This 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)In the Vienna mission they didn't have "units" per se, but they did have things like departments, for example. And as far as I ever knew nothing ever ailed departments. The only kind of problems I knew about there were things like external changes, such as changes to the political climate or changes to the logistics, maybe one of our providers was not going to be able to deliver textbooks any more or we tight on funds maybe. Or, in the case of me, of course, I could be what ails the organization maybe. I mean, judging by the send off I got (not) and the great general cold shoulder I received in the weeks leading up to my leaving you'd really think I was what was personally ailing the organization. It was all my fault; blame it all on me. (Don't ask me exactly what it is that was my fault - what I did - , but it must be something really horrible judging by the way I was treated.)
In the Vienna mission the workers are - once they are socialized, that is - the epitome of satisfied workers. Any government agency or corporation would just crave to have employees employees as satisfied as those you'd find there. It's incredible, really. They're so cheerful, and friendly it almost rivals Shirley Temple on the Good Ship Lollipop. But there's just one caveat: don't ask any untoward questions or your days of happiness may be disrupted as you find yourself suddenly a target of human resource scrutiny and psychological testing.
I'm not sure if the high satisfaction levels in the Vienna mission resulted in higher work productivity or not. The thing is that they spent so much time on social affairs, which were also highly rated, that that cut into their productivity time, although it undoubtedly increased their job satisfaction (that is if they liked being social; some people might have resented it taking away from their work, I suppose).
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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)This is elementary h.r. logic, and I have no reason to doubt that the leadership (not just the H.R. staff) knew about this when I was at the Vienna mission. I don't know whether they ever intended to use it with me, however. If they did, then it would have been to promise me some position or the like, as that's the only thing I can think of as far as extrinsic reward they could have offered me. It wasn't like they could have offered me a raise or something - that's not how it works in those kinds of missions. Anyway, if I was morally set against cooperating further with them - after they sent me to the USA - then they could have offered me the moon and it wouldn't have mattered a hill of beans, I wouldn't have taken it. So there wouldn't have been any kind of extrinsic reward at all that would have budged me at that point. They ruined it for me just a few months in.
So and the thing was, and I wasn't willing to admit this until the very end, they they didn't negotiate like this with their workers. So they weren't going to offer me anything. I had to come period or not. So there was not going to even be any of this kind of discussion or negotiation going on. See, I thought I was a reasonably valuable worker and maybe they would see that, and they might do this kind of things, but no, they don't treat anyone that way. It doesn't matter. I'm dirt, you're dirt. Everyone's dirt. No one get's any extriinsic rewards of any kind.
That was my take away.
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I guess I finished the article after all. Good night.