This next main chapter section is titled "ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS."
"In classical management thought, organizations were viewed as relatively closed systems....
...[C]ontemporary organizational theory takes a muchbroader perspective of organizations and their management. Organizations are viewed as open systems, one that have to adapt to changing external conditions in order to effectively perform, succeed, and even survive over time." (p. 158)
I believe I've said before on this blog that the mission acted like it wanted to be a closed system in it's complex security measures to protect it's boundaries and interests. But, in fact, it wasn't and couldn't be a completely closed system, so the mission tried to control the access points as much as possible, maybe like how the Soviet Union used to control the phone lines into and out of the country when it was still the USSR, only then they really could control that, although information could always find some other way of getting through such as through samizdat (self-printed/underground printed materials). So he Vienna mission could be looked at as sort of a pseudo closed system, perhaps; at least from one perspective.
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I'll now take a look at a sub-section, "Defining Organizational Environment" and the first sub-section under that "General and Specific Environment.""The general organizational environment refers to the broad factors, trends, and cconditions that concern all organizations...
...[T]he specific... environment focuses on those external factors and conditions that have immediate relevance for an organization. Such a specific environment usually includes an organizationals customeers, suppliers, unions..." (p. 159)
The general environment the mission worked in was very broad, because it included North America (e.g., where a lot of its funding came from), Eastern Europe (e.g., political conditions), and Austria (where the main office was located). Changes in any of these could have significant affect on the ministry.
The specific environment includes what is often called the stakeholders, including the boardmembers, in-country translators, foundations, students, etc.
It's largely because of the nature of the environment that the mission took the form that it did, although that doesn't mean I agree with this logic.
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The next sub-section is "Actual and Perceived Environment.""Another important analytic distinction is the difference between the actual (objective) environment and the one that managers perceive (subjective). .. The perceived environment... reflects the subjective interpretive of that environment. Although these perceptions are also 'real' events in their consequences, they take place within an organization.
Although we might assume that there is close correspondence between these two dimensions, empirical research has indicated that correlations between measures of a firm's actual environment and measures of the perceived characteristics of that environment are not very high. This is significant since people react according to their perceptions rather than what is actually 'out there'." (p. 160)
I think it may be possible to distinguish some difference between the actual and perceived environment of the mission. The "perceived" element would be the emotionally charged view on things East European, or Communist, or politically unfriendly to Christianity (the latter is looking ahead to where the mission went later on after I left). In other words, it's one thing to look objectively at the situation in those countries, and I think I was more objective than they were, because they were more into the anxiety-prone paranoid mode than I was and I wasn't so politicized about the work as they were. So I think that their perception of the environment the mission was working in was colored by their political views, their pragmatic philosophy, and perhaps their theology too, since my theology conflicted with some of their practices and views, and my theology made it very difficult to work with them.
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There's more about the environment, but nothing helpful, so I'll skip ahead to something else next time.
