O'Driscoll, Michael P. and Beehr, Terry A. (1994). Supervisor behaviors, role stressors and uncertainty as predictors of personal outcomes for subordinates. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15, 141-155.
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Two assumptions underlying the present study are (a) that one important realm of influence which control is the degree of uncertainty personnel have to contend with in their work environment, and (b) that uncertainty is a predictor of work-related effect, strain and behavior intentions. We argue that, through their interactions with subordinates, supervisors may reduce or, alternatively, exacerbate the amount of uncertainty confronted by employees within an organization. Supervisors' behavior may be quite critical for alleviating or increasing the ambiguity and unpredictability which subordinates feel about their job tasks, about managemenet, and about the social and political dynamics of the organization. (p. 141-142)Bingo! And if you just happen to be working for the Vienna mission, where ambiguity in the work place is a standard operating procedure - particularly during the socialization process, but not even completely isolated to that initial period of the worker's time with the mission. It's just that at the beginning it's heaped on him/her and s/he is taken by surprise and doesn't have the coping skills yet to deal with it and hasn't come to grips with it yet. Because half the battle is coming to grips with it; that is, you have to sort of decide agree to live in/with this ambiguity, which means that you aren't the one pulling the shots and you don't really know what's going on. So you're taking a huge Kierkegaardean leap of faith and you have to really believe that the mission is on the straight, has your best interest in mind, is doing what it says it is doing, etc., because you're laying your life on the line that it is doing these things. Literally, because you're going behind the lines into Communist countries doing church work and they might even think you're spies if they find out you're doing church work. So that's pretty serious.
But when I arrived in Vienna and the ambiguity I first face wasn't just from my "Supervisors' behavior." At least not directly and openly from his behavior. But management can give other orders that don't come directly from them that cause ambiguity also, and I'm pretty certain that the computer problems and some of the other problems at work may have been of that nature. But then I'm not sure how they decided how to "socialize" me, it may have been by committee, but that's still management and my supervisor, who was the assistant director of the mission, most certainly would have been involved in the process, no matter how unassuming he could come off.
Even things like at the end when I was working at the reception desk and I was supposed to keep track of who was in the building so I knew how to route calls or take messages, etc. And people would NOT tell me when they left no matter how many times I asked them to do so. This was deliberate and created a sense of ambiguity for me because it made me feel uncertain about my status in the organization and unrespected. This wasn't done by the supervisor, but the organization was such an in sync organism that things didn't always need to come from the supervisor or management, and then this could free up the management and leadership from having to take any responsibility for doing the dirty work, which, of course, was a very convenient thing.
All I can say is that I have never ever worked anywhere where there has been so much ambiguity, including in Siberia or Seoul, S. Korea. That's part of why I had to do these studies with these articles because my mind was such a muddle about what happened but my life was so destroyed by those two years with the mission, and it was incredibly worse than anything Russia did to me. It's like the saying that the American Jews graffitied on our mission working with Soviet Jews in the '80s in the U.S.: "The Nazis killed Jews bodies, but you are killing Jews souls." Of course, we didn't see it as killing Jews souls, but the comparison was graffic, and you could see how from their standpoint they could feel that way. So for me, the Vienna mission tried to kill my soul, but Russia tried to kill me. I'm not exactly sure Russia tried to kill me, but I think it came pretty close because I was in pretty bad shape in their hospital there were some pretty shady things there that went on and no one knew I was there except my then husband. (Later believers from the house church I was going to ran me down, but it was after the worst was over.)
The ambiguity in the Vienna mission was a given and everybody had a certain amount of it and it was just something you just had to get used to, but not like what I went through. What I went through was over the top and to say it was intended as training for me to be able to contend with horses (Jer. 12:5) was beyond believability. There is no way that what they put me through could train me for anything other than trying to get me out of there or having a breakdown (if I won't get out of there on my own free will). And, of course, the other thing, is that they would have been interested in protecting my father, so they would have had that extra directive (the word is used intentionally - remember the H.R. staff are U.S. reserve chaplains, and one of the lead missions takes money from the C.I.A. and my father had an intelligence aspect of his job as SDI program manager at Boeing) to make sure I'm in a position that keeps dad safe. My personality and background, values included, would not have made this very easy.
So here we are back at my dad again. It's hard to deny that my treatment by the mission was extraordinary and everyone knew it. And when I started to get rumors, people telling me about different positions, possibilities of this or that thing going to happen that I might be a part of, I didn't know whether to believe it. That's because the ambiguity was too much and I was too much on the outs so I did hope some, but I mostly chose not to act on these things. This was ambiguity. A very clear example of what I mean, but it was all the time and this is just one thing.
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Similarly, role conflict has been shown to be related to unfavorable personal outcomes, although typically the association is not as strong as for ambiguity. (p. 143)There was some role conflict, if you will recall (if you have been reading along, that is), but even that involved some ambiguity because it wasn't out and out role conflict. That is, my boss didn't outright say that I had to stop attending the Austrian church, for example or being told by H.R. that galavanting about on my own (such as taking the Spanish cooking class) was prohibited for staff to do. Nothing was that straightforward or cleancut. That would be too easy. Rather, it was left to the world of ambiguity and social pressures and tips from the inner sanctum if one appeared ready and in the right spirit to learn more about the desires of the leadership. Otherwise, the ambiguity remained.
There were, of course, roles that missionaries at the mission had to balance, such as family roles and responsibilities in the mission. Those would be the main roles of this type, I think. This includes issues around children and their schooling. But the mission had taken this into account and this wasn't so much the issue that I'm talking about. (Part of how this was dealt with, incidently, was that secretaries worked with their boss's kids and befriended their lonely homebound wives that might be jealous of them (the secretaries) spending all the time with their husband all day at work. At least this is how it was explained to me.)
So then what it comes down to is other types of roles. In fact, it might just only be my external roles to the mission because I dared to have roles outside the mission. It is possible that I wasn't the only person that had ever had the problem of external role conflict that became a problem and led to some ambiguity, but I'm pretty certain that I'm the only one that stuck with it so long.
These were the preconditions that led to me having the role conflicts:
1) being assigned a position (secretary) that I was not satisfied with and felt overqualified for,
2) knowing the local language, at least somewhat
3) having Bible school training and some missions background
4) having previously spent 2 months (with a mission and also a few days with a university) in the city)
There was at least one other female staff that I think could have been a candidate for role conflict, but I'm not sure if she had or not experienced it because she had already been there so much longer than I and I didn't have any chance to really discuss this with her.
The thing, then, is that all these things had to converge together. Then I felt this sort of ambiguous sense that there was a disapproval, but there was a disapproval for everything about me it seemed.
And then, of course, I'm told I have culture shock. Is that their ultimate disapproval? How ambiguous is that? And all the time I'd been doing just great at the Austrian church and I much preferred being with the Austians over the Americans. At least the Austrians made sense. Let's just say I much prefer the Austrian and Russian horses to the American footmen (Jer. 12:5 - the verse the H.R. director/U.S. reserve military chaplain used in his send off back to America for counseling for "culture shock").
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[O]ne proposition examined in the present research was that role ambiguity and conflict are perceived environmental stressors which induce uncertainty in a person about the performance of tasks of about the outcomes that are dependent upon successful task performance. (p. 143)This is not as clearcut as it might seem. For me in the Vienna mission, a good part of the problem was that I was constantly being moved about, so it was difficult to think that I was really leaving a mark on the mission. And from the very beginning I was doing trivial things that were way beneath what I could have been doing. Even just volunteering at a research center I was making more of a mark than what I was doing there in a two year mission supported term. It was degrading. And I felt absolutely demeaned. That's on the macro level.
On the micro level I knew I was doing what I was supposed to do to the best of my ability and that they were pleased with it. But at the same time, I also knew that the micro level was often - but not always grunt work. At the very beginning what I was doing was absolutely nonessential and I might as well have not been there. There was no good purpose in my being there unless they were seeing it as being for my socialization.
But a lot of the time I felt like it was just a test to see how I would do and they might not even care that much. For example, when I was sent to the receptionist desk. I had so much time on my hands it was ridiculous so I decided to re-organize the supply and ordering system, which I didn't have to do. I guess they appreciated it, but it was sort of a joke too, because they just had me their as a retainer biding time until I left and that was all.
There never was a benchmark or anything by which to determine if you had successfully completed a task; it wasn't that kind of place anyway and I don't know if anyone had that luxury. But in my case I never even knew if successful task completion was what they were really after, or if it was something else and the task was just a ploy to get to something else that they were really after. That's how it felt, but it was a moving target, so that I can't say that it was always the same. And there you get more ambiguity.
Can you begin to imagine how it could have been hell on earth and how hard it would have been to maintain one's sanity in this kind of context? It was wild. And to explain it is just... it's almost beyond words. You had to be me living it, really. I don't know how else to say it.
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So now we get to the results of this study and here is one finding.In particular, there were strong indications that role ambiguity was closely related to job dissatisfation and to psychological strain, while role conflict was associated with strain and with turnover intentions. Uncertainty appeared to be directly connected with lack of job satisfaction, rather than with the two other outcomes variables. (p. 151)So there you have it in black and white. As some might say, it's not rocket science, no? I mean it's not like you should be shocked out of your pants to learn this truth. It's not like learning for the first time that the earth revolves around the sun or something, right? Well, I mean, it might just solidify something you had a hunch about but now it's more certain, like a truth. Of course, the way with research studies is that they have to study it in other settings, with other populations and other researchers have to confirm it, etc., etc. but you know what I mean.
Was I happy in Vienna? Well, I put on a good show, for sure, but I've been a wreck ever since I left there because they ruined me and inside I was anything but happy. I was scared spitless. More than anything else I was afraid of them. But there was also a good dose of anger in there, and hurt, grieving because this was my career that I just buried somewhere and didn't deal with for 2 years till I came home to the States for good.
So it's clear I had job dissatisfaction, and for good reason, for all the times they moved me around - and they didn't treat anyone else that way, and I'm not stupid, so anyone in their right mind would have job dissatisfaction. I had so much psychological strain it was a miracle I didn't come home in a straight jacket and that just testifies to my fortitude and scrappiness for finding a way to survive in that social climate. So you just know that I am a turnover intention just waiting to happen because I meet all the criteria left and right and it's a wonder it didn't happen sooner except I was afraid to leave my term early. So when my two year term was up you bet your booties my turnover intention was not just an intention it was a fact and it happened right on schedule at the end of my two years.
It turns out I fit the description perfectly.
I would also like to say that the mission leadership was pretty stupid for thinking that I might be happy working with them after how they treated me. They didn't know who they were dealing with it seems.
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That's the end of this article. It's another pretty emotional one. It looks like this file seems to be full of these kinds of articles. They touch on subjects that really hit home and help me describe what happened when I was in Vienna. It's these aspects that won't be picked up in a lot of other places because I was so scared to even write about my feelings realy. The mission had me that terrified. No one should have to go through that. And the worst thing is that these were Christians, Christian leaders. So it has undermined my faith in the Christian church. It hasn't undermined my faith in God though, just the Church.
You know this isn't the kind of thing I'd just make up or something. I hope you understand that. It's my real life. It's hard on the Internet, and with me using a pseudonym it doesn't help. I'm not ready to use my real name yet. I'm afraid I'm going to have a lot of enemies bombarding me and eventually I guess I might have to get ready for that, but I'm not ready yet.
