My intention is to make it to church this morning, but I really don't feel up to it. So we'll see. I'm doing the stimulator now.
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This next portion of text is a relatively short one:
Miner, J. B. (1988). Organizational Behavior: Performance and Productivity. New York, NY: Random House.
I'm just using two main sections from chapter 15, "Organizational Structure and Design."
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The first Major chapter section I'm going to use is "Limited-Domain Approaches." It sounds to me like these approaches to management are more-or-less static ways of limiting the "domain" of managers/management. The first sub-section presents a model or theory or limited-domain approaches, "Milner's Four Domain Types." I"m just going to pick out the aspects of each type that I think might be worth commenting on.
"Hierarchic or Bureaucratic Systems....
1. A continuous rule-bound conduct of business...
3. An organization of positions that follows the principle of hierarchy, so that each lower position is under the control and supervision of a higher one
4. A system of rules regulating the managerial positions, which may be technical rules or norms
6. An understanding that managers do not have any long-standing rights to ownership of their positions
7. A practics of formulating and recording in writing managerial acts, decisions, and rules." (p. 541-542)
As to #1, I think that the mission was only rule-bound when it had to be for external purposes, such as legal or financial recordkeeping, reporting to the mission board, etc. Otherwise, I think it was rather "weasel-y" and could slip out of rules that existed fairly easily because of it's deception-based security system. I experienced this even in minor areas, such as the documented (written) right to take German lessons upon arrival in Austria, but being disallowed this right on the illogical basis that there was too much work for me to do (when I was spending my time at work - at their request - reading computer manuals).
Number 3 does conceivably describe the Vienna mission as I knew and experienced it. Power was most decidedly a top-down affair and everyone was accountable to someone higher up in the chain. The rank-and-file would be responsible to department heads, and department heads to upper management, generally speaking.
When you include "norms" in number 4, then it does seem that maybe this could apply to the mission as I knew it. The norms would include the unwritten security (and other) norms that would guide management as to how to act under certain circumstances, and if those are included under the rubric of "norms" than number 4 might fit the mission.
Regarding #6, I know from my own experience with the mission where I came to the understanding that everyone is expendable (generalizing from myself and the treatment I receive to others - that was how I was thinking, since I thought I had so much to offer by way of specific East European ministry skills and knowledge). I can't be 100% certain that this is true of everyone, let alone of management personnel, however.
The big issue in my case is whether I was "uniquely" expendable because of my dad. If that's so, then I really can't speak at all towards the issue of whether or not managers had "any long-standing rights to ownership of their positions."
The other issue in that discussion is that managers should have come a long way in the trust & socialization process so they should have been deeply ingrained in the organization. So, first of all, I think it would have been difficult for them to go astray in the first place (because the mission would know them very well and they would be well surrounded by mission personnel and leadership) and also they would have so well internalized the mission's values and norms and more of them than other staff, so that these two things would together make it very difficult for the manager to do something on their own apart from mission dictates.
As to whether the mission might let the missionary go for some other reason (such as, for the textbook writing manager, completion of the writing of the textbooks), this was possible, but not likely on a whim. Most likely it would be well-known in advance, such as the textbook writing example above, or possibly due to external environment changes that might require organizational change, such as with the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe (which happened after I left, so I can't speak to, although I'm certain it must have affected the mission's operations). Speaking hypothetically, but quite plausibly, after the break-up of Eastern Europe, the mission might have decided to wind down the East German segment of their work because people would then be able to study in the old West Germany. So the East German team, including the team leader, might have been facing a change. If the team leader wanted to continue working in East Germany he'd have to leave the mission to do so.
However, I think this #6 point is speaking not to the dismantling of the position but to the person having long-standing rights to their position as it is. That is, I think it's speaking more to the expendability of the individual - that someone else could always be found to fill their shoes and the show would go on without them. For the reasons given above, I think this is highly unlikely, but if a manager did manage to do something egregious, I suppose this statement would prove to be true. I think that there was enough cross training and people filling in for others during mission trips and furloughs that someone from within the department or the mission could in many cases be found to fill the shoes of their old boss. If that wasn't the case, at least the mission was used to running without any given staff due to ministry travel requirements, so it could function for a time while it looked for someone to replace the manager gone bad. Another factor would be that the mission leadership and board members (not to mention some key funders) were well connected in Evangelical circles and if anyone could find a new manager they could, although there could be a steep learning curve to learn the ropes of the mission.
As to #7, I think this was only done in certain cases where it was deemed necessary for a specific reason, often external or for the board, or perhaps to protect themselves. Otherwise, I think that this was done only very minimally so. I did work as a secretary (part of the time!) for the assistant director and also the North American director (covering for his secretary on maternity leave), I had some access to these kinds of things, although, since I was never fully integrated into these positions, I can't speak for great certainty. But in any case, I think I can safely say that they came nowhere close to the kind of documentation that you'd find in a bureaucracy. As far as this is concerned I mainly remember keeping minutes of management meetings, and they did the same for board meetings. But I think that's about the only thing along these lines I can remember management doing.
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Here's another take on bureaucratic systems:
"Stated somewhat differently, a bureaucracy is a set of jurisdictions operated according to rules... There are certain rights that go with a position, and these rights serve to protect a person against arbitrary actions on the part of a superior. The climate is both rational and impersonal." (p. 542)
I think that on one level one could say that the Vienna mission probably (or at least might have) operated "according to rules," but those rules were ones not written down in policy manuals (although they did have at least one of those, which they only adhered to as it pleased them, as I experienced first hand). There may have been some rules elsewhere that I wasn't aware of, but otherwise, I believe that the mission operated more on normative rules, although I've written elsewhere about how the mission seemed to me to have a "legal nihilist" view towards policies and rules, so my opinion any rules that existed (written or otherwise) were only adhered to as long as certain other necessary criteria were met (such as the ever-present concern that security wouldn't be compromised by following the rule).
Or, perhaps it's better to say that in the hierarchy of rules security (for example) was tops and that it was understood that everything else was contingent upon it. If this were true, then, the policy manual I was given was only relevant in as much as security wasn't an issue, but I couldn't know when security was an issue because I was new, so I had to trust their judgment. However, no one ever said that the policy manual rules were only actually valid if security weren't an issue, so it would have been left to me to deduce that. And how was I to know that attending German classes upon arrival in Vienna would be a security risk anyway? And if it was generally always a security risk, then why did they even have it in the policy manual? Presumably it would have been a security risk because the new person didn't know how to behave his-/herself outside the mission yet and wasn't yet satisfactorily socialized into the organization. However, the policy explicitly said it applied to newly arrived missionaries, and the studies allowee were one month for each year of pledged service, so that in my case I should have been granted 2 months. In any case, I never knew anyone to utilize that rule and study German when they arrived in Vienna, so I wasn't singled out on that account, although I do not know whether anyone else requested it upon learning of the right.
The position this quote refers to is that of a manager post. So managers have rights in bureaucratic systems. I can't really speak for management positions specifically, but what I know of the mission as it was when I was there makes me doubt very strongly that managers in the mission had rights that protected them "against arbitrary actions on the part of a superior." It's not as if they had a grievance system in place or a union with an ombudsman to represent you in difficult situations. I think that that's the kind of thing the text is referring to. Think of, for example, teachers in some public schools that get tenure after so many years and whether or not they continue to be good teachers their tenure protects them (to a large extent) from termination. If a department head went sour, even after being with the mission 15, 20 years, say, s/he wouldn't have had that kind of protection with the mission. Chances are, if the mission hadn't been able to work with the missionary to correct the situation before it affected the ministry detrimentally, they would either transfer the missionary to another position or ask the missionary to resign.
As far as arbitrariness of superiors vis a vis the manager, I know of a situation in one of the key member missions, which I have already described in this blog, where for some puzzling (to me) reason the mission rather suddenly realized that it was short of funds and within a week's time or so laid off something like a third of its home office staff (in the USA), and it had a reasonably large staff, as they not only oversaw missionary work, managed financies and h.r. functions, but also did some of the short wave radio work and Christian publishing (mainly for the USSR distribution). To compensate for the lost staff, which were on salary from the mission budget, it took missionaries from the field, who were on faith support, and brought them home to work in the office. Some of these missionaries had been there, mostly South America, for 20 years or even more, and some of them were really devastated by the move. Now that's arbitrary, and they had absolutely no rights against "arbitrary actions" on the part of the mission. This is one of the reasons I didn't want to go with that mission, but they were one of the founding missions of the work in Vienna I was part of, and were very influential in East European ministry.
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Here are some "Characteristics of Hierarchic or Bureaucratic Systems." (I'm skipping a few to highlight the most informative ones.)"1. Work rules and regulations are established by management.
3. Organizational changes are carried out by management
6. Freedom of action is limited by organizational guidelines.
7. Organizational leaders are appointed by management.
8. Punishments are established by management.
13. Risk of failure is assumed by management.
15. Meetings are called and conducted by management." (p. 542)
1) Rules, etc., such as they were, were all established by management, although sometimes I think that some informal discussions with others might have led up to the establishment of rules, norms, etc. The Vienna management was always (as far as I know and remember) quick to give credit where credit was do, so that if someone else came up with an idea they would point that out publicly as appropriate. However, everything did have to go through management and it would have been a major crime against the culture to do anything that smacked of bypassing the leadership. However, the place of rules, etc., in the organization should be understood as per the above discussion.
3) When I was with the mission there was talk of change - of growth to new countries, etc. - but I wasn't sure if they were being honest or not because I experienced enough from the mission to distrust them. It turns out they probably did make many of the changes they were discussion, but the fall of Communism would have changed their plans for change too. Plans for change in the mission did come from the top, from the top leadership and the board, which consissted of representatives from the member missions. I don't think anyone lower down would have suggested change of any import.
6) "Organizational guidelines" would have to be understood as norms in the Vienna mission setting, but I think that freedom of action was also somewhat individual. I think I had very little freedom of action, which I attribute to my not being trusted. However, I should also explain that statement too. On one hand it could look like I did have a significant amount of freedom of action because I did do a fair amount apart from the mission. However, my doing so drove a wedge between me and the mission, so I wasn't really practicing freedom of action. At first I faced a lot of extra work stressors, which I think was aggravated - if not caused - by my extracurricular activities. Then I felt more social pressure and work demotion. Finally, I think they sort of let me go and my doing things outside the mission ended out being like a first step of separation from the mission. (The social isolation and then the physical departure from Vienna would have been the second and third steps of my separation from them.)
7) It's not as if there was anything particularly democratic about the mission, and the appointment of leadership was indeed top down. In fact, I'm sure that all the mission representatives on the board had to agree to each appointment, even if it was an internal move. I don't know this for certain, but I'm pretty sure that's how it would have been.
8) Since knowledge was segmented and the higher up you went in the mission the more knowledge you had, and so many of the aspects of the functioning of the mission were unwritten, it was really only the management that would know enough to be able to discipline someone. In my case, this is how it might have gone:
I think that the director of H.R., and mission director, assistant director and North American director probably knew about my dad. The H.R. assistant might have also known, but I don't remember interactions with him that might confirm that. The H.R. director and assistant were both U.S. military chaplains, although I'm not sure which armed force they were with (i.e., army, navy, etc.). Since my dad had a military clearance and some kind of military intelligence responsibilities, the chaplains might been in a position to have been told about my dad.
No one else would have known about this aspect of my situation. So the leadership, if they didn't want to make my dad an issue in my relationship with the mission, would have had to rig other things that would make me leave because of my own doing, apart from my dad, assuming they thought having me there was a security risk.
The other thing is that even if that weren't an issue, few would have known about the history with my having offered to take a course to learn the software they used before coming to Vienna. So then my being made to sit and read software manuals for weeks on end wouldn't have had that context. Same with the issue about the roommates where I had asked to not have a roommate and then I got a call from Alaska when I was on deputation in Colorado from another to-be secretary saying we were going to be roommates. These aren't discipline, but if I respond in ways displeasing to the mission leadership, others wouldn't understand this anyway. And the mission leadership might have had certain plans for me that others wouldn't have known (and I didn't even know!). So discipline had to come from leadership and everyone else just learned to trust the leadership. I don't know what everyone thought at my departure about what had happened during my stay, but everyone towed the "party-line" so to speak and stood with management in isolating me. Whether or not they knew what horrible sin of commission (or ommission) I had committed is another matter. Or maybe the mission leadership framed my departure in a light that suited their purposes, and they had a monopoly on framing things, so it's not like there was going to be a competing frame floating around somewhere in the organization.
13) This one didn't really apply, I don't think. The thing is that the biggest risk was really for the in-country Christian students (remember, these were in Communist countries). After that was the risk to the missionary (-ies), mission and member missions. A few missionaries lived in the countries and they were at a certain amount of risk there, but the missionaries travelling and teaching were also at risk and they needed to b e able to continue to travel and teach to continue the ministry, so they didn't want to botch that up. Sometimes missionaries could get blacklisted from a country, like the USSR, when they became suspicious in the eyes of the local authorities. The member missions could also be at risk and that was huge because it involved a major part of all the Evangelical missions working in that part of the world. So in this case, the bureaucratic model definitely does not fit.
15) As far as I can remember meetings were always called and led by management, and although portions of meetings might be turned over to others, the leadership was always in charge and clearly so, maybe in a benevolent father sort of way, jovial, but firm and wise. There was a protocol as to who would lead meetings if the top leadership was gone (on a ministry trip, on furlough, etc.). First was the director, then the assistant director (whose secretary I was supposed to be, and then thirdly the country coordinator (who managed all the country-focused teams). I can't remember who came after that.
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Looking back at all this discussion it seems that there are some aspects of bureacracy that more or less fit the Vienna mission, but I have a hard time considering it really bureaucratic. The rules - systemic and concrete - just weren't a major enough part of the organization and I think that the informal organization was too strong there. So I'll look at another system approach next time.
