I didn't realize last night that most of the rest of the Luthans text is irrelevant to this discussion. I'd just like to end the discussion on the Luthans text with this one quote from the "Summary:"
"Organizational culture is a pattern of basic assumptions that are taught to new personnel as the correct way to perceive, think, and act on a day-to-day basis." (p. 68)
In the case of the Vienna mission, which was a total institution, these things were expected of the missionary pretty much 24/7 for the 2 year duration (or however long) the missionary was with the mission. (The usual long-term assignment was 2 years, but one could keep extending that for longer.) When the missionary left the mission office, their interactions with their neighbors, at church, with their kids' teachers, etc. were all supposed to reflect the mission's culture, because ingrained in that culture were security protocols and the like.
This is why it felt like brainwashing to me. Really, perceiving, thinking and acting, if applied to one's whole life is a major overhaul, if you ask me. So then I figure I should retain the right to hold any of these proposed changes in my make-up to Scripture to see if they are appropriate changes or not for a Christian. (Of course, some would say you can prove anything with Scripture and if I'd said these things point blank to the mission leadership - assuming they didn't deny the existence of their socialization efforts - they very well might have found some way or the other, however obtuse, to support the cultural end-results they (apparently) wanted in me.) Retaining this right puts Scripture above the mission authority, which is, I believe, how it should be. To deny that right is to put the human mission leadership above Scripture, and they couldn't stomach anything being above them.
That is, as long as you agree with them it's okay to put Scripture above them, because they're not being challenged anyway. But as soon as you disagree with them then it's not okay to put Scripture above their authority. What good is that, though? The point is you just can't disagree with them, even if there is a Scriptural justification for doing so. Anyone at the mission who might disagree with them is made to reconcile that issue during the socialization process, so that the new recruit decides that (whatever the particular issue of concern is for that individual) the issue can be seen in a different light, the issue is not so important after all, the mission leadership has good reason for taking the position it does, etc., etc. In other words, the person must somehow come to peace with the issue that initially s/he though conflicted with Scripture, because the mission wasn't going to let the person proceed in his/her socialization process knowing that there was a significant issue in which it's authority was being questioned and another authority stood in its place, because that was not acceptable to the mission. (I should say though that I'm talking about the more significant theological issues that are more difficult to just gloss over. Some issues might have different perspectives and might be more easily reconciled. But individuals might place different values on different issues, also.)
Part of the problem with me too, was that the mission had trouble getting me to open up and so they probably never felt like they really knew me and they undoubtedly didn't like that. That's part of why the initial testing was set up, I think, to get me (as with at least some others) to break down and sort of spill my guts to them. But I never did that. So they never got that reaction from me, but I did my work that they gave me as well as I could without complaining, even though some of the things I experienced with them were very stressfull.
So the thing is, how can you know that a new worker perceives, thinks and acts correctly? "Acts" is pretty straight forward, so I won't address that one. But the other two are mental constructs and cannot be known directly by observation, so the organization would have to find some way to deduce them, to indirectly conclude that the individual has satisfactorily met the thinking and perceiving criteria.
In the Vienna mission context, they would have wanted to know that the new worker met these criteria all the time 24/7 - not just while at the office or even not just while in the presence of other mision workers. They might not even trust that you would act appropriately outside the office if you didn't have thinking and perception down.
So then it becomes a challenge to find out if the perceptions and thinking have evolved appropriately. I think that this is one aspect of the mentor's responsibility (formal or otherwise). The mentor if s/he is clicking well with the new recruit should be able to get to know him or her and be in a good position to determine at least much of these intangible cultural objectives. In my case, since I didn't feel like my secretary colleagues were a good match for me it would have been hard for them to do this. And since no one there seemed to have my background it would have been difficult for them to have found any one person who could have played that role with me.
But since I soon learned not to trust the mission, anyway, there wasn't much chance I might be eager to open up with someone there anyway. So they would have had a bit of a difficult time determining whether I'd met the perceiving and thinking criteria to fit their organizational culture. In the end, probably the main thing they had to go on was actions. The problem with trying to ascertain thinking and perception based on actions alone (or even mostly on actions) is that you have to be pretty certain that you are attributing the correct thinking and perceptions to the actions being displayed. In my case, I think they didn't get everything right on that score, even towards the end of my time with them. That is, they still didn't really understand what I was thinking when I did what I did. That's my opinion of them and how I left them. And I have a feeling that if they'd understood me better I wouldn't have gotten a friendly post card some 6 months after I left the mission from the director and assistant director.
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I didn't expect that I'd write so much about that one short text, but hopefully it helped eke out some more information about my time with the Vienna mission. That's the end of this text.