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This next paper is:DeCotiis, Thomas A. & Summers, Timothy P. (1987). A path analysis of a model of the antecedents and consequences of organizational commitment. Human Relations. 40(7), 445-470.
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The first major section of the article is: "Rethinking the Definition of Organizational Commitment" and within that section there are various issues, usually a paragraph or two long. The first issue I'm going to address is "Attitudinal Commitment.""Buchanan (1974a) presented a definition of organizational commitment that appears to be the basis of many of the attitudinal definitions found in the literature. He defines organizational commitment as an individual's '... partisan affective attachment to the goals and values of an organization, to [his or her] role in relation to these goals and values and to the organization for its own sake, apart from its purely instrumental work [to the individual]" (p. 533).'" (p.446)
This is probably going to go in a direction that you might not expect if you've been reading any of these posts at all. There was never any complaint about my attitude while with the Vienna mission and I was always pleasant and agreeable and never complained. I did as I was told, maybe to a fault even. I was sociable and took initiative, which seems like a good sign of affective commitment too. So there shouldn't be any problem right? Wrong.
When I was sent to the USA for "culture shock" counseling my "take away" from that was to hide my true thoughts and feelings from others. I think I was even afraid to leave counseling until I could master that because I was scared to death of the mission after that. So, in truth I had zilch affective commitment, which is why I could leave and never look back.
I was shocked that they really and truly were going to send me back to the USA and my affective commitment zeroed out I think when I took all my things from my office and brought them to my apartment to stay for the duration of the time I'd be gone. I lived about half a mile from the office and I did this all on foot, including a lot of books I'd brought over and each trip was like nailing the coffin of my affective commitment until it was just dead.
It hardly had a time to come to life, actually, when you think of it. I mean I arrived in Vienna and right away I faced these lies and sitting hours on end with software manuals when I could have learned that beforehand in a class. And then there was the issue about not being allowed to study German which was promised in the policy handbook to new comers because I was "too busy" (studying policy manuals!).
So on the one hand I was a model of Pollyana where I was social and kind and all. Actually, though, you might as well make the best of a bad situation, so it's not that I wouldn't have done any of that. But that wasn't an indication of affective commitment in my case.
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This issue is "The Membership and Willingness Issues.""...Weiner (1982) has distinguished between organizational and instrumental motivation in that he defines commitment as '... the totality of interalized normative pressures to act in a way that meets organizatal goals and interests' (p. 421)" (p. 447)
If I may take the "organizational goals and interests" to be what the mission ostensibly says they are I think I felt it my duty and responsibility to do the best I could to do my job in such a way as to further the mission. I also think that some of the social things I initiated benefited the organization.
But that being said, you understand, that I also entertained outside the mission, as well, such as my neighbor and landlady, singles from my sending mission, etc. So I'm not sure that the mission would really have been so keen about that. They would have liked more single-focused attention, I think. Therefore, maybe the entertaining shouldn't be counted here.
So then if all you have lef is me doing my job well, that probably wasn't adequate for the mission, especially if I was rebellious in their eyes. To me it was that they hadn't done anything to earn my trust and I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. I wasn't harming them in any way.
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"The Revised Concept""In view of the above discussion, the view of the present authors is that commitment to an organization is a two-dimensional construct centered on organizational goal and value internalization, and role involvement in terms of these goals and values. Hence, organizational commitments can be defined as 'the extent to which an individual accepts and internalizes the goals and values of an organization and views his or her organizational role in terms of its contribution to those goals and values, apart from any personal instrumentalities that may attend his or her contribution." (p. 448)
So we already know that I really didn't internalize the mission's norms and values, not the ones I found once I arrived in Vienna. The goals, as expressed publicly were what drew me there in the first place and I accepted them wholeheartedly, but some of the other things there ended out taking precedence and crowding out the goals.
I don't like the way that this is worded, at least for my particular situation, because it was not my "personal instrumentalities" that got in the way, although the secretary issue would probably have been along those lines, but I said in advance that I wanted to work with Austrians in the evenings, so I thought that was all okay and agreed upon. They wanted to absolutely shove me into the secretarial mold and I wouldn't have accepted that if I'd known in advance.
The issue here though is the use of deception, and right from the beginning with me, not just with border guards or what have you, but with me. So those kinds of things with the values and what they thought they had to do that I disagreed with, based on things I had studied and been with different missionaries as well as a bit of experience myself in Eastern Europe. So I couldn't accept their values, and I'm talking what I think are some fairly major values for what are fundamental bases for their work.
So it's quite a dilemma when you agree with the goal but not the values. What do you do? I guess this may be the first time I remember thinking of it quite like this. Maybe I did at some point, but I don't remember. But actually, it really is the old Ends-Justifies-The-Means philosophy, which I've talked about more than once here, right? Unfortunately, I'm not a pragmatist, so that doesn't go over too well with me.
The thing is that the whole time with the Vienna mission I was in a supporting role, although I went on one teaching trip and a few day-long ESL trips. I could do my work according to my values, but I was in actuality supporting they mission with it's values operate in its pragmatist fashion. That is pretty much what I did for 2 years. I had figured out the ends-justtifies-the-means philosophy while I was there so I knew while I was still there that that was how they were operating.
Okay, so bear with me here. To backtrack above I had trouble with the goals & values because of the values, that there was a discrepancy, in my mind between the goals and the values of the mission, which I interpreted as the Ends-Justifies-The-Means (Pragmatism, among other names). For further explanation of this look for the pragmatism keyword and follow the discussions in the other posts where I discuss it more in detail.
What threw me off from the mission were actions that indicated a difference in values, particularly. Some of the things, especially having the two military chaplain on staff made me wonder about other connections since I did know that one mission had received money from the CIA (and I did a Freedom of Information Act request on it), so that would have been a separation of church and state concern as well if anything there was going on as well. And if anything was going on there then the question would have been raised as to whether there were any other "goals" besides the obviously stated ones. For example, "keep Margo under control/out of East Europe/etc." (because of my dad working in management in SDI at the time) would have been another goal, if a fleeting one. In such a case, I might have also had a problem with a goal as well as with values.
I think that there are security mandates that probably also come close to these, even if they only come from mission leadership, but, for example, they managed to have everyone shun me pretty well the weeks before I left the mission for good. Even my boss's kids ignored me! So that's in there too somewhere as part of a goal too, right? I don't know where it is, but it's somewhere, and it's real.
And my commitment to it... Can I claim the 5th Amendment*? Or is it too late for that?
*In the USA the 5th Amendment of the Constitution grants the right to remain silent rather than testify against yourself in a court of law
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That's all for now, but I'll get another one in later, Lord willing.I'd just like to say, and this has been on my mind to say this. All these articles that I collected, you whould remember the context. I collected these articles during the time when I was living in Russia - on an extended visit to the USA. I was so SICK AND TIRED of all the problems and political issues in my life that constantly kept pointing back to my dad and I couldn't have a life of my dad and I was in my 2nd career and had my 2nd major health catastrophe, one in the USA and one in Russia and I had had it. I wrote a human rights report and I've quoted parts of it here and then the other thing was I had to try to understand my life and the worst time was with the Vienna mission. I didn't research like this any other time, just that time because I had to understand it and a few people believed me but my family didn't, except my Grandmother, she did. So I am studying the Vienna mission from the standpoint of it being part of a political USA-USSR/Russia mess that is my life. But to understand the Vienna mission I have to look at the mundane parts, but that's why I went to Minneapolis and did this research full-time every day for a month. And I've done I don't know maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the articles so far. We've got a ways to go. So sit back and enjoy the ride. There's other stuff along the way too.
