It's really frustrating, because there's no way I could hope to go out West in July (to see family) if I'm going to keep having these kinds of health issues at every turn. I just can't deal with it and I don't have anyone to help me if I have problems while I'm away. So then I'm sort of stuck here. If I'm staying here, though, then maybe I could finish a couple things on the condo. It's really frustrating though. But there's not much I can do about it (my health limitations), because I'm doing the best I can, really.
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The next article is:Kohl, John P. (1980, Winter). It's more than griping -- thoughts on counseling dissatisfied soldiers. Military Chaplains' Review, 13-21.
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"The Human Relations Movement, and its philosophy that satisfied workers will be more productive workers, dominated much of the management literature from the 1920's until the 1950's. It is interesting to note that these concepts continue to dominate the thinking of many managers in industry, the government and the military. As a result, all too often human relations training is seen as a cure-all for whatever ails a unit." (p. 15)I have no idea what philosophy the human resources department in the Vienna mission operated under, but it didn't appear to me that satisfied workers was anything that they cared one iota about. The thing that they care about was workers that towed the line and passed the socialization test of being completely trusting of the mission (no holds barred, etc.). In the spirit of the Soviet Union, deviants were declared mentally touched or else were driven there. This, to me, has nothing in the least to do with employee satisfaction.
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"Studies have shown that dissatisfaction often leads to increased absences, turnover and other difficulties. A unit with high morale is often a unit with high reenlistment rates and fewer people going on sick call. So continue to do PET, and continue to show supervisors how to pay attention to people's needs. But avoid the fallacious belief that high morale units are necessarily more productive units." (p. 15)I expect that the military has so many checks and balances, so many levels of oversight that productivity will happen even without excessively high morale, because it's enforced, if nothing else.
In the Vienna mission virtually everyone had high morale because that was part of socialization and if you didn't have high morale than it would soon be found out and soeone would be on top of it to "express concern" to find out what's going on. I think that's why I slipped under the radar till the very end - because I apparently had high morale (no matter what happened, no matter what they threw at me). Really, you might think I was supremely stupid and didn't understand at all what was going on the way I was so cheerful no matter what they did to me. But that was my external self, my yes-man playing alone. After being sent to the States and then returning to Vienna I was scared to disagree with them, but I did internally anyway.
I have a feeling that most people, once they were really part of the organization, just decided to not think too much about these kinds of things that might become problematic.
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"Much of the behavior modification literature of recent years has stressed the importance of using extrinsic rewards as a way of motivating workers." (p. 18)They really didn't use this on my much. Sometimes I was told various stories of this or that possible opportunity down the line, but I never knew if it was a real or phantom possibility, so I never really knew if I should hang my hat on it or not. I ended out going the "not" route and just mainly ignoring these rumors. So if we ignore these things as pipe dreams, then all I got was the stick (vs. the carrot). So I more or less figured out what to run from, and I sort of guestimated as to what I was supposed to run to, but I wasn't interested, after all the sticks they threw my way. I guess they didn't know about the "preferability of using extrinsic rewards as a way of motivating workers."
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That's it for that article.
