using this gift
- A missionary speaker from the Vienna mission came to speak at my church and I'd been praying for a way to serve God in the Great Commission and I knew my secretarial skills would be a valuable service in this ministry
- I read a book about believers in the USSR and I wanted to serve in a ministry in a Communist country and while I was in seminary I learned of this ministry and I knew this was where I belonged
- etc., etc.
So although missionaries, by the time they arrived in Vienna, should have had a pretty good idea, at least on one level, of their motivation to serve in the mission, it's possible they still had some blindspots. But the thing is that the socialization process could really have done a number on that initial thinking, as well. The usual obvious motivations would be the ones that mirror the mission's mission statement and perhaps one's relationship to it vis a vis (formal or otherwise) one's role in the mission.
As for myself, though, I was really pumped about the mission's work, but not so much about my role in the mission. I was only very minimally motivated to carry out what I saw as the mission's extracurricular demands on my time. While I didn't agree with Communism, I didn't see a need for politics in missions and I wasn't otherwise politically oriented. I came to Vienna motivated to to have a people ministry (that is, outside the mission) because I believe that there was a need for people to hear the gospel and have opportunity to grown in the faith, and I didn't see that hanging around missionaries off hours had anything to do with that. These motivations were based on Scriptures and years of teaching and some experience and the influence of various people on me over the years.)
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But we've only just begun the article and I'm not even done with the introduction!Until next time..
