Organ, D. W. (1985). Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Good Soldier Syndrome. Lexington, MA: Lexingon Books.
I'm picking up in the "The OCB-Job Satisfaction Relationship" chapter.
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This section is "Satisfaction as Fairness"The inference we have torturously reached is that the portion of job satisfaction that overlaps with OCB [Organizational Citizenship Behavior] contains more in the nature of cognitive assessment and appraisal than current or typical mood state. Moreover, the type of appraisal reflected probably comes close to statement of the person's opinions about the degree of fairness or justice that characterizes his relationship with the organization. (p. 60-61)
I think this is a good point, because to say it's just cognitive assessment and appraisal- a kind of factual deduction of of the situation, or mood - emotion or how you feel. Rather, it's an evaluative and and moral reaction. I think that this is a very good description of something that was going on with me in Vienna at the mission.
I had very strong opinions and views of right and wrong that I felt were violated and althought they weren't just violated only in comparison to how I should have been treated based on my abilities, but also things going on in the mission that I was morally appalled at that I thought went against the very principles I thought they believed in too, but apparently not. So I was a overflowing over with this kind of sentiment, but I dare not show it.
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I think you will agree that title of the section this text is from is very apt: "Justice is Relative" Oldham et al. found that the basis for comparison most generally invoked was some other person or persons within the same organization; this tendency was especially marked for those with longer tenure and at middle and lower levels of the organization. Those persons relatively new to the organization were somewhat more likely than others to anchor their conceptions of fairness in previous positions with other organizations, and upper-level personnel were apt to compare their situations with those of individuals in other organizations. (p. 67)The thing here is that the mission, as I've said innumerable times, seemed to like living by things being relative in a shady sort of way. So why not here too? Don't expect me to say that I was like that, because I hope you know me well enough that I couldn't stand that about the mission and I wasn't about to be a part of it and that was among the primary things I did my best to avoid being a part of without anyone catching on to it. For all I know they even changed their theology when I wasn't looking to become Arminians and not believe in the security of salvation - so then even that would be relative in a way.
[Now I know there may be some Arminians out there reading this and you may think that it's not so bad for them to change to become Arminian, but you just have to understand that for a large multi-mission group like that to change would be a huge deal, so you can imagine what that would be like to go through.]
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Blau (1964) sketched a taxonomy of exchange of considerable heuristic value. Economic exchange has a contractual character...In the normal work place it would be a kind or economic exchange, and with the mission there was a little sense of that in that there was and office and there were office hours. But it was more than the office and it was a total institution, so that the office was decieving even. But it was basically a hube social exchange and that's how they had it set up, and that's how they wanted it.
By contrast, Blau characterizes social exchange as being based on trust and implicit obligations. Social exchange has to do with commodities whose value depends somewhat on the identies of the parties. Each principal will have expectations concerning the behavior of the other(s), but will not gear these expectations to a precise time-table or specify the substance of what a particular party must render. Social exchange is open-ended, in the parties -- assuming that they benefit in some way from the exchange - can never know for sure that they expectations of each have been fully met, and even if they feel sure, are loath to verbalize this opinion.
Thus, if your toilet leaks, you can turn to the yellow pages, call plumber, and pay a fee for the service rendered. You may not experience total satisfaction with either the service or the bill, but both you and the plumber know what the transaction requires of you and when the exchange has concluded. By contrast you may call over a neighbor who has more aptitude with wrenches and pipes than you do, and the end result may be no better nor worse than would optain with the plumber. But neigher you nor your neighbor will attach a pricise value to thise service, or make explicit when and what you should do to reciprocate. (p. 68)
But it wasn't a completely accidental social exchange, either. It felt sort of smothering, really. So I don't know, maybe it was a hybrid social-economic exchange, except that no matter how you looked at it there wasn't an exchange or money per say. But there was some of the economic exchange's sureness. Maybe it was just ritual too, though. And authority.
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Graham (1986), drawing upon the writing of Elazar (1978), has suggested that the exchange relationship binding an individual to a collective body can take on the quality of a covenant. Covenantal relationships emphasize the common purpose of the parties rather than the details of the required behavior. Covenants presuppose some degree of conflict, but also assume that the various parties are sufficiently committed to their common purpose to continually struggle to overcome these conflicts by means of mutual respect, support, accommodation, and forgiveness. (p. 69)In the Vienna mission everyone had come in support of the common mission, so there was no question there. But then as soon as the new missionary arrived the mission had to quickly acclimatize the missionary into what the mission thought was the necessary way of working in that part of the world and in that process they had to become vulnerable and then once they were in it was pretty easy, I think to make sure that everyone maintained the mutual respect, support, etc., because it was much more of a total institution than the average workplace so you couldn't really hide anything if there was a problem. I was an unusual case that I was able to hide anything, but that was really rare.
I think I've gone over this before but I'll just say it again since maybe it's been awhile. after they sent me home to the U.S. and I got the shock of my life I spent the next few months trying to figure out how I could be true to myself - hold onto my values and beliefs - and still work with the mission. So the whole thing was, it seemed to me anyway, sort of learning to have a poker face. But I had to learn what my limits were, what I could and couldn't do so that I wouldn't completely implode. Because if I completely imploded I could have come out of there a screaming meme. It was literally a very fragile balancing act like you wouldn't believe and I didn't know if I could carry it off. But I'm here to tell you that I have the same values and beliefs about work in Eastern Europe as I did before I went to work with the mission, and that's because my balancing act did work.
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Furthermore, a workable consensus on criteria for distributive justice must, as a precondition, take account of the varying claims made for alternative standards of justice. This precondition is unrealized under some circumstances because those who design and execute distribution arrangements either wrongly assume that their own preferred rules are broadly accepted or because they are unwillingly to discover the breadth of support for rules other then their own. (p. 75)
As regards the Vienna mission's treatment of me this text has little meaning, because, as I learned eventually, the mission cared little what anyone else's views were, so it appears that everyone's views were to change to match the mission's views. So whether or not I agreed with the mission on criteria for distributive justice - which I'm not sure if anyone knew what they were anyway, since the staff manual wasn't a reliable source for these kinds of things - was of little matter, because I was supposed to agree with the mission, hence I was clearly in the wrong if I happened to not agree with the mission. This was very likely in its own right a punishable offense, just the disagreeing with the mission about the criteria.
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Also, organization leaders at one level or another may find it expedient to exploit the potential for coercion inherent in the conditions of membersion imposed on some participants. This phenomenon is demonstrated in such remarks as "Yes, I know they won't see it as far, but what chan they do? They have little choice." Thus, participants who are virtually immobilized within a system by previous commitments, unable to relocate without great financial or personal distress, or perhaps without other options for employment in the vicinity will indeed remain in the system. While a contractual, exchange relationship holds, it holds under duress. (p. 75)I don't think the Vienna mission leaders thought in general like this, but if they had instructions about me related to my father, than this would certainly have been included in their thinking, because I was stuck there thousands of miles from home and this was my profession going up in smoke. So they may have included this kind of thinking particular to me, and I did have unusually bad treatment from the mission, there's no way around that.
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So, as these people experience an irrespressible sense of unfairness, how will they react to the employment situation? Here Equity theory proves instructive, provided we substitute for the equity criterion one that approximates the expected mix of competing fairness principles. We rule out the option of perceptual reevaluation, on the grounds that the offended parties have no remaining perceptual slack unless they resort to pathological defense mechanisms. We rule out as well the literal rendering of "leaving the field," that is, formal resignation, because that is often not practicable. Their remaining options are to attempt to increase the share of the outcomes or to "lower their inputs." (p. 75)Let's look at these options, because I think this is real helpful. Of course, I did think about quitting. It did pass through my mind, but the thing was that I was just frozen in thinking what my other mission options might be if I left because I'd thought I'd already considered them all and I didn't think there were any more, so I was up against a wall there. And then I was just giving up on missions and what was going on, I couldn't believe it. And then I'd have to face my supporters and how would I explain to them what was going on? Believe me, it was really hard to explain what was happening. It was just a mess. No one was going to believe me, and I was pretty sure, and that's what the mission wanted. So I couldn't quit. It wasn't "practicable."
I was with the author at being to the point where I had "no remaining perceptual slack" for perceptual reevaluation. I know I was definitely at that point when they sent me back to the USA. It's quite possible that my alter ego/secret self was a pathological defense mechanism; I'm not a psychologist, but I venture to suggest that it's possible that might be what that was.
I did not lower my inputs, and I did not attempt to increase my share of the outcomes, although every once in a while someone suggested to me the possibility of this or that position and I might have expressed interest, but I didn't actively pursue it, such as discuss it with the management. I never was sure if these kinds of things were in good faith or not, so I thought it better to just hang tight.
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Yet one suspects that diminished OCB, while prompted as a reaction to sensed unfairness does not settle the account. The reduction in inputs does not remove the feeling of inequity so much as it reaffirms it. And there is something worse: as diminished OCB becomes a pattern, informal and often unforeseen changes in relationships occur that have greater adverse effect than that which defined the initial state of unfairness. Inequity seems compounded, inviting further diminishment of OCB, and so the vicious cycle continues. (p. 77)
I can see how this might happen, but it didn't with me and the mission, because I didn't reveal what I was thinking and my views on these issues. I always did my best at work and there wasn't a complaint about that, so we didn't have that, as far as I knew of, to deal with. So that's why we didn't get caught up in what would have been a typical scenario like this author describes here.
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Houseman, Hatfield, and Miles (1987) have suggested the term Benevolent to denote the type of individual who actually prefers inequitable underreward to equity. Modifying this concept slightly, we can generalize beyond the equity rule and apply it to those who persist in contributing despite unfair treatment.
How do we account for such tendencies? Perhaps some individuals simply find it personally and emotionally unacceptable to rein in their contributions, even those of a purely voluntary sort. Their self-concept may be so deeply dependent on characteristic levels of contribution that they find it easier to endure injustice then to endure injustice then to alter such an important component of the sense of self. (p. 78-79)
On one hand you would expect that everyone working at a mission would be "benevolent" practically nor matter how you define it. But no matter where they received their sustenance and whether the management wisely doled out accolades, these folk were benevolent to the hilt, not only because they came that way but because the mission, which was a total institution, remember, socialized them into being jolly, happy, supportive members, who looked out for each other. So even if the mission missed giving an accolade, a department or individual surely would. And where ever there was a need someone was there to help, so everyone was always happy.
But the thing was when the person first arrived there was a difficult time and at that time the person might not necessarily be always so happy. But there was always the available mentor or boss or what have you to help you along - basically, to help you learn the mission's ways and accept them. I've discussed this before, the socialization.
Okay so eventually you're supposed to get over that and everybody-but-everybody makes it through and is happy. So the only people that aren't happy are the newcomers, unless maybe your mom just died or something, they'll allow for that. But the thing is that I kept staying in these underewarded positions that I thought was completely unequitible. I was not really taken seriously, I thought.
Then this last sentence is a killer. I'm going to write it again here:
" Their self-concept may be so deeply dependent on characteristic levels of contribution that they find it easier to endure injustice than to alter such an important component of the sense of self." (p. 79)I was used to getting some contribution - some acknowledgement of my abilities and knowledge in the area of mission in Eastern Europe and the USSR, and then going to the Vienna Mission was like a slap in the face. And this was a huge part of my identity. So I really wasn't able to use my Bible background, because the mission kept cutting me back on that one, I wanted to work with Austrians, and I was willing to do the secretarial work if that's what they wanted me for. But I wanted people ministry.
Then they denied that I knew anything at all about Eastern Europe. They just refused to admit or even acknowledge that I had any background in it at all. So all my preparation was just gone to waste and for nothing. Why was I there even?
How lower can it get? I was humiliated absolutely to the core. Completely and absolutely, utterly humiliated. I can't describe it how I felt. It was absolutely horrible. Really, the whole time. And I must say I held my own and I came out with my own conscience and, yes, I was indeed standing on the inside, and the reason I was able to stand on the inside was because I had all this knowledge and background that the management refused to acknowledge. That's why.
[The reference of "Standing up on the inside" is to something I was told repetitely at the end of my time referring to what I was doing that they just then realized that I hadn't completely submitted to them and their ways, but it was too late, because I was leaving. I've told that full story elsewhere here on the blog.]
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The cynic suspects that the "martyr keeps a "reserve" of underpayment on hand so that, at an opportune moment, he may employ it as moral susasion in an effort to attain a long-run objective. Indeed, Blau (1964) suggest that an important base of power inheres in the situation of one who has contributed much in forms that defy in immediate reciprocation. (p. 79)
Hmmm. I'll have to keep that in mind.
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That's it for this post. This really opened a can of worms for me and has been an emotional post to write. It feels like its a step in helping me understand what happened and that the mission did treat me wrongly and explaining how I felt. It makes a lot of sense and really fits well.
