452. Discipline & Justice, Pt. 2 ( King, Miles & Day, pt. 1

I think my system for which files I'd done and hadn't yet done had gotten messed up in the Military Chaplaincy file.  But I don't think it was a complete loss, because I think I still came up with some new insights the second time around on some of the articles.  But despite the fact that there may be articles that I may have missed on the other end of things, I'm giving it up and moving on to pick back up with the Discipline and Justice file again.

I won't finish this now, though, because I have to get ready for church.  Right now I'm eating a breakfast of multigrain Eggo waffles and homemade fig compote (on top of the waffles, instead of syrup).  I never by processed food like this, but I had a coupon for it at BJs and when you're not feeling well... and it's multigrain, so I was game.

This article is:

King, Jr., Wesley C., Miles, Edward, W., & Day, David D. (1993). A test and refinement of the equity sensitivity construct. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 14(4) 301-317.

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Husemen et all (1985, 1987) and Miles et al. (1989) classify individuals as either benevolents, equity sensitives, or entitleds accordings to their measured sensitivity to equity.  Equity sensitives are those invidules who adhere to the predictions of the current equity theory model (i.e. the equity norm) as proposed by Adam (1963), 1965). Benevolents and entitleds, on the other hand, anchor opposite ends of the equity sensitivity spectrum.  As originally defined (Huseman et al., 1985, 1987), benevolents and entitleds prefer that their outcome/input ratio be either less than (for the benevolent) or greater than (for the entitled) that of the comparison other.  Satisfaction for benevolents was proposed to be the result of the preception that their inputs had exceeded their outcomes and that they had made a valuable contribution to the relationship.  Satisfaction for the entitled, proposed to have a high threshold for feeling indebted, was reasoned to be a result of outcomes exceeding inputs... (p. 302)

So this in interesting because it considers the expectations of the individual - as a psychological contruct, rather then just a cookie cutter stamp or a program.  If the Vienna mission had taken this approach with me, which it should have been able to do, at least in principle, considering I had worked for sometime with one of its member missions for some time, if not the mission I chose to go with in the end.  Still they had access to the information if they had chosed to use it.  Then they might have known that I wasn't the type to go for a lot of overblown hype - in my syrupy sweet welcome what was enough to make anyone gag.

But then from there they went way from there to the other end to where I was treated like dirt, and the pendulum seemed mostly stuck there for the duration of my time with the mission, with a few exceptions.  So then I felt not exactly like my inputs exceeded the related outputs, but what I was able to offer by way of inputs exceeded what they offered for me to do and therefore the related outputs.  So basically I was underperforming, but not by my choice - by theirs.

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 This tolerance for underreward can spring from the same sources suggested to be the root of benevolence: Calvinistic heritabe, altruism, empathy, or disguised self-interest. Accordingly, we predict that:

H1. In identical underreward conditions, benevolents will report significantly higher satisfaction than will equity sensitivities.

H2. In identical underreward conditions, benevolents will report significantly higher satisfaction than will entitleds.

Defining benevolents in terms of tolerance for underreward, however, does not imply its converse: that benevolents will report the greatest intolerance for overreward.  As shown the results of the initial field study, benevolents tend to express high satisfaction (relative to the other two groups) irrespective of reward conditions.  Unlike equity sensitives whose satisfaction appears more influenced by the input-outcome ratio in an exchange, benevolents appear to express relatively high satisfaction across reward conditions.  Results from the original field study found that overrewarded benevolents reported higher satisfaction than did overrewarded equity sensitives. (p. 303)

 In the Vienna mission there were only so many ways available for reward and punishment, but they knew you to use then; to that I can testify.  The one benifit was that it was a total institution, so even if it didn't have so much ready access to raises and things like that, it had other social control things that it could use on a day to day basis just to keep a person on track.  But certainly most everyone would be of the "benevelont" sort, not really needing a lot of pats on the back to keep going, although the management tried to give those out, acknowledging anything that had just been completed, for example.

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The other redefinition is for entitleds.  Rather than viewing entitleds as those who have a preference for overreward (Huseman et al,. 1987), we comceptualize entitleds as those who are more focused on the receipts of outcomes than on the contribution of intputs and who are thus tolerant uf underreward, more tolerant of overreward than are either equity sensitives or benevolents, and for whom satisfaction and receipt of rewards are positively and linearly related.  This conceptualization suggests that entitleds' satisfaction is a function of the receipt of rewards with relatively little regard for the input component of the equity exchange. (p. 304)

I had this highlighted so I maybe thought this might have applied to me at least somewhat (I didn't have stars or anything else by it, so it mustn't have been too very notable in my mind.)  But I couldn't really have been an "entitled" - actually now either, but I'm talking about when I was in Vienna working with the mission.  If nothing else, I really was bothered by "underreward" - by being forever in these jobs that were not for me professional and yet the mission - formally or otherwise - pressuring me to break off using what I felt were my professional skills.  So I most definitely was not very tolerant of underreward at all and my syrupy sweet welcome might be viewed as an overreward - and it must made me suspicious as to what they were up to.  So you can see that I was not an entitled.  And if the mission leadership got it in their head that I was one, they missed the mark there, because I'm not, and I wasn't.  Obviously.

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The data supported the predicted relationship in H2: That in identical underreward conditions, benevolents will report significantly higher satisfaction than will entitleds.  This finding is parallel to that of Huseman et al. (1985) and leands support to the redefinition of benevolents having an increased tolerance for underreward. (p. 307)

In Vienna I had to act as if I was getting all the satisfaction I needed no matter what job they threw my way, so I didn't ever display my true feelings.  So it would have looked like I was very benevolent, like a doormat, really, ready to be walked all over, like they could do whatever they wanted with me and I was just fine with it whatever they wanted I'd do.  I'm surprised they didn't ask me to jump through a hoop or play a hand organ or something.  It's surprising that they really couldn't tell that these jobs bothered me.  So that really says something that I could hid it from them so well all that time.  This was a major issue for me, a huge, gigantic one.  I prepared years for that work, so it was just mammoth.  It was my life.

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There are some other interesting things in this article, but basically more of the same and I couldn't really add anything new to the discussion, althought the text might be interesting for the reader and perhaps add to the convincing effect.