257. Organizational Behavior File, Pt. 6 (Ouchi, pt. 4)

I'm still not completely unpacked, but I e-mailed our thank you message to the church for the Sunday bulletin. Now I'm working on developing an Excel spreadsheet of all the people I need to send notices too. I'm not sure what I'll do for stationery, but I do have to get copies made of the obituary.

I'm taking my dinner break now and having my evening stimulator session.

***

This next sub-section is titled: "Loose Coupling and The Clan as a Form of Control."

This sub-section starts out by discussion a matrix that provides one way of describing the basic options available for behavior control. These options are 1) behavior or output measurement; 2) output measurement; 3) behavior measurement; or 4) ritual and ceremony, "clan" control. I'm skipping the discussion about the first 3 of these options and jumping straight to the 4th.

***

"Finally, suppose we are running a research laboratory at a multibillion dollar corporation. We have no ability to define the rules of behavior which, if followed, will lead to the desired scientific breakthroughs which will, in turn, lead to marketable new products for the company. We can measure the ultimate success of a scientific discovery, but it may take twenty, or even fifty years for an apparently arcane discovery to be fully appreciated... Effectively, we are unable to use either behavior or output measurement, thus leaving us with no 'rational' form of control. What happens in such circumstances is that the organization relies heavily on ritualized, ceremonial forms of control. These include the recruitment of only a selected few individuals, each of whom has been through a schooling and professionalization process which has taught him or her to internalize the desired values and to revere the appropriate ceremonies. The most important of these ceremonies, such as 'hazing' of new members in seminars, going to professional society meetings, and writing scientific articles for publication in learned journals, will continue to be encouraged within the laboratory." (p. 844)

This thought continues in the next paragraph, but I wanted to cut it off here as there's a lot to discuss already. The theologians on staff, as I've said before, would have received some schooling which might have served as a good foundation for the organizational culture of the Vienna mission. I think one seminary in particular might have provided professional socialization that seemed to fit well with the mission. I think I've also questioned how this might be since it seemed that there were so many non-biblical aspects of the mission's operations.

Also, however, I think that similar to the corporate laboratory, there wouldn't be a lot by way of behavior or outputs to measure for control purposes. So this issue alone (without the added security concern even) might argue for the use of the clan as a control measure. However, I think the addition of the security concerns (because of the work being focused on communist countries) led to more unethical use of clan control than might have otherwise been used if the work were focused on countries more open politically to Christianity. Whereas the mission might have wanted to "control" its workers to make sure the work was being done and no one was going off in some direction not otherwise sanctioned by the organization, the addition of the security issue meant that the organization would also be motivated to protect its interests and those of its students as well.

***

"Now, it is commonly supposed that such rituals, which characterize not only research laboratories but also hospitals, schools, government agencies and investment banks, constitute quaint by essentially useless and perhaps even harmful practice. But if it is not possible to measure either behavior or outputs and it is therefore not possible to 'rationally' evaluate the work of the organization, what alternative is there but to carefully select workers so that you can be assured of having an able and committed set of people, and then engaging in rituals and ceremonies which serve the purpose of rewarding those who display the underlying attitudes and values which are likely to lead to organizational success, thus reminding everyone of what they are supposed to be trying to achieve, even if they can't tell whether or not they are achieving it?" (p. 844)

The question regarding the Vienna mission that comes to mind in response to this paragraph is: What is the organization whose success control is meant to protect? Is it the Church (i.e., the church universal, the "body of Christ")? Or is it the mission?

Now, the mission leadership would undoubtedly respond that the whole purpose of the mission was the building up of the church, so the fate of the mission was closely linked to the fate of the Church. This comes back to faith and the fact that Christ is the head of the Church. That is, Christ as the head of the Church is the one who will ultimately see to the survival of the Church and the mission is just called to do its part in the ministry but let Christ determine how the Church will continue. This involves, of course, faith that Christ will carry out His promise.

So here we find a bit of a dilemma regarding the Vienna mission's organizational controls: If the mission was concerned mainly for its own survival, then it seemed to put that concern above Scripture because in pursuing this aim it used unbiblical means, which I've discussed elsewhere. On the other hand, if the mission's controls were out of concern for the continuance of the Church, then it seemed to have usurped Christ's role as the head of the Church. In either case, there is a biblical and theological problem.

***

"Whereas output and behavior control (see also Ouchi and Maguire [30], Ouchi [31]) can be implemented through a market or a bureaucracy, ceremonial forms of control (see Meyer and Rowan [28]) can be implemented through a clan. Because ceremonial forms of control explicitly are unable to exercise monitoring and evaluation of anything but attitudes, values, and beliefs, and because attitudes, values, and beliefs are typically acquired more slowly than are manual or cognitive abilities, ceremonial forms of control require the stability of membership which characterizes the clan." (p. 844)

The Vienna mission had much more stability of membership, I think than do most businesses, because members committed to 2 years at the minimum, and many worked with the mission much longer. So it did have the requisite stability of membership to effectively use the clan form of control.

Also, it is worth pointing out the comment here that clan control can only monitor and evaluate attitudes, values and beliefs, so if I can effectively determine and/or prove that the Vienna mission had a clan culture and used the clan form of control, then it logically follows that they were most interested in the attitudes, values, and beliefs of its members. So if the mission denies this focus on attitudes, values, and beliefs, it must also show that it used some other form of control, such as bureaucratic or market control. If it can not do this, then we are stuck with the focus on attitudes, values, and beliefs. I think this is very significant and goes a long way towards confirming my assertion that the mission used clan control and also that it was mostly concerned with things like attitudes, values, and beliefs (rather than behavior or outputs) of its members.

***

That's all for this sub-section and I should be able to finish this article with the next post.

247. Vienna Mission Years, Pt. 7

"The Mennonites are Anabaptists of Dutch and German origin who found sanctuary in Russia from the eighteenth century, and were by and large well treated under the Tsars. The Soviets found about 100,000 in their territory after the Revolution - and within a decade had set about rooting them out completely, a process accelerated during the purges. They were suspect partly because of their Western origins, but even more because of their traditional pacifism - a key feature in their religious outlook. It should be emphasized, however, that there is not hint of extremism in their religious make-up. A recent Soviet writer on the subject F. Fedorenko (Sects, their Faith and Practice, p. 153), admits that a new wave of activity began in the sect in 1956-7, when active preachers began to return from prison - in other words, the effort at total suppression by Stalin had signally failed. The Soviet Union Remains the only country of the world where there is a major Mennonite colony which has no right to set up an administrative body. Since 1963 they have been encouraged to throw in their lot with the Baptists which means being forced to give up their pacifism and other special characteristics. In 1967 came the first news of registration of a Mennonite congregation in its own right (Bratsky Vestnik - 'Fraternal Herald' - the official organ of the Russian Baptists, No. r, 1967, p. 42), and others have followed."

Religious Minorities in the Soviet Union: A Report, rev. 4th ed. (1984). Minority Rights Group, report no. 1. London: Minority Rights Group, p. 12-13.

***

I think the month of August, my second full month in Vienna, the great welcoming fanfare subsided... the honeymoon period of my relationship with the mission ended. I guess all the people that felt like they had to make initial acquaintance with me had done so, although I wouldn't have thought of it in these terms at the time. I do know, however, that it didn't bother me so much that the fanfare ended (since the welcome seemed overblown to me anyway), as it did that the stressors increased. That is, I hadn't expected so much apparently positive feedback right away nor so much negative feedback that followed.

Actually, I had been getting negative feedback in the form of non-work (reading software manuals) and the mission's continued effort to set me up with a roommate from the very beginning. But the negative feedback at work kept building up even after the positive welcome dwindled. As my mission-centric social engagements tapered off, however, my Austrian activities increased, so that it began to look more and more like my relationship with the mission being a 9 to 5 affair with somewhat more social interaction than one might have at a regular office job back home. So in this way, I was treating the mission as an office job with no real intentions, on my part, of pushing for more than that. Neither did I particularly feel an obligation to anyone to tell the mission what I was thinking nor what I was intending to do in my off hours. So the vacuum left by the mission by way of dwindling off-hour social activities I gradually filled with Austrian activities.

Besides my feeling comfortable in the Austrian context in general, my personality also made the withdrawal of excess attention rather insignificant to me because 1) I hadn't expected such an overblown welcome in the first place, but also 2) my personality is such that I don't mind alone time. That is, the drop off in mission-centric social activities and the resulting alone time didn't particularly phase me, where it might have been meant as a stressor and it wasn't.

That being said, however, I think it was in August that I began having more and more troubles at work. These are hard to explain and I would have had to document them step by step to be able to get them across to you very well now. But what happened for the next two or three months was that I began having more and more problems getting things done at work. That is, when I was given anything to do that involved any interactions outside of my office, such as phone calls or even needing to get supplies, I started having problems in carrying out these responsibilities. But everyone else seemed to have a "logical" explanation for any particular problem I was having. In this way, it made it look like everyone just thought that these problems were normal and to be expected but they seemed too contrived and limited to the work setting for me to believe that. Nevertheless, I felt like I shouldn't open up too much about my frustrations.

A lot of times it felt like I had to do things over and over again to get them right or problems with the phone system, for example, were unpredictable. In this way, my attempts to figure things out was always thwarted because nothing ever worked the way I thought they should or the way I'd been explained. I did express my frustration too, although I wouldn't say I got angry exactly and nor did I let on that I thought these things were intentional tests, but I did think that. The thing was, a lot of times I couldn't explain what the possible mechanisms for these things were, and if I thought I could explain them that would attribute actions and, therefore, qualities, to my fellow workers that I knew wouldn't be believed.

I should also say that these problems at work were particularly a part of my experiences until I was sent back to the States and after that they subsided. Also, this is the only time in my life where I've experienced this kind of thing and it was specific only to my experiences at the office. That is, my experiences in my outside relations and activities did not include these kinds of stressors. This meant that my Austrian activities allowed me to maintain a sense of grounding in the face of my mission-centric problems and shifting sand foundation. My mental map of how to function in Austria grew stronger and continually more accurate, whereas my understanding of the mission grew weaker, if anything.

Now this is a strange thing, when you think of it, because I was working mostly with Americans with a very similar background to mine in many ways, which I've discussed at some length elsewhere in this blog. But then, the problems at work seemed to be more things that just "didn't work" rather than strictly with people. So the main way the people would have been involved would have been if I attributed to how things didn't work to them, and I didn't have concrete enough proof to do that, although I was sure it was true. So I never told anyone I thought these things I was experiencing were contrived.

So through all this what were my complaints that I expressed to others? My complaints were just the problems I was having at work getting things done. So that was the one hook they had to catch me with, the work-related stress.

***

The month of August is rather sparsely populated in my calendar. On Saturday, August 1 I invited the director of human resources and his wife over for dinner. I don't really remember that evening, but in hindsight, considering what eventually transpired - several months later - it's rather ironic that they seem to have been my first dinner guests. They might have been being friendly to me in an effort to try to get to know me, because they would be key people in deciding on the mission's path to take with me. In any event, by that time I was set up enough to feel comfortable entertaining already.

***

As I continued at the Austrian church, there was a wedding Saturday, August 15 and I brought a green salad for 10 people to it. So I was beginning to get settled in there a bit too. This might be a good time to discuss the church.

The church, Evangelikale Gemeinde Döbling, at that time was a church-planting effort led by an American couple. The attendance was about what my current church is, that is around 30 people or so on any give typical Sunday. The people there were very friendly and received me well. Since the pastor and his wife, my colleague from the mission and I were all Americans and the idea was for it to be an Austrian church, I was mindful of wanting to work under their leadership. That is, despite the fact that the American presence included more Bible and theological training than would have been so for the Austrians, many of whom were young Christians, the point was to let them have the leadership. Of course, my German wasn't so great anyway at this point, although I was able to function well enough, as we'll see as things move along here. I expect that bringing a salad for the wedding was my first contribution to the church functioning.

In any case, the problems I had at work most definitely did not carry over to my relations with the church.

***

On Thursday, August 20th I had another appointment with my doctor to get new prescriptions.

***

Then on Saturday, August 22 I had two of the young families over for a picnic. Both of the men in the families were instructors in the ministry to Eastern Europe. I remember this picnic really well, so I'll go into more detail about it.

The reason I had them over for a picnic was because my apartment was so small and I thought the younger kids, especially the ones of the new family, would enjoy being able to run around.

I spent a lot of time preparing for the picnic, including a salad and dessert. I packed everything up and they men helped carry it all to the picnic site, because it was at the edge of the Wienerwald (Viennese Forest) near me, so we walked to it from my place, about 1/2 a mile (ca. 1 km.).

***

Here is one of the recipes I prepared:

Corned-Beef Picnic Buns

6 oz. corned beef, chopped
2 tablespoons chili sauce
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon pickle relish
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
2 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, diced
1 (8 oz.) can refrigerated crescent rolls
1 1/2 teaspoons butter or margarine, melted
1/2 cup crushed potato chips

Prehead oven to 375F (190C). Grease 8 muffin cups. In a bowl, combine corned beef, chili sauce, mayonnaise, pickle relish, onion and cheese. Separate refrigerated dough into triangles. Place about 2 tablespoons corned-beef mixture on each dough triangle near wide end. Pull up sides of dough over filling. Roll to opposite point of triangle until filling is completely covered. Pinch edges to seal. Place buns in greased muffin cups with point of dough on the bottom. Brush tops with butter or margarine. Sprinkle potato chips over bun. Gently press chips into buns. Bake until lightly browned, about 20 minutes. Cool slightly on rack. Wrap warm buns in paper napkins or paper towels. Serve warm or at room temperature. If buns will not be served within 3 hours, refrigerate. Rehead buns on a baking sheet in a 350F (175C) oven 10 minutes. Makes 8 servings.

Deeming, Sue, & Deeming, Bill. (1983). Soups & Sandwiches. Tucson, AZ: HP Books, p. 91.

***

I think everyone had fun. After eating the women stayed chatting around the picnic table while the men and young boys walked around a bit. The boys had a bit of excitement when they found a harmless snake. Then we had dessert later on and eventually walked back to my apartment.

I always have enjoyed entertaining, so it's been difficult when I've been in situations that I haven't been able to do as much as I'd otherwise like to. I am resourceful, though, and always manage to find something else to fill my time with. Still, it's not like I don't know there's some compensating going on for what I'd maybe rather be doing or at least what I'd be happier doing.

***

This is the end of my August 1987 entries in my calendar, and I'm going to take another break here because I have more files I need to go through here before I reach the 5th month crisis point.

229. Pre-Vienna Comments 1

I was out most of the day at appointments and then I was pretty tired when I got home (and still am tired). I have a lot to do around home too, since I've been so focused on this blog. But I have started getting things set up for summing up discussions of text that pertain to Vienna and a brief summary of the issues I've identified so far. I haven't started on preparing for the chronology discussion yet though. I hope to get more headway done on these things tomorrow; I don't have any appointments tomorrow.

***

I don't want to keep posting just for the sake of posting something, but on the other hand, I would also like to minimize breaks as much as possible. So I thought of an issue that I might be up to and that also would be both timely and hopefully also helpful. I'm going to discuss Revelations 2 and 3. (To go to Revelation 3 click on the right arrows after the "Revelation 2" that is right above "New International Version.")

When a person becomes a Christian s/he, among other things, joins the Church, the Body of Christ. I've already in this blog discussed a little about how Christians are supposed to interact, but for my purposes here I just want to focus on a couple of issues. First of all, the new believer needs to be around other believers and grow in his/her faith through interaction with them, including teaching, for example. The new believer would probably also learn by example and would become like the other Christians in his/her local congregation, right? Nowadays, of course there are a lot of other inputs, whether through mass media or interactive electronic media, or conferences of all types, etc. So the influence of a single church might not be as strong as if there weren't all these other inputs, let alone the veritable plethora of churches to choose from making it easy for the believer to change churches if he/she so desires. But things were a lot different in New Testament times, and I think the local church would have had more of a monopoly of influence on the young believer, barring, of course, visiting itinerant preachers or letters to churches from apostles and the like.

So from this background, I would like you to imagine that a young believer is led to Christ by a member of the Church at Ephesus (Rev. 2:1 to 7) hasn't been saved, say a year or so (enough to develop some grounding in the faith but not necessarily be a very strong Christian), and something happens in her life and she has to move to, say, Thyatira (Rev. 2:18-27), and once there joins up with that local church. What do you think it might be like for that believer? What would her response be to the differences between the churches?

Let's say she finds out where the church meets and starts attending. Don't you think it might be confusing to her to see the differences between the church she knew before and this new one? She might know enough about Scriptural teaching to be able to bring this up with someone there, but if she's the only one that is having a problem at the church, what are her choices at that point? She could leave the faith entirely, of course, maybe out of disillusionment, for example. Or she could go on a crusade in the nature of new believer zeal. But she might not be able to withstand the others, which wouldn't be surprising because the Bible does warn against making immature believers leaders too soon. So she might be right but not have enough grounding to hold her own.

On the other hand, what would it be like if a new believer from the church in Pergamum (Rev. 2:12-17) moved to the church in Philadelphia? Would the new believer maybe feel like he needed a second conversion in the new climate of stronger spirituality?

Then what would it be like if a stronger believer moved from one of these churches to another?

Considering the local church, a move from any one of these 7 churches in Rev. 2 & 3 to another one of these churches would require a change for the person to fit in at the new church. But is using the local church as the criteria upon which to base one's Christian life a sound one? How much should the individual rely on the local church to be a sound interpretation of God's plan for the Christian (and the Church)?

The other issue is the local culture. If you read the descriptions of the churches, you will see that some of these churches (e.g., Pergamum) were too influenced by the local culture. Other churches just seemed to drift away from God (not particularly to anything else; cp, Sardis, Rev. 3:1-6).

So if a church drifts away from God and/or to something else, this raises a dilemma for the individual believer. Either she will follow the church and enjoy the fellowship with the other believers (while her relationship with God might suffer), or she decides to reject the errors she sees in the church (based on Scriptural teaching) and risk this decision affecting her relationship with the local church (but her relationship with God might be strengthened). If she were in a position of authority she might be more likely to wield influence in the church for change for the good, or she could also leave the church, of course.

You might be wondering why I'm bringing up this subject, although some of you may well have figured it out already. I was an individual going to a new church, of sorts, namely the Vienna mission. I do think my church background was pretty good and also my Bible school exemplars (the professors) all influenced my Christian growth immensely. I must say I didn't see a great difference between my home church and the Bible school instructors, although there might have been somewhat more zeal in the latter. But the Vienna mission, I think, might not exactly resemble any one of these 7 churches in Revelation, but I am very confident in my belief that they were affected too much by worldly influences. I'm referring here to the ideological and values aspects of the work that allowed them to make compromises contrary to biblical teaching for the sake of "security."

I don't know what kinds of churches the other missionaries came from, and I can't speak for them. I've discussed other contributing issues in this blog that might also have impacted one's decision to go along with the Vienna mission or not, so I won't repeat them here. But I think the church background, or the concept of "church" one had somehow developed along the way, may well have been another factor in determining whether one could or would fit into the Vienna mission.

I chose to be a black sheep in Vienna, I think at least partly because I had a different idea of what the Church is supposed to be like.

194. Socialization File, Pt. 76 (Starr & Fondas, pt. 2)

I feel like I need to explain some of my distance from organized (Evangelical) Christianity. Also, I should probably qualify that further even to be "organized Evangelical American Christianity." I'm not sure how far geographically to spread that net, so I'll just stick with "American" until I learn otherwise (i.e., that I need to include Evangelical Christianity in other places as well).

Since this all started basically with my experience with the Vienna mission, I'm going to use that as my main reference point. However, it should be noted that while with the mission in Vienna I realized that there were also hints of things earlier that also could have been a part of the phenomena (or phenomenon, depending on whether you want to see it as one issue or multiple issues) I witnessed and experienced in Vienna. Since I haven't gotten to the Vienna part of my chronology yet I might be jumping the gun a bit here, but I think you know enough already (that's assuming, of course you've read all my prior posts which is highly unlikely) to hang your hat on, so to speak. That is, you should be able to able to follow along without too much difficulty, even if you don't know all the details.

***

The issue here, I think, is how far the net needs to be thrown by way of how things could have happened as they did in the Vienna mission (whether for me in particular or in general - in as much as I've interpreted things correctly). I'm going to be assuming at the front (and I'm not saying that this is the case, because I think there's a good chance it's not, but that I'm going to err on the side of caution, if you will) that there was not governmental connection in how the mission operated in general or in my experience of it. (By governmental, I mean things, for example that might have pertained to my dad's work, or military connections - as in the 2 U.S. military reserve chaplains comprising the h.r. department.) Besides, if we included any possible government involvement that would go into a lot more than I want to right now. Believe me, there will be enough to chew on without including that possible influence in the mix.

So, basically, you have 15 missions, all with their own culture, values, ways of doing things and connections coming together to form one mission, apart from their separate, individual stand-alone ministries. They send missionaries, money and board of director representatives to the Vienna mission so that it can function as they've intended it to.

The missionaries on the staff, besides coming from different missions, also come from different church backgrounds and, to a certain extent, different professional backgrounds as well. The church diversity included churches like Conservative Baptist, Christian & Missionary Alliance, and independent churches (which was my background). Really, there's not that much difference between these backgrounds, which made theological integration that much easier. And by far most of the missionaries were pastors/theologians/chaplains by trade, with secretaries and layout and design comprising the remainder of the group.

So where in this process would it have been possible to come up with the kind of organizational culture and value system that I witnessed in Vienna? I think the "inputs" and "facilitative" elements include some of the following:

1. the 15 missions
2. the denominational backgrounds (and some missions were denominational too)
3. the seminaries

Let me illustrate what I mean here:

1. Each of the seminaries must have educated the pastors/theologians/chaplains in such a way to make the kind of normative structure of the mission possible and/or acceptable and/or tolerable and/or preferable, etc.

2. Each of the denominational backgrounds of the missionaries on staff must have prepared the missionaries in such a way as to make the kind of normative structure of the mission possible and/or acceptable and/or tolerable and/or preferable, etc.

3. Each of the 15 missions must have come to the table in such a way as to make the kind of normative structure of the mission possible and/or acceptable and/or tolerable and/or preferable, etc.

I'm leaving no one out here because I was evidently the only one who, as far as I knew ever objected to the things I objected to, or at least no one else stuck to any reservations they might have had. So in this way everyone of these groups are culpable, at the very least, of making it possible for the mission to operate as it did, but some actors had to have made it desirable or even imperative that it operated in the function it did while I was in Vienna.

But beyond that, of all the other (non mission-related) American Evangelical Christian seminaries, denominations and churches, and missions to Eastern Europe could be seen as tangentially connected to this whole mess in as much as American Evangelical Christianity includes a lot of interconnectedness and cross-fertilization and the like. It is possible that, for the most part, they would not have had much of a causative input. BUT... I think they could have had, to one extent or another, a preventative or corrective input. But it's clear they didn't and in all my years since working with the mission in Vienna (1987-1989) I have never ever ever come across anyone who thought that preventative or corrective action was called for. So, in as much as these other players have (or had) some knowledge of the kinds of things going on in the Vienna mission, they are also accomplices of sort.

So where does this leave me? Churchless, right? Maybe you understand where I'm coming from on this now, at least understand it somewhat better than before I explained this. And if you knew who the 15 missions were and how very large some of them are, you'd see how also might spread some of the culpability out.

Your response now probably depends on whether...
1) you agree with me or not that the mission was wrong in some of the things it did and was,
2) how much you knew of the mission (specifically during the time I was there), and
3) your view of what your responsibility, if any, might be vis a vis this knowledge.

Of course, at this point you probably don't know enough to make much of a determination, but this is the kind of thinking that I've gone through in my a lot of my relations with churches since my Vienna experience. I'm too disillusioned and my experience there has tainted too much of my perspective on American Evangelical Christianity. Maybe one could say that the Vienna mission has become the epitome of American Evangelical Christianity to me. Virtually all the conditions necessary for the mission to be the way it was came from the the Evangelical Church in the USA.

(I understand that the mission's logic would have included an aspect of responsiveness to the situation in Eastern Europe, but that does not justify the route they took, and that choice - or choices - was enabled as stated above, from its USA roots. I also understand that I seem to be the only person in the USA - or possibly anywhere - who disagrees/disagreed with the mission.)

***

This next sub-section in our text (under the main heading "A Model of Entrepreneurial Socialization") is "Motivational Bases for Adaptation."

"The socializability of newcomers is directly related to their motivation to adapt to the expectations, norms, and values of incumbent organizational members. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors predispose new recruits to attend to socializing cues and adjust their conduct accordingly. Further, an individual's psychological make-up, as well as tangible incentives, influence the novice's willingness to explore, learn, and adapt to the behaviors and attitudes required in the new setting. Thus, individuals will respond differently to organizational socialization efforts, resulting in personalized responses to the new setting." (p. 70)

I think I came to Vienna with a reasonably high motivation to adapt to the mission's ways, although I don't particularly remember giving it any conscious thought beforehand. In hindsight, I might actually have given more thought to thinking about ways to get involved with the Austrian culture, with ministry in mind particular, than I did to what strategies I might take in getting used to the mission culture. I think this is because I took at face value that I was going to be a secretary and nothing more, and, while I did want to be part of the mission because I thought it was great what they were doing (equipping church leaders in Eastern Europe), but it never occurred to me that my relationships would be sort of defined for me before I arrived even. That is, the outside of work relationship with my boss and his family and with the other secretaries. I've already talked some about these people as my reference group though. My sending mission also didn't seem to have any problems with my interest in local ministry while serving as a secretary. But the Vienna mission, quite obviously, thought otherwise and evidently didn't communicate that back to my mission's home office (and probably not to the Eastern European office of my sending mission either).

Normally I am a person with high intrinsic motivation and don't need a lot of external motivation. That's as a rule, although I'm sure there probably are exceptions. I'm also a dependable worker too in this regard. That is, once I know what to do I'll get about to doing it with little oversight needed, and you can trust I'll get it done and if, per chance something happens and I might not get it done in time I'll let you know as soon as I realize there might be a problem. Some might call this Protestant work ethics, I suppose.

I think then, that if a situation arises where I don't appear to have high internal motivation, there's probably a reason for it, although I may or may not be aware of it. I think, for example, the mission predicted that when I arrived and was confronted with reading software manuals my internal motivation might kick in and I'd come running in to my boss's office in tears about how I really can and want to do so much more than read software manuals. But I didn't do that, for several reasons, some of which I've already mentioned, such as trying to figure out what was going on. But I think too that I was "green" to the job that I wasn't sure what exactly what to expect and wasn't inclined to make waves. From this perspective, I could be trying to think the best of the mission and assuming there was some good explanation (other than debasement) that could account for what I was given to do, and sooner or later I'd find out what that reason was. This might be an innocent until proven guilty stance towards the mission. But since I was rather intentionally holding back and watching and observing at the same time, a small inkling of guilty attribution might have been forming, or at least the suggestion of something going on that wasn't what it seemed to be.

The other thing I'd like to comment on in this text is the phrase "tangible incentives." My experience of the Vienna mission eventually led me to never believe any carrot or stick innuendos or suggestions. On the other hand, if someone said to me, "Next Monday you're moving to reception," then I would know that that stick meant business, or "We'd like you to go on a women's ministry trip from Jan. 15 to Jan. 25, you'll have your briefing for that trip tomorrow at 3:00" then I'd know that that carrot meant business." Otherwise, I pretty well got to ignoring anything less specific than that because I couldn't tell what was a real possibility (or how likely a one) and what wasn't such a real possibility. That ambiguity was beyond what I could deal with. Although, that being said, I think I did respond some to things I thought I would like, but in hindsight I think it was foolish of me to do so; it would have been better to not respond.

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Within this section there are paragraphs dealing with specific variables that might affect motivation. The first one is personality.

"Personality variables may affect the motivation to become socialized. An individual's response to authority, need for control, and feedback may affect the newcomer's mode of adjustment and accommodation to the expectations of organizational members." (p. 70)

This is only a small part of the paragraph, but the other is material I've already discussed. The main issue of interest in this text regards the response to authority. I don't know where I got this from, but I think probably my adventures in preparing myself for ministry to Eastern Europe maybe over-developed my sense of self-efficacy in a way that made me not be afraid of authority for authority's sake. That is, I wasn't cowed or intimidated by authority and if I thought they were wrong being in a position of authority would not of itself be convincing enough for me to change my mind. Think of the 18-year old upstart confronting (with composure and sound reasoning) the garden shop manager in front of the merchandising manager at KMart. That is, I didn't disrespect authority, but I didn't see authority, at least human authority, as authority in any absolute sense and if they crossed the bounds of what I thought their authority gave them rights to I disrespected them as authority figures to the extent to which they overstepped those bounds. I'm still like that. I can just imagine the Vienna mission leaders (the ones who were there when I was there) saying, "Now you tell us!"

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I don't think I have anything to say about the rest of this article, so next time we'll move on to a new one.