"Hierarchic systems control behavior by means of rewards and punishments transmitted down the hierarchy... Hierarchic structures develop when the organization becomes so large that written, formal communication is reuired because direct, face-to-face communication will no longer do." (p. 543)
I've already discussed the nature of rewards and punishments in the mission. However, I'm not sure I can say that the main means of behavior control was via rewards and punishments. Rather, I think those were more last resorts, in my thinking and understanding of the mission. I think that the internalization of the mission's values and norms would have been the primary means of behavior control and they just had to make sure these were internalized.
This is not to say that there weren't rewards and punishments, because I have shown how these were used on me. The reason for their use on me was another issue, however, and I think that at different times in the process there were probably different reasons. However, these were rewards and punishments for things that weren't written in policy manuals, so it was left to me to find a way to figure out why I was experiencing the things I was experiencing, or put another way, why I seemed to be punished (or rewarded, which was rarer in my case than being punished). Let's just say that if they were my parents and they were raising me, they used very bad parenting skills according to most standards. If I were a child I'd think they were just being very arbitrary and they'd have me scared spitless and the stat's Child and Family Services would probably determine that I was being abused and get me out of there. But I wasn't a child and they werern't my parents and I had made a decision as an adult to join them, and although I made that decision with less than complete or accurate information, I did stay on even after I realized things weren't as I expected.
So if bureaucracy controls behavior primarily by management and hierarchy does so by rewards and punishments, neither of these models is a good fit for the Vienna mission on this count.
As to the reference in this portion of the text to the size of the organization, there is a bit of relevance there, but that's not really a great fit either. For a mission working in Eastern Europe (when it was under Communism), it was a large mission, especially to have so many people in one place, working out of one building. These kinds of missions preferred to remain small at least partly because of security reasons and they might have several small locations, but not one large one like the joint mission I was working at. But it wasn't large as a coporation is large.
Actually, I think that face-to-face communication was preferred by the mission for the most part, but the issue would have been so many people in the mission traveling for the ministry, so they might not be there for staff meetings and other in-person communiques. So they would have to be kept informed somehow also. The other issue was the office inthe USA and keeping them abreast of things, but they'd only receive information they needed for their part of the work and also information that might be acceptable for public dissemination, such as newsletters with stories with recent human interest stories happening in the ministry or the like. These kinds of things workers could take and use in their prayer letters.
In my mind, the bulk of the every day communications happened more in the informal organization, in impromptu small or one-on-one meetings to discuss a particular issue, or even in the hallways sometimes.
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"Key concepts in large hierarchic structures are:
Formalization: The amount of written documentation related to procedures, job descriptions, regulations, and policies
Specialization: The degree to which organizational tasks are subdivided so as to yield division of labor
Standardization: The extent to which similar work activities are clearly described and performed in the same manner
Decentralization: The process of moving decision-making aurhotity down the hierarchy - in contrast to centralization, where decisions are made at the top." (p. 543)
When put this way it becomes very clear that the Vienna mission was not a hierarchy, at least not in the classic organizational typology sense. My experience of the mission was that it did not meet the formalization criteria as there was precious little written, as far as I was aware. So if there was a great amount of this kind of written documentation, 1) I wasn't privvy to it, and 2) it evidently mustn't have concerned me and/or applied to me. The latter point opens a whole new can of worms: if there was such a plethora of documentation, some of which might have applied to me (such as a grievance policy), why wasn't I privvy to the documentation relevant to me? But this is all hypothetical, because I do not know that there was a lot of this kind of documentation. However, if sometime down the road it should become known that there was such documentation, then these questions (and others like them) would be pertinent.
The mission was definitely divided into specialized functions. This is not that unusual in office settings, although in a lot of Christian missions there might not necessarily be that much specialization. However, the great uniter was the plethora of theologians, so many of them could work in other positions. For example, an instructor on the German team maybe could teach in Poland, especially with the use of a translator, which was standard fare anyway. There were other reasons, then, besides task uniqueness that separated many positions and some groups from others. One was security, as there was a desire to limit how many people had detailed knowledge of what, so that the East German team might all have a detailed working knowledge of all the issues involved in their work, but they would be the only ones to have that detailed knowledge, outside of upper management, which might share some of it. Everyone was on a need to know basis, so that you were only supposed to know what you needed to know to perform your job and what was common knowledge for everyone, of course.
The other issue involved in specialization at the mission, I think, was the desire for continuity, especially with external contacts to the mission. The most obvious example would be for the instructors and their relationships with the groups of students. The country teams had to develop trust with these groups, especially the leader(s), and then with each trip make or adjust plans for future lessons, delivery of textbooks, etc. Since the relational aspect of this part of the ministry was so important, it resulted in specialization so that there would be some continuity of contact with the students. This could be true in other external relations too, such as where the mission got the ring binding done for printings, and having the same person or just one or two persons have that contact to limit that external contact as well; this harkens back to the security for specialization, but it's an example of external contact continuity, rather than keeping people on a 'need-to-know' basis.
As to standardization as a criteria for hierarchic systems, there were some things that were standardized, such as in the textbook publishing and student group information management processes, or the usual accounting processes, but outside of those exceptions I think the mission was more people-centric than standardization-centric. That could be a good thing, or a bad thing, but it meant you had to relate to it, in my mind, as a person rather than as a set of discrete and explicit values, standards and policies. To be that way and also a total institution was not easy to deal with.
Finally, regarding decentralization, there was a certain amount of this, limited to one's mission-approved sphere of influence. In this world, women were granted the role of social planning and initiation, but there was a hiearchy there, too, and you had to know where you stood in that hierarchy as to what you could and couldn't do. I never had any problems regarding entertaining at home or elsewhere (e.g., picnic in the Wienerwald - Viennese Forest). Also, taking ownership of one's job was encouraged, as far as my experience was, although some things would have to be run by one's superior's, probably like in any job. And when out on the field or otherwise out of the office, one was expected to use one's best judgment in problem solving as issues came up, be it a too-curious member at church in Vienna or a last minute change in venue of a student group in Romania. Since these were considered work-related issues, that might be considered a type of decentralization, where everyone had to be prepared to deal with issues they might realistically experience and have to respond to on their own (or maybe in tandem with another colleague with them at the moment).
This being said, I never felt much of the decentralization, which, I think, hearkens back to where I was in the socialization process. So for me personally, it felt like everything was controlled by the administration - the top leadership. However, I was supposed to work with the assistant director, and even in the USA office worked for that director a whole, so my work was generally close in proximity to mission leadership. But although I felt like there was very little decentralization in my experience with the mission, I wouldn't try to generalize that to the whole mission because what I witnessed there indicates otherwise. So, in other words, my experience (via a vis decentralization) was different from what seemed to be going on around me at the time. I hadn't thought of this before, but this might also have contributed to my brokenness upon leaving the mission, my feeling like I really couldn't do anything - since next to nothing was decentralized to me, that would be how I would feel - like being spoon fed like a baby the whole time (or much of the time) I was with the mission. In contrast, I was constantly made to feel like the mission did not trust me, by the way I was shuffled around, by the mixed signals I got at times, etc. Of course, it doesn't help that I had such bottom of the totem pole positions, where perhaps no decentralization might have expected to have occur. However, if my mentor, the director's secretary, is any clue, there could have been some decentralization to me.
