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Do you know anyone with as many problems as me? I mean, really? How come a every turn I have problems? So many things are an uphill battle and I have practically no support it seems. Is this an opportunity to wax theological, philosophical, anal or psycho?
The theological angle might go something like this. "I wonder if maybe I really am the second Job. Maybe Satan's up there telling God I wouldn't be such a paragon of virtue if thus and thus test were presented me." On the other hand, I'm not quite sure I match up to Job's virtuosity in the first place to be an object of such testing, so maybe I should consider another approach. (It's possible there are other theological angles, but for brevity's sake I'll move on to philosophy for now.)
A philisophical approach, I suppose might go something like this: "I suffer, therefore I am." In this case, there is no doubt that I am, because I suffer, although don't want to give the impression that I am the greatest sufferer around because I think that would be untrue. I can think of kinds of suffering and agony that would be much worse, as I am sure you can also. However, if you are in a position to not have suffered as much as I have, than, according to this philosophy, your existence might be much less certain than mine is. One of the issues here, however, is that existence is not the end all. If existence is the only thing that mattered then I don't know about you but I'm left rather ambivalent about it. However, my opinion is that existence is not in fact the end all and there is inded more to be said about meaning than existence alone can explain. I hope that my suffering (if I may call it that) isn't only to prove that I exist. Moving right along....
We turn now to the anal. Maybe I just have problems because I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe people look at me and they say, "Ah, she looks like an easy victim, let's pounce!" Or maybe I'm just dumb and it's all my fault for getting myself into these situations. (Silly me, I should have known better than to move in above a blooming idiot that goes balistic over the sound of emptying dishwashers!) Could be, maybe, might be, perhaps.
Personally, however, I think the stars are aligned against me. Oh, sorry, I don't believe in astrology... If I were psycho, I'd try to see a pattern and maybe get a little paranoid. Conspiracy theory also comes to mind. I do feel singled out in incidents when I'm told that something that has happened to me is highly unique, never happens and is very surprising to people who know what they're talking about. In those situations I do begin to think, "Hmmm... is this intentionally happening to me if it's so unique and specific just to me? And if so, why?" I don't have reason at this point to think that things happening to me right now are like that, though. The neighbor below me was probably always like he is but his former neighbors who owned my place from when the building was brand new somehow learned to coexist with him. As to the interior decorator, I guess no one ever had the guts to stand up to her. Although it is possible that my experiences with her and her crew are unique, but at this point I'm assuming they're not, although I might have gotten a worse treatment than normal.
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The next sub-section under "The Nature of Organizational Culture" is "Strong and Weak Cultures.""There seem to be two major factors that determine the strength of an organizational culture: sharedness and intensity. Sharedness refers to the degree to which the organizational members have the same core values. Intensity is the degree of commitment of the organizational members to the core values.
The degree of sharedness is affected by two major factors: orientation and rewards. In order for people to share the same cultural values, they must know what these values are. Many organizations begin this process with an orientation program... Sharedness is also affected by rewards. When organizations give promotions, raises, recognitions, and other forms of reward to those who adhere to the core values, these actions help others better understand these values....
The degree of intensity is a result of the reward structure. When employees realize that they will be rewarded for doing things 'the organization's way,' their desire to do so increases. Conversely, when they are not rewarded or they feel there is more to be gained by not doing things the organization's way, commitment to core values diminishes..." (p. 52-53)
Within this framework, the Vienna mission would clearly have been a strong culture organization. The mission virtually demanded that all of its members share its core values, which, at least on one plane, was one of the causes of problems I had with them, although they didn't know the extent of the problem, because I didn't let on how much I disagreed with their ways (and the values they were based on).
The "orientation program" is the socialization I've discussed here on this blog and core values were a major if not THE major component of the orientation. However, I would like to say that unlike the average Joe-Blow type of values orientation program, the mission would have wanted some of the values to be learned inductively rather than deductively. What I mean is that the deductive learning is straigtforward and clearcut - the kind of stuff that might be accompanied by a human resources manual, handouts, a slideshow, etc. Inductive learning, on the other hand is the kind of learning that you don't really realize so much that you're learning something, but you are. It's perhaps a bit sneaky and insidious - or it can be if put in the wrong hands, which you can tell is my opinion about the Vienna mission. The issue was that some of the core values that the mission wanted the new missionaries to learn, first of all might not have sat well with things they learned back home in their churches and theological training. This is one possibility. But also, it was to train the new recruits for the kind of mindset and way of doing things in that kind of work, where things often were not clearcut and direct and you had to be able to work in that kind of setting. One example of this in my life with the mission was the pressure to give up the focus on Austrian ministry. It's difficult to explain this pressure, and it came from several sources, and I'd put it with the inductive learning category. The mission could deny this because it wasn't a deductive instruction from them, so it would be easy to deny. And if they weren't able to deny it it's possible they might have to explain themselves because it seems reasonable that a secretary working in the Vienna office should be able to have an Austrian ministry in her off time. So, since it wasn't a deductive missive from them (to me) they can weedle out of it altogether and make me look like a fool as if there was no impediment from the mission to my working with Austrians while I was working with them, including any orientation efforts to dissuade me against such an effort.
I'd just like to say here that I'm glad for chances to use my adult education background and that inductive/deductive bit falls in that category.
Okay, so we have that the mission had an orientation program, albeit not your typical orientation program and that it was heavily weighted with core values learning. So for anyone to make it through orientation and become an insider they had to pass the core values test. But there's another aspect of core values sharedness: rewards.
Rewards, in the Vienna mission were not and could not be like in the typical workplace. First wrong rewards, I think, were things like feelings of belongingness, social participation, and feeling part of the mission family. Later rewards might include some leadership in the social realm and increase in meaningful work. These rewards would increase like this as the person continued to internalized the mission values and prove him/herself, but within his/her skills, abilities and education, of course. I think that the more one proved oneself the more one also learned of the mission values, like a gnostic organization with greater enlightenment the further one progressed. So these were the kinds of rewards that one would have received for demonstrating shared core values with the mission.
Together the orientation and rewards inculcated a very strong level of sharedness in the group (with the unfortunate exception of me).
Moving on to degree of intensity, which the text says is a result of the reward structure, I think that the intensity of core values commitmen was pretty strong there because of the tightknit bond it developed and the sense of purpose and being needed as one increased in work responsibilities. (Work motivation was already strong because of the nature of the work, it being a voluntary mission, etc.).
So there you have it, an organization with a very strong culture, no matter how you cut it. And this was no accident, but rather planned from above, perhaps even social engineering.
Together the orientation and rewards inculcated a very strong level of sharedness in the group (with the unfortunate exception of me).
Moving on to degree of intensity, which the text says is a result of the reward structure, I think that the intensity of core values commitmen was pretty strong there because of the tightknit bond it developed and the sense of purpose and being needed as one increased in work responsibilities. (Work motivation was already strong because of the nature of the work, it being a voluntary mission, etc.).
So there you have it, an organization with a very strong culture, no matter how you cut it. And this was no accident, but rather planned from above, perhaps even social engineering.
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There's one more sub-section, but it's not helpful, so I'm going to skip it. Next time we'll start with the next section, which should be interesting. 