342. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 66 (Farh, Podsakoff & Organ, pt. 2)

I did some scoping around today regarding some thoughts I'd been having lately that I might be having some pronunciation difficulties.  I pulled out my favorite go-to handbook and found several pairings that seemed somewhat difficult.  Then, since migraine seemed the mostly logical culprit I looked online for anything migraine related and I was shocked at what I found.  I guess there is something called "complex migraine" that causes pronunciation problems, but from what I found that would be much worse that mine.  So maybe if I have anything like that it's a very mild case.

It seems so strange that my migraine is so constant, but the complex migraines aren't constant either.  Still, maybe it's another piece in the puzzle.  I'm scheduled to start speech therapy in a month - the soonest I could get in.  It's not like you couldn't understand me.  It's maybe like I have a slurred speech or something.

***

The next section of text I'll be citing from is: "Task Characteristics."

"The essence of intrinsic motivation, according to deCharms (1968), is the person's self-conception as 'Origin' rather than 'Pawn.' To think of oneself as Origin is to think beyond external requirements and instrumental incentives." (p. 709)

This is really part of a larger discussion that is more in keeping with discussion about the task, as the section title might indicate, but I'm not so interested in discussing the surrounding discussion at this point.

How I understand this text is that the worker, the individual, is him/herself the origin of his/her own motivation and as such he/she is a cog in a wheel.   At the Vienna mission, however, intrinsic motivation, I think, had to be group approved.  I most definitely had intrinsic motivation, but I had all kinds of trouble with it.  I don't know if other people managed to find ways to harness their intrinsic motivation in ways that were mission-approved, but I never figured that out.

So, as far as I ever knew, intrinsic motivation in the Vienna mission was not generally well accepted.  If any intrinsic motivation at all was accepted, it would have had to have been in very narrowly defined terms, because the mission could not tolerate independence or surprises and found these types of things to be inexcusable security risks.

***

I'm  jumping over all the description of the study and going straight to the discussion.

"Overall, the data do not support the view that satisfaction is in any sense a direct or antecendent of either Altruism or Compliance: that is, a model in which mediates the effects of leader fairness and/or task characteristics is not tenable.  As indicated in Figure 1, the evidence here is more consistent with the idea that leader fairness and task characteristics are the relevant causal variables with satisfaction and OCB correlated because they are common effects of the causal factors." (p. 716-717)

Overall, I'd say the  Vienna mission leadership did exactly the right things to make me unsatisfied with my time with the mission.  Ergo, you should not be surprised when I say that I was not satisfied.  Okay?

The Vienna leadership were completely unfair with their treatment of me and the tasks I was given to do were way beneath what I was capable of doing and mostly weren't even what I came to do.

***

I guess that's it for that article too, because there aren't any more quotes in it that look helpful.  So I'll pick a new one next time.

294.Organizational Behavior, Pt. 20 (Kratz, pt. 5)

I just returned from church.  Next week I'll probably have to bring my foot pillow for the foot neuropathy.  It was nice to be there though.

***

We're still in the section of Katz's article titled "Motivational Patterns: Consequances and Conditions," but we're starting off in the sub-section "Instrumental system rewards."

"It is important to distinguish between rewards which are administered in relation to individual effort and performance and the system rewards which accrue to people by virtue of their membership in the system." (p. 137)

This section winds through a somewhat involved argument regarding the affects of various individual and aggregate reward systems on productivity, motivation, turnover and recruitment.  I won't discuss all of it here, but some it is does raise some interesting thoughts about the mission as it was when I was working with it.

For example, if potential theologian-missionaries back home got wind of the effective work being done and the professionalism of how it was being carried out, these things might interest them in working with the mission, or at least taking a teaching trip with the mission to try it out.  The effectiveness and professionalism would be among the "rewards" that would interest them and the professional theologian-missionaries on staff.

However, as Katz also mentions, providing rewards, say a staff fitness center, wouldn't necessarily translate into increased work productivity, although it might result in easier recruitment and also allow them to set higher work standards because the workers would be willing to work harder because of the better work amenities.

In Vienna the system rewards might be things like the monthly women's meetings, the semi-annual retreat, the monthly all-staff meeting, the monthly newsletter, the monthly birthday party, etc.

The individual rewards varied widely depending on the individual and the individual's position.   I'll try to take a stab at what my rewards might have been, although this was a moving target (i.e., fluctuated during my tenure with the mission).  When I first arrived in Vienna, my individual rewards probably included having an office to myself next to my boss, having an apartment to myself, and being allowed to attend the Austrian church. Just before I left Vienna the only thing I had left was the apartment as I was working in the reception area and attending and English speaking church, which I'd started attending because I'd gotten tired of swimming upstream against the mission.

So it is clear that the system wasn't rewarding me (understatement), which is a clue that maybe they didn't really want to retain me, because rewards  are given to retain people, right?   And according to this author, rewards are also given to increase productivity, so the mission was not concerned about productivity either when it came to dealing with me.  In fact, from the very beginning, it seems that productivity was not important to them (remember the computer manuals?)

And that's not even looking at whether they were punishing me or not. 

***

The next sub-heading is "Conditions conducive to effective system rewards"

"We have just described one of the essential conditions for making system rewards effective in calling attention to the need to make the system as attractive as competing systems which are realistic alternatives for the individual." (p. 139)

What Katz is saying here is that the systemic and individual rewards should make the individual think that this organization is better than some other competing organization.  Now think about my experience with the Vienna mission.  How likely do you think it is that I might have thought about leaving for another better mission?

Well, you're probably thinking that there is a very great chance, and on one hand you're very right, but on the other hand you're very wrong.  The thing is, and you might not have read all 293 posts leading up to this one to know this, but I was aware of a great number of the other missions working in the East Bloc countries and there were some 20 or so working with the group I was was with in Vienna and I'd written a letter to some 30+ before deciding on my sending mission and I'd gotten some very disturbing answers (rather paranoid, etc.), so I was thinking at this point that the whole lot of missions to this part of the world was a rotten lot and not to be trusted  - that they were all in bed together, more or less.  There were a very few that I thought weren't bad, but they weren't working in the areas I was interested in.  Child Evangelism Fellowship is one group I highly respect and at no time had any questions about, I even went on a vacation trip with one of their workers from Vienna to Istanbul and I had a good friend that worked in east Asia too.

But on the other hand, I did start looking for other options outside of the mission, like other fields of work even because I began to see that there was no way either me or the mission was going to compromise and come the end of my 2 year term we were going our separate ways.  I wasn't going to broach them on the issues and they weren't going to come to me either, so it was a mutual standoff, and maybe a mutual distrust, if they distrusted me, which I'm not sure about.

***

"The critical point, then, is that system rewards have a logic of their own.  Since they accrue to people by virtue of their membership or length of service in an organization, they will be perceived as inequitable if they are not uniformly administered." (p. 139)

The system rewards, as far as I can remember right now were generally equitably available, but the last few months of my stay in Vienna, my social exclusion might be seen as possibly system reward being inequitably withheld.  Also, information could be divulged or withheld in a similar manner.

***

We're skipping the sub-heading "Conditions conducive to effective individual instrumental rewards" (mostly applies to factories) and jumping to the sub-heading is "Intrinsic job satisfaction."

"The motivational pathway to high productivity and to high-quality production can be reached through the development of intrinsic job satisfaction. The man who finds the type of work he delights n doing is the man who will not worry about the fact that the role requires a given amount of production of a certain quality. His gratifications accrue from accomplishment, from the expression of his own abilities, from the exercise of his own decisions." (p. 141)

I think this could have been me in Vienna if I'd been given work that was truly meaningful and if I'd been trusted to take some initiative in my professional training.  But I wasn't.  Even the time I went on the women's ministry trip they didn't seem to really trust me and I felt like they were just testing me out and I didn't have much freedom of expression.

***

The next sub-heading is "Conditions conducive to arousal of intrinsic job satisfaction."

"If intrinsic job satisfaction or identification with the work is to be aroused and maximized, then the job itself must provide sufficient variety, sufficient complexity, sufficient challenge, and sufficient skill to engage the abilities of the worker.  If there is one confirmed finding in all the studies of worker morale and satisfaction, it is the correlation between variety and challenge of the job and the gratification which accrue to workers (Morse, 1953)." (p. 141-142)

In Vienna I never really had any variety.  In Dallas, working in the office I was kept busy, but it wasn't a lot of variety.  As a secretary in Vienna there was a bit of variety but I wasn't ever very busy and didn't have a lot of responsibility because I wasn't in the position long enough to own it, and in the reception position in Vienna I did take some initiative, but it wasn't a lot of variety there either.  Considering what I was capable of, these positions were all pretty boring for the most part, although I tried to make the most of them and focus on learning them and trying to make the position better, if I had the opportunity.

***

The next sub-section is titled "Internaliation of organizational goals and values."

"The pattern of motivation association with value expression and self-identification has great potentialities for the internalization of the goals of subsystems and of the total system, and thus for the activation of behavior not prescribed by specific roles...  The internalization of organizational objectives is generally confined to the upper echelons or to the officer personnel.  In voluntary organizations it extends into some of the rank-and-file, and in fact most voluntary organizations need a core of dedicated people - who are generally referred to as the dedicated damn fools." (p. 143).

If there were 40 people working in the Vienna mission, then there were 39 "damn fools" because I was the only one who didn't subscribe lock, stock and barrel to their "organizational goals and values." That is, I subscribed to their publicly available goals and values, but not to their internal values, in as much as they appear to differ from the public values.  Right now it feels good to now have gone along with the crowd, because I don't particularly like the moniker "damn fools."

***

Next the author describes two types of partial internalization, which is says is more common than the full internalization described above.  Incidentally, the Vienna mission generally wanted full identification, but in the area of theology, it had to allow some license in minor areas.  Theologically the mission had to take into account the 20 some missions working together and also the believers in the various countries and their theologies.

"The first [type of partial internalization] has to do with some general organizational purposes which are not unique to the organization.  A scientist may have internalized some of the research values of his profession but not necessarily of the specific institution to which he is attached...


A second type of partial internalization concerns the values and goals of a sub-system of the organization.  It is often easier for the person to take over the values of his own unit." (p. 143)


These both could have happened in Vienna, but I can't speak to them because I wasn't privvy to that information and it would have to have been someone closer to those departments to say for sure whether or not these happened or not.  If either of these did happen, the first type would most likely have involved the instructors, probably the country groups, although possibly the textbook writers too.  Any of the departments could have been "guilty" of the second type because the departments did become like second families and had their own insular life more or less apart from the rest or in addition to the whole group relations.  I think there was an effort on the part of the leadership, though, to not let any group become too detached and independent.  Still it's possible that this second type of internalization could have been a risk at the very least.

***

I'm still not done with this article, but I need to do some other things, so I'll pick up where I left off when I come back.

265. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 13 (Moorhead & Griffin, pt. 2)

We're moving on now to a new main chapter section: "Three Basic Approaches to Describing Organizational Culture." The first of these approaches is "The Parsons AGIL Model."

***

"Parsons developed the AGIL model to specify certain fuctions that any social system - whether a society, an economy, or an organization - must meet to survive and prosper. These functions are represented by the letters AGIL: A for adaptation, G for goal attainment, I for integration, and L for legitimacy. A social system, to survive and prosper, must be able to adapt, attain its goals, integrate its parts, and be considered legitimate to people and other organizations external to itself...

Adaptation and goal attainment are relatively clear concepts. To adapt successfully, a social system must be aware of its environment, understand how that environment is changing, and make the appropriate adjustments. To attain its goals, a social system must have processes that specify those goals, as well as specific strategies for reaching them." (p. 501)

I include the first paragraph here by way of introduction, but I'm going to comment on the second one. To start off, I want to make it clear that the mission as an emanation of the Church, the Body of Christ, should not necessarily operate on the basis of "earthly" principles, although I understand that I am undoubtedly a minority view here (see note below). That is, the church, if anything, is not supposed to respond to the environment by try to change it. Also, the continuance of the Church is the responsibility of its Head, Jesus Christ, which means that the church and Christians are just called to be faithful and leave the result to him. This necessarily involves an act of faith which the world might not understand and which might fly in the face of worldly reason.

Note: I would once again like to turn the reader's attention to Jacques Ellul.

Ellul, Jacques. (1986). The Subversion of Christianity. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans.

"At the same time the church felt it incumbent to absorb everything that seemed to be of intellectual or religious value in past societies. This explains the tendency toward syncretism that began in the third century and continues to this day in all the churches..." (p. 22)

"The scandal is that the church tries to use political power to ensure its own authority and to secure advantages. What was pure grace is thus radically subverted into a politics of give and take. The church buys the possibility of maintaining itself at the price of concessions (e.g., to the regimes of Hitler or of the Soviets). In so doing it disavows the martyrs. Martyrs are not agitators or obstinate people. They are primarily dedicated to God. Then want to obey God, not men." (p. 127)

Thus, if his church wants to be faithful to his revelation, it will be completely mobile, fluid, renascent, bubbling, creative, inventive, adventurous, and imaginative. It sill never be perennial, and can never be organized or institutionalized. If the gates of death are not going to prevail against it, this is not because it is a good, solid, well-organized fortress, but because it is alive; it is Life - that is, a mobile, changing, and surprising life. If it becomes a powerful fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed." (p. 157; emphasis in original)

***

Returning to our text:

"Parsons' concept of integration and legitimacy are perhaps somewhat less clear. Integration refers to the need that every social system has to keep its constituents parts together. The parts of a social system must be brought in contact with one another. Interdependencies understood and organized, and the need for coordinated action resolved. Legitimacy refers to the need that every social system has to be granted the right to survive by elements in its environment. A social system is said to be legitimate, in this sense, when society as a whole agrees that it is appropriate for that system to continue." (p. 501-502)

If I were to apply the AGIL model to a mission, a mission to a closed country, for example, here's how I might do it. I'm going to take the position of a consultant giving advice to a newly formed mission using this formula. Here is what I'd recommend:

The mission should have a system in place for recognizing changes in its environment and deciding on how to proceed based on those changes. The mission should have clearly stated goals and be able to determine how to best meet those objectives, taking into account such factors as the environment. To meet its goals it will undoubtedly need workers performing diverse tasks, and the workers and their functions will need to be integrated so that they together function smoothly to the end that the mission's goals may be met. The mission not only responds to its environment but also proactively asserts its place in society. The mission, then, needs to find ways to incorporate these various functions.

That's basically how the world would council the mission to proceed. Looked at in this light, the mission might well be right in taking the security precautions it did in order to ensure it's continuance in the face of opposition and adapt to its environment.

But is that a Christian approach? That is, is it a biblical one? Taken from the standpoint of the mission being, basically, an arm of the Church, it should function under the same guidelines as set forth in Scripture for how the Church should operate. Regarding adaptation, the mission should not adapt to its environment; rather, it is to be salt and light, but if it adapts to the world, it will lose its saltiness. Furthermore, the mission should operate more on faith, and less on its own determination, so goal setting should be contingent on God's will based on a trusting relationship with God. As to integration, this should be more an issue of honoring the Spirit-given gifts of the members of the mission, rather than trying to fit members into pre-ordained slots. The Spirit gave the gifts for use in ministry and this should take preeminence in determining how the collective can function as a whole. Finally, I don't think that the Bible says anything about the Church needing to be concerned about legitimacy, except to say that the world will persecute believers, which seems to me very similar to denying the legitimacy of the Church.

I hope you see the difference between this AGIL model and the biblical counterpart. Unfortunately, the AGIL model fits the Vienna mission better than the biblical mandate does.

***

I'm going to skip ahead next time and I think I'll be able to finish this book chapter next time too. But for now I need to get to bed.

262. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 10 (Zaleznik, pt. 4)

We're now continuing on in the section "Structural Theories of Interpersonal Behavior," but moving to the next sub-section "Equilibrium."

***

"The theory of equilibration asserts that a central tendency in interpersonal relations is toward a balanced system in which the interpersonal affinities, perceptions, ideas, and attitudes held by members of a system toward one another and toward impersonal objects are valued in consistent patterns. Take a simple dyad made up of Person and Other. A balanced system results when Person and Other feel and react to objects in ways that correspond to their attachment to each other." (p. 596)

It is clear that if one of the parties in this "Person and Other" dyad is me and the other is the mission, there was a great lack of equilibration in our relationship. Here are some issues in which our views differed (views on the left represent the mission, and views on the right represent me):

• philosophy (pragmatism vs. Christian idealism)
• political persuasion (staunch conservative views vs. relative apolitical concerns)
• view of communism (probable red scare mentality vs. relatively unemotional disagreement with it)
• belief about security (virtually anything is admissible vs. security limited by Scriptural guidelines)
• emotional attachment to security (obsession vs. rational precautions)
• ministry boundaries (limited by organizational mission statement vs. limited by Scripture)
• Church and State relations (church-state entanglement admissible vs. church-state entanglement unscriptural)
• etc.

As you can see, we had some quite substantial and heady disagreements which were unlikely to be surmounted short of my becoming brainwashed or otherwise forced into accepting their way of thinking. And, because of the power differences between me and the mission, the only way these differences could have been surmounted was by my changing, rather than through mutual change or them changing.

Also, some of these disagreements, as I've stated them here, indicate a different view of Scripture - either differing interpretations of it and/or differing understandings regarding the role it should play in these kinds of issues. This view of Scripture would have had to have been, I think, addressed for any satisfactory, unforced resolution of our differences to occur. The other major overriding issue was the place of emotions as guiding criterion.

***

This next lengthy discussion, in the same sub-section of the book chapter, describes the theory of social certitude in relation to group interactions. In a nutshell, what this theory says is that every individual has a social standing in the broader society based on that society's values. An organizational member has social certitude if his/her standing in the broader society is mirrored by his/her position in the organization. Thus, a person with relatively low social status but higher position in the organization will have less social certitude than would a person with a better matched social status and organizational position. A decrease in social certitude will result in increased role ambiguity within the organization. Then the author quotes Zaleznik, Christensen, & Roethlisberger (1958, pp. 355-361) regarding 4 implications for interpersional relations in organizations. I am just going to quote one of those implications here:

"The less status congruent an individual is (i.e., in a condition of ambiguity), the less certain and more anxious he will be of his standing and position in the eyes of others. This condition of anxiety may be relieved (a) by infrequent interactions, (b) by restricting activities to more structural social relationships in which the ambiguity is accepted, (c) by excelling in technical performance where skill, competence, and knowledge are important, (d) by the expression of more liberal social attitudes, and (e) by the assertion of the ideals over the norms of behavior as to what the determinants of behavior should be." (p. 599)

There is a lot to say about this, so this might be a longish comment.

First of all, I think I need to start with figuring out where I was in terms of "social certitude." In the broader society (of the USA) I was approximately on par with other members of the organization, so I don't think there was any great issue there. However, I think that it is both helpful and relevant to narrow the field a bit to consider my standing in the conservative Evangelical community. The one thing I had going against me here was that I was raised in a church that differed somewhat theologically from the mainstream conservative Evangelical church or denomination, because not only was it dispensational, but it took a mid-Acts position (regarding when the Church started and the dispensation of Law ended). As such, my church background was rather on the fringes of conservative Evangelical Christianity, which affected my social standing in the broader context of conservative Evangelical Christianity (in the USA). I think it affected my standing in at least a couple of ways. First of all, it put me in a minority theological position. Secondly, it resulted in me being less socially connected among groups the mission commonly associated with, including its member missions. Generally speaking, the theological issue would only have come up if I mentioned it or if a direct conflict occurred regarding a doctrinal issue, such as water baptism. I don't remember this ever happening, so it should have been a non-issue. We're left, then, with the social interconnectedness factor, and I think this could well have impacted my standing in the mission. The possible countering factor would have been where I went to Bible school which was well within the mainstream of conservative Evangelical Christianity, but this wasn't enough to make up the difference, because it didn't result in me having a Th.M. (the Bible school didn't offer that degree yet when I was there). Because of the theological differences and the fact that my supporters were virtually all from the same church background as I was raised in, my supporters, including supporting churches, were not motivated to develop interactions with the mission apart from their support of me. So these things all pointed to my having somewhat less social status among conservative Evangelical Christianity and the mission, lacking information to the contrary, didn't consider my abilities and standing developed and used within my home church context.

The other issue, however, is my educational background, which would in some contexts provide me with a certain amount of professional credibility. But this background did not have that affect in the Vienna mission, despite my sense that my background was incredibly relevant to the mission's work.

So it would seem that I experienced a great lack of social certitude at the mission, wherein my position never coincided with my knowledge, skills, education and experience, despite my education and social standing being otherwise similar to others' at the mission. That being said, however, I've already discussed elsewhere how my European Studies background did differ from others' educational background at the mission.

Since I had this lack of social certitude, then, it seems appropriate to consider my possible responses as provided in this text. The numbering corresponds to those in the above quoted text.

(a) I don't think I lessened my interactions with the group; to the contrary, I would say if anything the mission eventually limited its interactions with me.

(b) I also don't think I restricted my activities to more structured social relationships with mission members, which is evident by my social overtures, wherein I took initiative to invite people over, for example.

(c) It would have been difficult for me to excel in technical skill, because this was a moving target since I was moved around so much. And in any case, I don't remember making any concerted effort to excel any more than I would have with or without social certitude.

(d) It was only much later that I developed more social attitudes - about 5 years after leaving the mission when I started trying to make sense of my life such as what led to my having these articles I'm commenting on here. I think my friend in Minneapolis sort of got me started in thinking along these lines, but I gave it my own twists and we would disagree on some significant issues.

(e) I never was the "butt of jokes" that I can remember; I don't think the mission did that kind of thing in general, which does seem fitting for a Christian organization. Nevertheless, I think that this "mixture of respect and disdain" can be viewed as coping mechanisms and it's highly likely that I did use other coping mechanisms, if not this one in particular. I think this deserves more thought. I'll go through a list of coping mechanisms to see which ones I might or might not have used (and why or why not, how others might have viewed my actions, etc.)

• Acting out: not coping - giving in to the pressure to misbehave. I didn't do this, and if I had it would have been caught and dealt with right away.
  
• Aim inhibition: lowering sights to what seems more achievable. I might have done this, at least for the duration of my time with the mission, but not beyond that, which is part of why I couldn't have stayed with the mission and why I went on to get my Master's degree after leaving the mission.
  
• Altruism: Helping others to help self. I don't think I did this, that is, I didn't become any more altruistic than I otherwise normally was. This might have been something the mission would have wanted, though, as evidence of the individual putting the mission and its members above personal interest which would have been more of a security risk.
  
• Attack: trying to beat down that which is threatening you. I didn't do that at least partly because I was too scared to do so. It's possible that after I left the mission I had some of this. I don't think I'm doing it now, however, and I am trying to avoid things like this.
  
• Avoidance: mentally or physically avoiding something that causes distress. Eventually I did this in caving in to the mission's demands to have less contact with Austrians and attend the English-speaking church. But for about 18 months I was able to get by without resorting to this.
  
• Compartmentalization: separating conflicting thoughts into separated compartments. I think for the most part everything was so confusing that it was hard to do this, but this was probably part of my coping strategy for dealing with how the mission treated me starting about the 5th month of my tenure with it. That is, I think I was able to find enough I could agree to with the mission to allow me to function at a certain level within it, so I compartmentalized things that way - what I could agree with and what I couldn't go along with. Doing this helped with the horrendously stressful dissonance I was experiencing.
  
• Compensation: making up for a weakness in one area by gain [sic] strength in another. I don't think I did this. The main thing I would have been weak in is not having a Th.M., which couldn't have been compensated for as far as I know, other than actually getting the degree. In any case, my weakness was, as far as I know, noncompliance rather than skill or knowledge.
  
• Conversion: subconscious conversion of stress into physical symptoms. I didn't do this. (See "somatization.")
  
• Denial: refusing to acknowledge that an event has occurred. My denial was expressed in my irrational (I now believe) hope that the mission would ever want to hear me out as an equal. It was hard for me to believe that they didn't value my knowledge and skills and actually believed the things they seemed to believe (resulting in their means of operation).
  
• Displacement: shifting of intended action to a safer target. I don't know that I did this. At least I can't recall right now having done this.
  
• Dissociation: separating oneself from parts of your life. I don't think I did this, but I expect that the other missionaries had to have done this in order to accept the mission's normative structure and beliefs.
  
• Emotionality: Outbursts and extreme emotion. I didn't do this, although I think the mission would like for me to have done it, as it would have put me in a vulnerable position and provided a hook for them to catch me with.
  
• Fantasy: escaping reality into a world of possibility. I don't think I did this, although some might say that my belief structure was unrealistic and thus fantasy-like.
  
• Help-rejecting complaining: Ask for help then reject it. I don't ever remember rejecting help from the mission or complaining.
  
• Idealization: playing up the good points and ignoring limitations of things desired. I most likely did this in ignoring the risks involved in the type of ministry I wanted for myself.
  
• Identification: copying others to take on their characteristics. I did this, identifying with the other secretaries, to the extent I could without giving up my values and interest.
  
• Intellectualization: avoiding emotion by focusing on facts and logic. I probably did this as a way to get a handle on what was happening to me and what I was seeing in the mission in general, and I expect that this exercise (this blog) is a good example of my doing this.
  
• Introjection: Bringing things from the outer world into the inner world. I don't think I did this.
  
• Passive aggression: avoiding refusal by passive avoidance. I definitely did this and I think this has been something I've tended to do since my Vienna mission experience as well. Part of the reason was my fear of the mission, but I was also afraid of how my career was going to be affected by my experiences with the mission. Taking a stance other than passive aggression would mean either having to unilaterally capitulate or leave the mission.
  
• Performing rituals: Patterns that delay. I don't think I did this. This might be what elsewhere has been called "overconformity" which, as I've said before, would have been seen as nonconformity, maybe as a kind of parody of true conformity.
  
• Post-traumatic growth: Using the energy of trauma for good. I think I did this to a certain degree after leaving the mission, but how successful or healthy the "growth" was may well have been a mixed bag (i.e., some aspects of the "growth" quite healthy and others less so). I think that the mission might have intended this in how they treated me the 5th month of my tenure with them, and if I did have growth from that traumatic experience it wasn't the kind of growth they would have wanted, because it didn't lead to my internalization of their normative structure and beliefs.
  
• Projection: seeing your own unwanted feelings in other people. I don't think I did this.
  
• Provocation: Get others to act so you can retaliate. I didn't do this.
  
• Rationalization: creating logical reasons for bad behavior. I may have done this in as much as I had to convince myself that I was on solid ground if I was going to risk my profession to withstand the mission's apparent efforts to change me. So, for example, if the real reason I didn't go along with the mission was that I resented someone forcing their views on me, then I might have rationalized my behavior on moral and scriptural grounds. It might be foolhardy of me to out-of-hand deny such rationalization, but I don't think I did use this coping mechanism, because I did actually have strongly held and though-out convictions, knowledge and experience that the mission offended.
  
• Reaction Formation: avoiding something by taking a polar opposite position. I might have to think about this one a bit, although I don't think I did it. However, there may be some particular issue or the other regarding which I did use this coping mechanism. If I think of something later along these lines I'll come back and note it here.
  
• Regression: returning to a child state to avoid problems. I don't think I'd ever thought of this before, but I might have done this when, during my temporary return to the USA I ended out focusing on complaints against my parents, rather than addressing the real issues which would have put me in an even worse position than I was (who would have believed my complaints about the mission?). However, I don't think I ever really believed that my childhood experiences were the main issue, although I think I did believe that they weren't completely irrelevant, either though.
  
• Repression: subconsciously hiding uncomfortable thoughts. I probably did this and pretty much had to do it to continue with the mission without accepting their ways (or at least the ways I had serious issue with). After I left the mission I almost immediately stopped the repression, as is evident from my journal from that year.
  
• Self-harming: physically damaging the body. I did not do this.
  
• Somatization: psychological problems turned into physical symptoms. I did experience this, as my asthma became worse with the stress. I also took up running, a physical stress reliever. Also, it was during my time with the Vienna mission that I first began getting occasional stress-related migraine headaches.
• Sublimation: channeling psychic energy into acceptable activities. I don't think I did this. The closest thing I can think of would be taking up jogging as a stress release. If this is considered sublimation, then I did do it.
  
• Substitution: Replacing one thing with another. The mission's not providing me an outlet for my desire for personal ministry resulted in me substituting such a ministry with it for a ministry on the side external to the mission.
  
• Suppression: consciously holding back unwanted urges. I undoubtedly suppressed my great anger at the mission and my great sense of injustice as to how I was treated as well as my conviction that they were wrong (in the sense of unscriptural) in some of their ways and apparent beliefs, values and norms.
  
• Symbolization: turning unwanted thoughts into metaphoric symbols. I don't think I did this, mainly because I don't remember having "unwanted thoughts".
  
• Trivializing: Making small what is really something big. I don't think I did this because my valuation of issues like how my experiences with the mission would affect my career. If I had trivialized some of these kinds of things I might not have experienced the level of dissonance I did.
  
• Undoing: actions that psychologically 'undo' wrongdoings for the wrongdoer. I didn't do this because I never thought I had done anything to wrong the mission in any way, other than just not conforming, which I felt I was justified in doing because the issues in which I didn't conform in I disagreed with, and my opinion about these things has never changed.
  

***

There are a couple more interesting quotes in this sub-section, but I need to get on with my day, so I'll just have to finish it in the next post.

259. Organizational Behavior File, Pt. 8 (Zaleznik, pt. 1)

This next article is another book chapter:

Zaleznik, Abraham. (1965). Interpersonal relations in organizations. In J. G. March. (Ed.). Handbook of Organizations. Chicago: Rand McNally, p. 574-613.

Since "organizational behavior" is a broad subject, I'm trying to mix it up by picking out articles on different topics.

In this particular article, I'll be skipping a lot of pages. Some of the things I'll be skipping at the beginning of the article include discussions of aspects of research on the topic and relevant "psychodynamic theories". I'll be picking up in the section "Structural Theories of Interpersonal Behavior," and the sub-section "Performance." In this sub-section of the chapter, the author discusses Erving Goffman's theory of "likening interaction to a stage and play" (p. 586). One of the elements of this theory is that there are separate sets of behaviors for "on-stage" and "backstage" regions.

***

"On-stage activity, however, is sustained by the modes of behavior permitted only in the backstage region of the relevant group. We note, therefore, modes of behavior recurring in one region that are quite different from modes of behavior occurring in another region. A region is simply a situated time and space with its consensually established definition as to the purposes of interaction, the relevant individuals who are engaged in interchanged, modes of behavior that are expected within the situation, and ranges of deviation permitted within the expectations." (p. 587)

Following this discussion the author presents a quite lengthy hotel-context example directly quoted from one of Goffman's books. While that example is helpful, it is too long to quote here; nevertheless, I'll be keeping it in mind as I discuss the Vienna mission context.

First of all, I think it would be helpful to consider what might be "on-stage" and what might be "backstage" in the Vienna mission. On-stage might include: 1) relations and interactions with churches and supporters back home; 2) relations and interactions with Austrians; 3) relations and interactions with believers in Eastern Europe; 4) relations and interactions with officials and others in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, back-stage might include such interactions as: 1) relations in the office with other staff; 2) relations with other staff outside the office, but in Austria; 3) relations with other staff in Eastern Europe; 4) relations with other staff in North America or other home-country contexts. I'll take these one-by-one.

Regarding interactions with churches and supporters back home, the mission was very clear in wanting only a certain image presented to this class of people. It was rather direct with me in this regard when it demanded that all my circular prayer letters be censored by them first and also in demanding that I shorten my prayer letter list. They may have other ways of assuring this set of interactions meets their criteria, but, since I didn't serve a second term with them, I'm not aware of how they might have tried to control such things as furlough relations. Also, they tried to limit my in-person interactions in Austria with supporters by not allowing me time off to spend with visiting supporters (which I was guaranteed in writing by office policies) and by not wanting a friend/supporter to come and help out for a short time (contrary to the common practice of others coming in similar fashion). The mission wanted a certain image portrayed back home of their activities, which precluded mention of a lot of what happened "backstage" including things that would have been more embarrassing than security-risking. This might be compared to government administrations classifying embarrassing documents. In this way, supporters back home received a monolithic white-washed view of the mission. It was monolithic in the sense of being presented in unison by all mission workers.

Relations and interactions with Austrians were similarly "monolithic" in as much as there was a single definition of the mission that was presented to local outsiders; that is, that the mission was a "publisher". This might be sort of like witnesses to a crime corroborating their story of how a crime had unfolded. In addition, how much and what kind of contact with Austrians was also controlled by the mission, although this seemed to be more individualistic, so that certain individuals in the mission would be allowed more contact with Austrians than others. It seemed to me that those with long-term office-based ministries were often allowed more Austrian interaction. I'm thinking, for example, of someone in the design and layout group and a textbook writer especially. Both of these people had been with the mission for a number of years and did little travel into Eastern Europe. Even if I hadn't been "deviant" I still would not have fit the criteria for length of service (and thus proven trustworthiness) for extensive Austrian interactions.

There were, again, a whole different set of rules (spoken or otherwise) defining how the missionaries were to interact with believers in Eastern Europe, which would mostly be the students and their families. Mostly this would involve instruction as to cultural sensitivity, as these outside contacts would be astute enough to not press for details of the work not otherwise offered willingly by the visiting missionaries.

In contrast, deception was used vis a vis interactions with Austrian officials and others. The mission might balk at the suggestion of the use of deception, but the fact was that we pretended to be other than what we were. A very explicit example of this was that in the briefing for my trip to Romania I was instructed as to how to appear to be Romanian to others (such as on the train). We would, for example, pretend to be asleep to avoid others trying to talk with us, since speaking would be a dead give away. We also dressed the part to appear like a local. We couldn't hide our foreignness from authorities needing documentation from us (such as visas), but we could frame the purpose of our visit in terms other than what it really was.

Now I turn to "backstage" interactions:

As to relations in the office with other staff, there really was a whole microcosm of life invisible to the casual eye. I hope I have by this time gotten that message across, and that some of the behind the scenes goings on were other than what one would expect of a conservative Evangelical Christian mission. The overriding issue which would differentiate the mission from your average mission would have been their view on "security" and all that that entailed. I don't think that it would surprise anyone that there were security efforts going on, but the extent and type of security precautions might not be so expected or even acceptable, say, to other conservative Evangelical Christians, or even to supporters. Since I've dealt with this so much elsewhere (a good chunk of this blog to date), I won't belabor it here.

As to relations with other staff outside the office, but in Austria, there were different sets of rules governing some of these interactions. If the interactions took place in one of the staff's homes, interactions might be much like those in the office itself, but if it took place outside the home, such as in a restaurant, then some of the rules governing interactions with Austrians would also apply in such cases. Also, there were rules, I think, as to who one should socialize with, and these rules were primarily instrumental in nature. In my case, for example, interactions with other singles and the other secretaries, and social interactions with my boss and his family would have been expected to be pivotal extracurricular relationships and interactions for me, although I think that interactions with mission workers who lived nearest me would also have been condoned. My sense is that such interactions served to widen the control net, so that members of the mission were mutually accountable in wider spheres of their lives and that those one worked closest with and might have known the most about the particular demands of a position of issues regarding the individual would have been enabled to better define the mission's relationship to the individual member. I think that it is through such interactions that the mission might have learned more about the individual's personality, knowledge and insights, and abilities, especially in areas perhaps not readily evident in the office environment. On the other hand, the mission could also learn through such interactions of potential problem areas in the individual. These social interactions were also used as a means of social control which could, for example, confirm or sanction the individual.

Regarding relations with other staff in Eastern Europe, this would mean relations with workers one was traveling with or relations with workers living in Eastern Europe. These relations shared some similarity with relations with believers in Eastern Europe and with others in Eastern Europe. However, the "in-country" missionaries would be more privy to the mission workings and as such could also be related to in ways fitting of this fact, albeit with security precautions in place because of the relations taking place in the communist country. Also, the in-country worker would not know a lot of what was going on at the mission itself as part of the segmentation of knowledge, which was a protective barrier for the in-country workers as s/he could, to a certain extent, honestly hide behind this ignorance in his/her relations with nationals.

Relations with staff in North America (or other home-country contexts) was similar, I think, to relations with staff living in Eastern Europe, except that the consideration was not the immediate communist context, but rather the felt need to present a monolithic image in the West to protect the work in the East. In this context, there had to be a certain amount of openness about the work, but within bounds and couched in mission-defined terms. Also similar to relations with co-workers in Eastern Europe was the fact that state-side interactions with colleagues were also characterized by limited knowledge of what went on in the Vienna office, because of the segmentation of knowledge, especially for security's sake. The state-side workers, however, might not have been aware of the extent of their ignorance of what was going on in the Vienna office, while the Eastern European in-country workers would have been more likely to have had some awareness, even if only in general terms, of the types of activities they were ignorant of going on at the Vienna office.

I think this covers, at least in broad-stroke terms, the various on-stage and backstage normative behaviors of the Vienna mission.

***

I'm not done with this sub-section, but there's too much left to discuss in it, and I need to get going, so I'll pick up where I left off here in the next post.

249. Organizational Behavior File, Pt. 2 (Nadel, pt. 2/Duncan, pt. 1)

I got to thinking more about assimilation and it is true that while I lived in Russia I made a conscious decision for the "adjustment" approach to acculturation, if rejection, adjustment and assimilation are a sliding scale and the middle position weren't an option, I'd put myself somewhat more towards the assimilation side because of my aversion (mostly) towards Westerners while I lived there. I even spoke Russian with other English teachers and when I came home my English was always halting for a while until I got sort of broken in again.

***

Returning to the textual discussion...

Next the author goes on to give examples in which failing to perform in one area can disqualify one in another, sort of how if you fail to dress appropriately for a job interview you might not get the position.

"Differently expressed, deviations from the socially approved conduct are penalized (not punished". The step from one to the other, though narrow, is unmistakable. We need to only think of the exclusion from sacramental offices of sinners or of the loss of civil rights threatening political criminals." (p. 268)

It's possible I was penalized for something or the other in Vienna, but it never was clear what my options were or how to get there. At any rate, at a certain level it could certainly look like I was penalized by not being allowed to do the job for which I came there for. That is, a good part of the time I was in the position I wasn't doing much and then a lot of the other time I wasn't even in the position anyway because I was moved around so much.

Since the only thing I really understood was they wanted some kind of unquestioning submission that I couldn't give, I never really knew what giving them that submission would lead to. Here are some examples of what could realistically have happened just by "submitting" (assuming I could figure out the right way to submit):

1. I would get to keep my job
2. I would have the possibility of moving into women's ministry (under the condition I got my Th.M.)
3. I would feel strong-armed into doing something (submitting) against my will
4. The submitting would lead me to do things I would otherwise regret
5. The submitting would lead me into their way of thinking/logic, which I would also otherwise regret
6. I would become comfortable with their way of thinking and doing things and all would be nice and rosy
7. I would submit and have the rug pulled out from under me and be made to go back home because of my dad
8. I would submit and learn to appreciate the priority of protecting my dad over my having a ministry
9. I would submit and develop a healthy fear for my life (because of my dad) and want to go home out of fear

So, you see, not only did I not really know how to submit, but I didn't know what I was submitting to or why. On the surface, of course, I would be submitting to a "Christian mission" and the ostensible reason would be for the mission's "security." How that would pan out for me, though, and what that would mean for my life after submitting, I didn't really know. My selective naivety does have a limit and I'd already experienced enough just by the end of July (what I've already told you about) for my protective shields to go up.

***

Upon reading the text further it appears that the Vienna situation does not fit what this author intends. That is, he is talking about more or less automatic built-in consequences, whereas in Vienna I don't think that was so. That is, there was not natural consequence to, for example, my choosing to attend a German-speaking church. Rather, the administration decided (apparently) that that kind of activity was not suitable for what they wanted me to do. The author is talking about non person-specific consequences of actions. For this to fit in Vienna, for example, it would mean that anyone who attended a German-speaking church would have the same consequences as I might have faced for doing so. When I say "anyone," however, this could be limited to "any secretaries" or "any female staff," etc.

So this article is basically irrelevant, although I wouldn't say useful, because in discussing it I think I've identified some new factors or issues regarding my experiences with the mission.

***

This next article is quite different:

Duncan, Robert B. (1972). Characteristics of organizational environments and perceived environmental uncertainty. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(3), 313-327.

This is a research article.

***

"In the present analysis of environment is thought of as the totality of physical and social factors that are taken directly into consideration in the decision-making behavior of individuals in the organization.

If the environment is defined in this way, there are then factors within the boundaries of the organization or specific decision making units that must be considered as part of the environment. A differentiation is made, therefore, between the system's internal and external environment." (p. 314).

This study then involved asking 10 decision-making units from 3 companies (businesses) about what internal and external factors they take into account in their decision making. On the basis of the results of their answers the author came up with a list of components of the internal and external environments.

[Sorry it's hard to read.]
***

"The next step was identification of the environment's dimensions in order to make predictions about the kinds of environments in which different levels of perceived uncertainty are expected to exist...

The simple part of the simple-complex dimension deals with the degree to which the factors in the decision unit's environment are few in number and are similar to one another in that they are located in a few components. The complex phase indicates that the factors in the decision unit's environment are large in number." (p. 314-315)

Let's see if I can identify some of the mission-specific environmental factors, using the list in this article (see above). I will be at a disadvantage for not knowing for sure what all of the factors might be, but maybe I know enough to make this a useful exercise. I'll be going down the list, item by item as in the image above.

Internal Environment

(1)
(A) Largely homogeneous in area of expertise & education level
(B) Mostly, I think, limited managerial skill, but not "technical skill", although there were exceptions, such as my secretarial skills (and one other secretary's also).
(C) Involvement and commitment are assumed because of organizational norms and the consequences of deviance
(D) Some differences in style, but nothing of major consequence, I think. Cohesion was so values that this wouldn't be allowed to be an issue.
(E) As far as I knew, this was not an issue, and if it was, I had lots of time on my hands that I could have helped out to fill in some gaps (according to my abilities, of course)

(2)
(A) I don't know that technology was a major issue, at least that I knew about.
(B) Interdependence among units was high, I think, and was complicated by geographical separation (with the publishing office in the US and some textbook translating being done "in-country" (i.e., in Eastern Europe).
(C) Not allowed (see (I) (D) above).
(D) Not allowed (see (I) (D) above).

(3)
(A) Not a problem.
(B) Not a problem (except with me, since I never was fully "integrated")
(C) This was complex because it involved the textbook and teaching components and had to be coordinated, often way in advance.

External environment
(4)
(A) Complex because of the E. Europe context.
(B) Complex because of the E. Europe context and how it affected the "students" and logistics of when and where to meet.

(5)
(A) I don't know about this. It would mainly be handled in the U.S. on the publishing side of operations.
(B) I don't know about this either, although I had delivered a light table to them when I was on the 1983 summer short-term ministry trip.
(C) I don't know about this either, as it would mostly be in the U.S. (other than standard office equipment).
(D) Complex mostly on the teaching end, as often there were guest instructors and sometimes other staff members who weren't on the regular ministry teams went on teaching trips, like my one trip of that nature.

(6)
(A) I don't think this was a problem, but I don't know for sure.
(B) Mostly irrelevant (competitors would be other national seminaries).

(7)
(A) Pertinent regarding the work being in communist countries mainly (i.e., U.S. and Austrian oversight wasn't that relevant other than basic registration and the like).
(B) Relevant in that the office in Vienna was a potential place of interest to communist interests and that the teaching and students were in countries unfriendly towards what we did.
(C) No trade unions - external ties like that would not likely be allowed, and in the context of the mission that would mean professional associations.

(8)
(A) Not that relevant, although the mission stayed pretty current regarding technology.
(B) In the sense that the organization was still writing its course materials (i.e. increasing its repertoire of courses and supporting materials) they did develop new "products" but not because of anything to do with "new technological advances..."

I've put in bold the items that seem to have been relatively complex in the Vienna mission. Looked at in this light, the organization doesn't come out quite as complex as I would initially have thought. What it seems to me, though, is that the mission had such tight control over the things it could control that that compensated for the greater complexity of the Eastern Europe (communist countries) component, which was where the complexity came in. This makes it look like maybe the mission's minimizing complexity where it could made it better able to deal with complexities it couldn't control, or at least couldn't control as much.

***

The next dimension is the "static-dynamic dimension."

"The static-dynamic dimension indicates the degree to which the factors of the decision unit's internal and external environment remain basically the same over time or are in a continual process of change. It is composed of two subdimensions. The first focuses on the degree to which the factors identified by decision unit members in the unit's internal and/or external environment are stable, that is, remain the same over time...

The second subdimension of the static-dynamic dimension focuses on the frequency with which decision unit members take into consideration new and different internal and/or external factors in the decision-making process." (p. 316-317)

The first sub-division looks at change in the environment, whereas the first one is about the staticity of which factors are considered, that is the list of factors changes, not the factors themselves. I'm not going to try even to address the second subdimension, but I'll take a stab at the first. Remember, I'm answering these questions as if it's the 1987-1989 time period I was with the mission. (The participants in this study used a 5 point Likert-style scale, but since I wasn't a decision-maker I'm not going to do that.)

Internal Environment

(1)
(A) Static
(B) Mostly static
(C) Static
(D) Static
(E) Static

(2)
(A) Static
(B) Static
(C) Static
(D) Static

(3)
(A) Static
(B) Moderately static
(C) Mostly static (Changes were additions - new courses - rather than changing anything already existing.)

External environment
(4)
(A) I'm not sure, but I'd put this more in the middle (between static and dynamic)
(B) Fairly static (Student groups changed some but the intent was to train up cohorts; new groups might be added, though.)

(5)
(A) I don't know.
(B) I don't know.
(C) I don't know.
(D) Mostly static

(6)
(A) Static, I think
(B) Static (i.e., no competitors, although there were some other in-country seminaries.)

(7)
(A) Static unless changes in E. Europe end
(B) Static
(C) Static (no such relationships)

(8)
(A) Mostly static
(B) Somewhat static (except for development of new courses)

From this standpoint it looks like there was a lot of stability, which, if I hadn't broken down like this I might not have realized. Of course, these dimensions come from the corporate world and may not match the types of factors the Vienna mission might have considered. Nevertheless, I think it does look like a helpful too in understanding the mission.

At this point I'm thinking that the stability was partly due to the nature of the work (textbook writing, publishing, low turnover because of workers coming from overseas, etc.), but partly also because of the culture of the organization. For example, the culture would influence the level of conflict ((2) (C) and (D)). Another factor might be the complexity of considering the 15 missions and also the in-country students, which would argue against the likelihood of a lot of internal change.

***

"If the view that an organization has no properties aside from the way people perceive it (Hunt, 1968) is given some credence, we need to begin to identify more clearly how individual differences affect perceptions of organizational properties." (p. 325)

This is an interesting concept, and I think there's more to it than readily hits the eye. For example: organizations are groups of people and aside from the people comprising it it does not exist, although I think it is more than just the people themselves, but also their interactions, etc. So the group acts on its members and the members likewise act on the group (i.e., affect each other). But the thing is that the people create the norms and boundaries of the group, and the individuals' perceptions of the group affect that process, and these perceptions also affect the the boundary maintenance process. So could the norms, boundaries, etc. exist apart from individuals' perceptions?

The other thing I thought of in reading this statement is the dilemma about whether a tree falls in the forest if no one hears it fall. But I think this is different because the tree is not a social construct, whereas the group is. So perception is not related to the tree in the same way it would be to the group.

Anyway, the thing is that I was a member of the mission (more or less), so according to this statement, my perceptions might be worth considering. The issue in this statement, specifically, however, is how individual differences affect perceptions of organizational properties. Since I was a member of the mission (more or less) for some 2 years, I could conceivably have affected the "properties" of the organization, at least for the duration of my tenure with it. So we have a couple things going on here:

1) An organization has no properties aside from the way people perceive it.

2) Individual differences might affect perceptions of organizational properties.

Or another way to put it is:

Individual differences => Perceptions of organizational properties => Organizational Properties

Are you ready?

Individual differences: (I've discussed this at some length already, but here are some things that might have been unique about me.) European studies background; idealist philosophy; language skills; pre-existing understanding of the church in Eastern Europe and missions there, etc.

Perceptions of organizational properties: mission 1 is deception/security; no accountability; misuse of Scripture to rationalize whatever they want; unbiblical demands on members (e.g., total submission/no questioning); ministry itself is all right; etc.

Organizational Properties:

[Does this mean that whatever I attribute to the mission is true? This thought is quite liberating, let me tell you. I guess at the very least it could be true in a relative sort of way. But that's part of why I did this research, so that I could try to get past the narrow scope of my single-lens perceptions. So far, the mission still hasn't come out smelling like roses though, at least in my olfactory perception of it.]

Organizational Properties: untrusting, deceitful, unbiblical, worldly (in its methods) ... That's a start anyway.

I guess this makes it fairly clear how I might have left the mission in something less than on ideal terms.

***

That's it for this article. There are a lot more to come, though.