323. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 47 (Miner, pt. 5)

The cardiologist today agreed with the anesthesiologist regarding the migraine medicine, so that was good.  He said that my stress test was normal (but the EKG I'd had done in his office was abnormal), so he proposed having a halter.  They're supposed to call to set it up.

The migraine medicine change made a difference in my stationery bike heart rate in physical therapy as it didn't immediately spike like it had been doing recently.  Also, it looks like yesterday's lumbar epidural was also having some effect, although it's still early, as it can take a few days for the full effect of an epidural shot.

When I returned home from the cardiologist's I found a box from my brother - it looks like he was going through some more stuff in storage (from after mom's death) and he sent me and my other brother things he thought we should have.  Among the things in my box were some notes and letters from my time in Vienna!!  This should be a great boon to my narration of my time spent with the mission, since I got rid of a lot of my mission-related things when I moved to Russia.  I had given up on mom having any of these left any more, thinking she'd maybe "down-sized" at some point.  I haven't read any of it, though, just sort of flipped through it.

 ***

This will finish the discussion on the Miner text.  This section is titled "Putting Ideas to Work for Performance and Productivity."

"Although theory and research dealing with effective organizational structure and design have not produced as many hard facts as might be desired, some important insights have emerged.  First, research has increased our understanding of the factors that should be considered in organizational design...

Second, the domain into which the structure being used falls must be acknowledged.  A given domain may characterize either a whole organization or a single component of it, but once an organizatinal unit is defined as belonging in a particular domain, than its structures and processes should match the requirements of that domain very closely." (p. 539)

 Miner lists several examples of factors affecting organizational design for the first area of insight and for the second one he goes on to discuss how the various types of systems might fit different contexts.  In other words, there are clear ways of knowing whether a particular organizational structure is appropriate for a given context or not.

***

"Finally, in group or sociotechnical systems - the missionary form - ideology predominates, and structure may in fact be at a minimum (replaced by culture...).  Group norms in an expanded form run the system, and anything that interferes with this process can only create role conflict and ambiguity." (p. 539)

The informal culture in the Vienna mission could be described in these terms to a large extent.  This may explain, at least in part, why I experienced role conflict (stress, with my extracurricular activities) and had trouble understanding that the mission wanted at times.  I was experiencing the ambiguity in as much as I was interfering with the mission's apparent desires and plans for me (e.g., making the secretaries my reference group).

However, this can't describe the mission's functioning as a whole, I think; it can only describe the informal organization functioning, although the informal organization was a significant part of the organization.  And I'm not sure it can fully describe the informal organization either, because there were hierarchical aspects of the informal organization also.

***

That's it for tonight and tomorrow I'll start a new text.

321. Organizatonal Behavior, Pt. 45 (Miner, pt. 3)

I'm very tired this morning because I didn't get to be until my usual time, about 1:15 a.m.  So I got about 4 hours sleep.  I have 3 appointments right away - two tests and then the doctor's appointment following that.  Then a 20 mile drive back to near where I live to my pain doctor to get an epidural shot.

The next sub-section of this "Organizational Structure and Design" chapter of the book is "Professional or Knowledge-Based Systems."

"Professional structures differ substantially from hierarchic.  Here role requirements come from the values, norms, ethical precepts, and codes of the profession, rather than from the hierarchy of the organization.  They are transmitted through early professional traning, by professional associations, and by colleagues... [T]he professional structure per se is most clearly evident in professional organizations such as law firms, accounting firms, and research organizations." (p. 543-544)

Since we determined that hierarchic and bureaucratic prototypes weren't a good fit for the organization we need to find something else and it seems, at least on the surface, that this might promise to be a likely candidate.

If we were to seriously consider this structural type, it seems that we'd have to identify a profession that the organization might get it's values from, and, again on the surface, it looks like we should have a likely candidate in the "conservative Evangelical Protestant theologian" profession.  In fact a good half to two-thirds of the office staff (not counting spouses and families) were theologians and when to seminary.  So it would seem plausible that the mission might possibly get its values from the theological profession.

The problem is that most of how the mission operated was not according to theological principles and norms, but was probably closer to the profession of espionage or "intelligence" in its security efforts.  Also, you might note that "intelligence" includes information, disinformation, misinformation, etc.  And you might remember that it was for the short wave radio work that the one mission I worked for (before I worked for the Vienna mission) received money from the CIA for its short wave radio work.  And the work of Christian missions, intentionally or not were enablers of the fall of Communism because religious groups were the main counter-government organization in many of the East Bloc countries in the lead up to the fall of Communism.  Even if this was a quite unintentional effect of the work of the Vienna mission, I think it was one they wouldn't have regretted, especially when you think of someof the politicization I experienced (most glaringly at candidate's course with my sending mission) and also the military ties (e.g., chaplians as the entire H.R. department).

So you have that, and you also have the incredible focus on security, some of which I can see was needed, but the extent to which it controlled the mission was, in my opinion, unscriptural.  So for such a major aspect of the mission to be apparently contrary to what one would expect to find in the theological profession, and the other reasons stated above, I think that the theological profession only had a surface sway over the organization.

You may remember from earlier discussions that the mission had a public and a private face, which is not , in general, anything unusual if that were all there were to it.  But the thing was that the private face was intentionally deceptive and glossed over what was really happening inside the mission.  By this I mean all the myriad of things that I've talked about already on this blog.  So the mission led a double life, and the external view of the mission did make it look like the mission might have been a "professional structure," but my experience of it was totally contrary to anything of the kind.  If they were a professional structure following the values and norms of the theological profession, they would not have treated me the way they did.  All the discussions I've had here where I point out things about them that were unscriptural back up this assertion that they weren't a professional structure following the theological profession.

On the other hand, if I had to try to find a profession that might have fit who they really were at the core - the part of them that they tried to hide from public view (for security reasons), I'd say if anything they might have been more like an intelligence or spy agency, except that no one there (as far as I knew) had ever trained to be a professional spy or member of the intelligence community.  I suppose the military chaplains on staff might have had some training in this, but I don't know that.

Another professional group might be the world of of (at that time) missions to East Bloc and otherwise closed countries.  But that's not a professiona that one trained for like a regular theologian or pastor or lawyer or whatever.  Rather I think it was somewhat of a hybrid type of organization.  My impression from what I knew of the world of East European missions, was that they all evolved more or less independently and developed their own ways of functioning and coping in Communist countries.  A lot of the groups preferred to lay low and keep to themselves to not draw attention to themselves and increase the risk of ruining their ministry, so missions could differ significantly because of this isolation and having evolved diffeently.  In the Vienna mission, however, a good number of these mission came together to work on this pastor training effort.  It was these missions - especially the ones that were members and sat on the board - that would have formed the professonal backdrop for the Vienna mission, moreso than, I think, the theological profession back home in the USA (most of the missionaries were from the USA, but not all).

***

"In organizations of this kind, many of the activities performed by managers in hierarchic systems are assumed by the professional component as a whole.  Professional organizations use committees and voting procedures extensively.  The structure is flat, with status differentiation based on expertise and professional experience." (p. 544)

Let's just say that even though the Vienna mission was a seminary, it did not have tenure - it wasn't necessarily "expertise and professional experience" that made one be recognized as the leader.  No, rather, it was most definitely a position in the hierarchic organization that got one recognized as a leader... and it wasn't voting nor a democratic committee that recognized one's expertise and professional experience to put one in a leadership position either.  In fact, there wasn't really anything democratic about the mission.

Also, I should say that since leaving the Vienna mission I have had professional memberships (i.e., in the fields of teaching English to speakers of other languages, adult education, library science) and various involvements in them, so I have an idea of what this author is talking about, and it did not exist in the Vienna mission.

The author goes on to describe how when professional organizations grow large (e.g., CPA firm) or are embedded within a larger organization (e.g., a research & development department in a factory) they can develop hierarchic structural elements.  However, I do not think that size or embeddedness were the issues in the case of the Vienna mission.  Rather, it was more an issue of the environment (and their attitude about the environment) and certain influential stakeholders that influenced the mission to not be a professional structure.  The mission was of moderate size as far as organizations as a whole go, although it was of large size compared to its piers, Eastern European missions.  Maybe it would have had some hierarchy based on size, but not as much as it did in fact have, if it weren't for 1) the stakeholders it selected to listen to; 2) it's attitude toward Scripture; and 3) it's attitude toward the target country and politics, all of which contributed towards its security beliefs, which argued for a tightly run ship to avoid security leaks and gaffs.  The tightly run ship goal, fits better with a hierarchical structure than with professional structure.

***

Sorry to interrupt this discussion (I'll get back to it in a moment).  I had a very long day today.  I started to write this this morning and couldn't finish it before I had to leave for doctors' appointments.

On my way out first thing this morning I registered with my oxymeter my heart rate going up as high as 188, but fluctuating, but it was early and doctor's offices mostly weren't open yet.  I spent the next few hours (between appointments trying to get ahold of doctors to deal with the migrain medication issue because the last change was to increase one that had cardiac side affects and I was trying to get a doctor to step up and say that that was unacceptable and then to figure out some other way to manage the migraines.  So my late morning appointment was for a spinal epidural - and that doctor is a pain specialist, an anesthesiologist.  So he agreed with me and stepped up to the plate and he decided to try one more increase of the medicine I was using before, and if that didn't work then we'd go the botox route.

Then I ran some errands after that and finally found a garlic press to replace the one that was stolen - it had to be the plumber/electrician because he was the only one around when I had all my kitchen things out.  It makes me mad that I've had to spend money to replace things that were stolen.  Of course, if I'd had homeowner's insurance these things might have been replaced, but I was wanting to wait till things settled and I could get more into a routine and budget.

I was wiped out when I got home and after having a late lunch I took a nap, but managed to get my letter to the condo association hand delivered to the condo office.  I decided to do it that way because it seemed that things were moving fast enough that the time factor was important, versus sending it through U.S. postal service with a signature receipt request.  So now we'll see what happens there, regarding the problem with my downstairs neighbor.

Back to the text...

***

This next section of the text is set apart as "Exhibit 15-12 Characteristics of Professional or Knowledge-based Systems."

"1. A large number of jobs are classified as professions...
 3. Learning how to do the job is based essentially on professional training.
4. On-the-job training is intended primarily for professional development....
6. Important day-to-day communicatioins are always with professionals and clients.
7. Individual efforts are devoted to professional goals.
8. The benefits of work go to work or to professional colleagues.
9. Relationships with clients are bassed on professional knowledge and trust.
10. Career development is oriented toward professional development.
11. Primary loyalty is to the profession.
12. Leaders are selected on the basis of professional competence.
13. The professional job is central to one's life and part of one's identity.
14. Professional knowlege is more important than any other type.
15. Status is based on professional and occupational competence." (p. 544)

 There's a lot here, so this could take a while.

1) True. Clearly, most of the positions in the Vienna mission were held by theologians, people with Th.M. degrees or higher, who would be considered "professionals".

3) True.  I'm understanding this statement as meaning learning to become qualified to do the job, learning prior to working with an organization.  In the case of the Vienna mission, the professionals would have primarily prepared professionally (i.e., in seminary) for the job they did with the mission.

4) False.  There was no professional development on-the-job training as far as I was ever aware.  The only on the job learning was related to socialization and initial learning how the mission did things.  It wasn't like they ever had a bibliology (or soteriology or....) seminar by some reknowned expert come to lead an in-service course or the like.

6) True.  I think this was largely true as they'd be teaching the students and hashing things out amongst themselves or coordinating various aspects of the work.

7) False.  I gave this a false because the mission wanted it's workers to be pretty focused on the work and not going off on some personal flight of fancy of where they might be wanting their next career move to be.  So once you were a professional with the mission I think for most of them it would be difficult to break out of that mold.  The one caveat, however, would be furlough.  If something could be worked out between the missionary's interest and the mission's needs then the mission might conceivably give its blessing on workers to use furlough time to advance their professional interests.

However, within the mission there were only so many opportunities, be they horizontal or vertical moves.  So if a missionary was interested in career advancement in the usual career way (i.e., moving up the tenure ladder, etc.) there may or may not have been support for such an interest, and, if you remember from earlier discussions, the mission was greatly interested in attitudes, so it would be difficult to hide aspirations for too long, I think, from them.  If it found out you were looking elsewhere your trust factor, which was so all-important on the security end of things, might have taken a hit. 

So it wasn't like in your usual seminary or university which might encourage professional development and pursuits on a much wider scope.  The mission only had a very narrow interest in the professionalism of its workers, and to step out of that might have been a bit of a risk.

8) Half true.  The benefits of work did go to clients, but not to colleagues in the sense I think it is meant here.  I think of benefit to colleagues happening when one contributes to a professional association (serving on a committee, running for office, etc.), contributes to the professional knowledge by publishing in journals or presenting at conferences, and carrying out original research in the field, for example.  I wasn't aware of any professional involement of this sort by any of the theologians nor any encouragement by the leadership for such involvement, so I can't say that it existed.


9) True.  I think this is true, although I hesitated a bit in answering this way.  I think this was true, although there was more to the relationship than the typical seminary professor-student relationship.  They would also have had to trust the instructors to not put their safety at risk, since they were working in clandestine situations.  And there also often grew to be more friendship-type relationships between them.  These things might be more common for the missionary context than the seminary context, however.

10) ?.  I am assuming this means career development within the mission.  If so, then the fact that there were only limited career options with the mission (there are probably more now).  However, I think that if a professional (i.e., theologian) wanted to think in terms of career development with the mission, that professional development probably would not be the way to go.  Professional development, in most cases, would most likely mean getting a doctorate and when I was with the mission I never sensed that a doctorate was particularly needed to teach the courses, although one new instructor came while I was there who did have a doctorate.  But I'm not sure where getting a doctorate would take someone in the organization, other than just feeling more equipped for what s/he was already doing and maybe becoming more eligible for a leadership position with the doctorate under his/her belt.  For most professionals, however, there didn't seem to be a great need for "career development" beyond what they already had and there certainly wasn't a push for it.

11) False.  The mission didn't like primary allegiance to anything other than itself because of the trust issue, for one.  I never heard of anyone while I was there interested in or concerned about professional loyalty.  I think if any of them had professional memberships it probably was mainly to get the professional journals to keep abreast of current literature and issues; in other worse, to be a recipient of professional information rather than be a contributing member to the profession.

12) False.  The director of the mission would have fit this description, although I'm not sure how he was selected.  But the assistant director (my boss) and the North American director most decidedly did not fit this description.  The North American director didn't have a theology dectree at all (although his office wasn't staffed by theologians either) and I don't think my boss did either, if I remember right (I think he "just" went to Bible school and had an undergraduate degree).  So these men were selected for other reasons, such as their ability to lead and manage, and similar considerations.  I'm surmising here, though, as to why they were selected.  I know my boss was being groomed for his position, which he now holds (director of the whole organization).


13) ? I think for the largest chunk of the theologians on staff their theologian identity was not primary, but rather their missionary identity was.  So, basically, it seemed that their theological training was just a stepping stone on the way to being a missionary, although their role in the mission was as theologian-instructor, theologian-textbook writer or theologian-administrator, for example.  So they acted out their training, but their identity was more as a missionary, which, I think, the mission wanted in order to be the central authority over what went on and make sure everyone was towing the "party" line.

I might say that the professional job is central to their life (if not so much to their identity) if you consider that the "job" uprooted them, put them on a different continent, and controled much of their life.  But a good part of that equation was not, strictly speaking so much theologian-related aspects of what they did as mission-related aspects (apart from the strictly theologian-related).  So the job was theologian-related, but I think it was all the other stuff and the mission itself that made them more mission-centric rather than profession-centric in their identity.  Besides, it was the mission that they had contact with all the time and they'd more or less forsaken their professional bonds, so the mission became their new professional family.

14) False.  I put false here because, as I found out the hard way, even if you had a lot of very good professional knowledge, if didn't meet the mission's security requirements, pass their socialization test (assuming it was possible for me to have done so, if not I'm a bad example), professional knowledge wasn't going to do you a whole lot of good.  So first and foremost was the need to agree to their terms of service, which could be pretty costly if you disagreed with them with any conviction on any of these nonnegotiable terms of service.  So I think that professional knowledge is only important AFTER, you've past these other trust and socialization tests.  And if thereafter you regressed, I suspect you might find your professional knowledge somehow lacking once more.

15) False.  Status was based on hierarchical position within the formal organization and also onces standing within the informal organization, through such things as level of trust achieved within the organization, whose wife one was, etc.  I don't think professional knowledge made a hill of beans difference in status.  The only way professional kowledge might have made a difference would have been indirectly if it was one of the considerations in the granting of one's position.  Otherwise, things like education were, I think, downplayed in many interrelationships, giving a sense of equality and "we're all in this together" collective mindset.  This mindset served to keep communication channels open at one level and make the leadership more approachable, but in actuality I think equality was pretty much a mirage or at best only a surface reality.  One didn't need to dig very deep to find inequalities and disparities of various sorts in action.

***

I think I've pretty much knocked the air out of the likelihood that the mission was a professional or knowledge-based system, although, once again, there were certain traits it did share with this organizational form.  Still, I don't think it's enough to warrant categorizing it in this way.  In the end, I suspect we'll find the mission was a hybrid of some sort, so we may come back to these earlier systems as a recap and attempt to determine if some combination of systems might work.  It seems to me, though, that one system would probably have to be sort of base, but we'll see.

That's it for now though, and I need to get a few other things done this evening.  This really does take a lot of time.

***

 Addendum, next day:
Another possible explanation, or part of the explanation, for the level of professional non-participation is that the theologians on staff knew that by deciding to work for the mission they would be giving up this kind of thing, and so the theologians on staff were those who were okay with that upfront.  I have trouble with that, because I think that that would have been discouraged similarly to how my outside contacts were, but also like myself, they weren't aware of this ahead of time.  In this case, they couldn't have intentionally deselected themselves on the basis of mission discouragement of external professional involvement because they wouldn't have known about it prior to their arrival in Vienna.

However, whether or not they knew about the mission's general discouragement of professional involvement (although there could have been certain exceptions on a case by case basis), they might have realized that in any event being a missionary, simply by virture of it's location would mean they wouldn't have access to the pastoral professional community involvement as back home.  And they would certainly be opting out of the kind of professional involvement inherent in the standard university or seminary setting, with its publish or perish value.  So whether or not the new missionary-theologians knew the attitude of the mission regarding professional involvement, they would have already made certain concessions in their thinking on their own before arriving in Vienna.

The problem would have been if any of these professionals arrived in Vienna thinking they could still keep up certain professional involvement while with the mission.  The problem would have dependent on the individual and the details of the situation and their desire for professional involvement.  For example, it is conceivable in my mind that if someone had come on staff already serving as revewer for a professional journal this might not have been too much of a problem, unless the new missionary persisted in placing professional values above mission norms.  In this case the mission might have tried to even end this kind of involvement,  (I'm saying this because it tried to interfere with my external contacts when it perceived that these were interfering with my being fully integrated into the mission, so I'm assuming that this was a typical reaction to outside involvement that proved troublesome in this way.)

320. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 44 (Miner, pt. 2)

Jumping right into discussion of the text, we're picking up with a look at "hierarchic systems."

"Hierarchic systems control behavior by means of rewards and punishments transmitted down the hierarchy... Hierarchic structures develop when the organization becomes so large that written, formal communication is reuired because direct, face-to-face communication will no longer do." (p. 543)

I've already discussed the nature of rewards and punishments in the mission.  However, I'm not sure I can say that the main means of behavior control was via rewards and punishments.  Rather, I think those were more last resorts, in my thinking and understanding of the mission.  I think that the internalization of the mission's values and norms would have been the primary means of behavior control and they just had to make sure these were internalized.

This is not to say that there weren't rewards and punishments, because I have shown how these were used on me.  The reason for their use on me was another issue, however, and I think that at different times in the process there were probably different reasons.  However, these were rewards and punishments for things that weren't written in policy manuals, so it was left to me to find a way to figure out why I was experiencing the things I was experiencing, or put another way, why I seemed to be punished (or rewarded, which was rarer in my case than being punished).  Let's just say that if they were my parents and they were raising me, they used very bad parenting skills according to most standards.  If I were a child I'd think they were just being very arbitrary and they'd have me scared spitless and the stat's Child and Family Services would probably determine that I was being abused and get me out of there.  But I wasn't a child and they werern't my parents and I had made a decision as an adult to join them, and although I made that decision with less than complete or accurate information, I did stay on even after I realized things weren't as I expected.

So if bureaucracy controls behavior primarily by management and hierarchy does so by rewards and punishments, neither of these models is a good fit for the Vienna mission on this count.

As to the reference in this portion of the text to the size of the organization, there is a bit of relevance there, but that's not really a great fit either.   For a mission working in Eastern Europe (when it was under Communism), it was a large mission, especially to have so many people in one place, working out of one building.  These kinds of missions preferred to remain small at least partly because of security reasons and they might have several small locations, but not one large one like the joint mission I was working at.  But it wasn't large as a coporation is large.

Actually, I think that face-to-face communication was preferred by the mission for the most part, but the issue would have been so many people in the mission traveling for the ministry, so they might not be there for staff meetings and other in-person communiques.  So they would have to be kept informed somehow also.  The other issue was the office inthe USA and keeping them abreast of things, but they'd only receive information they needed for their part of the work and also information that might be acceptable for public dissemination, such as newsletters with stories with recent human interest stories happening in the ministry or the like.  These kinds of things workers could take and use in their prayer letters.

In my mind, the bulk of the every day communications happened more in the informal organization, in impromptu small or one-on-one meetings to discuss a particular issue, or even in the hallways sometimes.

***

"Key concepts in large hierarchic structures are:


Formalization: The amount of written documentation related to procedures, job descriptions, regulations, and policies
Specialization: The degree to which organizational tasks are subdivided so as to yield division of labor
Standardization: The extent to which similar work activities are clearly described and performed in the same manner
Decentralization: The process of moving decision-making aurhotity down the hierarchy - in contrast to centralization, where decisions are made at the top." (p. 543)

When put this way it becomes very clear that the Vienna mission was not a hierarchy, at least not in the classic organizational typology sense.  My experience of the mission was that it did not meet the formalization criteria as there was precious little written, as far as I was aware.  So if there was a great amount of this kind of written documentation, 1) I wasn't privvy to it, and 2) it evidently mustn't have concerned me and/or applied to me.  The latter point opens a whole new can of worms: if there was such a plethora of documentation, some of which might have applied to me (such as a grievance policy), why wasn't I privvy to the documentation relevant to me?  But this is all hypothetical, because I do not know that there was a lot of this kind of documentation.  However, if sometime down the road it should become known that there was such documentation, then these questions (and others like them) would be pertinent.

The mission was definitely divided into specialized functions.  This is not that unusual in office settings, although in a lot of Christian missions there might not  necessarily be that much specialization.  However, the great uniter was the plethora of theologians, so many of them could work in other positions.  For example, an instructor on the German team maybe could teach in Poland, especially with the use of a translator, which was standard fare anyway.  There were other reasons, then, besides task uniqueness that separated many positions and some groups from others.  One was security, as there was a desire to limit how many people had detailed knowledge of what, so that the East German team might all have a detailed working knowledge of all the issues involved in their work, but they would be the only ones to have that detailed knowledge, outside of upper management, which might share some of it.  Everyone was on a need to know basis, so that you were only supposed to know what you needed to know to perform your job and what was common knowledge for everyone, of course.

The other issue involved in specialization at the mission, I think, was the desire for continuity, especially with external contacts to the mission.  The most obvious example would be for the instructors and their relationships with the groups of students.  The country teams had to develop trust with these groups, especially the leader(s), and then with each trip make or adjust plans for future lessons, delivery of textbooks, etc.  Since the relational aspect of this part of the ministry was so important, it resulted in specialization so that there would be some continuity of contact with the students.  This  could be true in other external relations too, such as where the mission got the ring binding done for printings, and having the same person or just one or two persons have that contact to limit that external contact as well; this harkens back to the security for specialization, but it's an example of external contact continuity, rather than keeping people on a 'need-to-know' basis.

As to standardization as a criteria for hierarchic systems, there were some things that were standardized, such as in the textbook publishing and student group  information management processes, or the usual accounting processes, but outside of those exceptions I think the mission was more people-centric than standardization-centric.   That could be a good thing, or a bad thing, but it meant you had to relate to it, in my mind, as a person rather than as a set of discrete and explicit values, standards and policies.  To be that way and also a total institution was not easy to deal with.

Finally, regarding decentralization, there was a certain amount of this, limited to one's mission-approved sphere of influence.  In this world, women were granted the role of social planning and initiation, but there was a hiearchy there, too, and you had to know where you stood in that hierarchy as to what you could and couldn't do.  I never had any problems regarding entertaining at home or elsewhere (e.g., picnic in the Wienerwald - Viennese Forest).  Also, taking ownership of one's job was encouraged, as far as my experience was, although some things would have to be run by one's superior's, probably like in any job.  And when out on the field or otherwise out of the office, one was expected to use one's best judgment in problem solving as issues came up, be it a too-curious member at church in Vienna or a last minute change in venue of a student group in Romania.  Since these were considered work-related issues, that might be considered a type of decentralization, where everyone had to be prepared to deal with issues they might realistically experience and have to respond to on their own (or maybe in tandem with another colleague with them at the moment).

This being said, I never felt much of the decentralization, which, I think, hearkens back to where I was in the socialization process.  So for me personally, it felt like everything was controlled by the administration - the top leadership.  However, I was supposed to work with the assistant director, and even in the USA office worked for that director a whole, so my work was generally close in proximity to mission leadership.  But although I felt like there was very little decentralization in my experience with the mission, I wouldn't try to generalize that to the whole mission because what I witnessed there indicates otherwise.  So, in other words, my experience (via a vis decentralization) was different from what seemed to be going on around me at the time.  I hadn't thought of this before, but this might also have contributed to my brokenness upon leaving the mission, my feeling like I really couldn't do anything - since next to nothing was decentralized to me, that would be how I would feel - like being spoon fed like a baby the whole time (or much of the time) I was with the mission.  In contrast, I was constantly made to feel like the mission did not trust me, by the way I was shuffled around, by the mixed signals I got at times, etc.  Of course, it doesn't help that I had such bottom of the totem pole positions, where perhaps no decentralization might have expected to have occur.  However, if my mentor, the director's secretary, is any clue, there could have been some decentralization to me.

319. Organizatinoal Behavior, Pt. 43 (Miner, pt. 1)

Yesterday my legs got much worse (spinal stenosis-related), so I'm glad I have the epidural scheduled for this week.  I've been feeling more stuffed up the last few days too and it's making me tired this morning.  The allergy doctor says this and the chest congestion has been going on too long to be a common cold and he has me using Nasonex, but I don't think it's helping much.   I see that doctor this week and have a couple more tests with him too.

My intention is to make it to church this morning, but I really don't feel up to it.  So we'll see.  I'm doing the stimulator now.

***

This next portion of text is a relatively short one:

Miner, J. B. (1988). Organizational Behavior: Performance and Productivity. New York, NY: Random House.

I'm just using two main sections from chapter 15, "Organizational Structure and Design."

***

The first Major chapter section I'm going to use is "Limited-Domain Approaches." It sounds to me like these approaches to management are more-or-less static ways of limiting the "domain" of managers/management.  The first sub-section presents a model or theory or limited-domain approaches, "Milner's Four Domain Types."   I"m just going to pick out the aspects of each type that I think might be worth commenting on.

"Hierarchic or Bureaucratic Systems....
1. A continuous rule-bound conduct of business...
3. An organization of positions that follows the principle of hierarchy, so that each lower position is under the control and supervision of a higher one
4. A system of rules regulating the managerial positions, which may be technical rules or norms
6. An understanding that managers do not have any long-standing rights to ownership of their positions
7. A practics of formulating and recording in writing managerial acts, decisions, and rules." (p. 541-542)

As to #1, I think that the mission was only rule-bound when it had to be for external purposes, such as legal or financial recordkeeping, reporting to the mission board, etc.  Otherwise, I think it was rather "weasel-y" and could slip out of rules that existed fairly easily because of it's deception-based security system.  I experienced this even in minor areas, such as the documented (written) right to take German lessons upon arrival in Austria, but being disallowed this right on the illogical basis that there was too much work for me to do (when I was spending my time at work - at their request - reading computer manuals).

Number 3 does conceivably describe the Vienna mission as I knew and experienced it.  Power was most decidedly a top-down affair and everyone was accountable to someone higher up in the chain.  The rank-and-file would be responsible to department heads, and department heads to upper management, generally speaking. 

When you include "norms" in number 4, then it does seem that maybe this could apply to the mission as I knew it.  The norms would include the unwritten security (and other) norms that would guide management as to how to act under certain circumstances, and if those are included under the rubric of "norms" than number 4 might fit the mission.

Regarding #6, I know from my own experience with the mission where I came to the understanding that everyone is expendable (generalizing from myself and the treatment I receive to others - that was how I was thinking, since I thought I had so much to offer by way of specific East European ministry skills and knowledge).  I can't be 100% certain that this is true of everyone, let alone of management personnel, however. 

The big issue in my case is whether I was "uniquely" expendable because of my dad.  If that's so, then I really can't speak at all towards the issue of whether or not managers had "any long-standing rights to ownership of their positions."

The other issue in that discussion is that managers should have come a long way in the trust & socialization process so they should have been deeply ingrained in the organization.  So, first of all, I think it would have been difficult for them to go astray in the first place (because the mission would know them very well and they would be well surrounded by mission personnel and leadership) and also they would have so well internalized the mission's values and norms and more of them than other staff, so that these two things would together make it very difficult for the manager to do something on their own apart from mission dictates.

As to whether the mission might let the missionary go for some other reason (such as, for the textbook writing manager, completion of the writing of the textbooks), this was possible, but not likely on a whim.  Most likely it would be well-known in advance, such as the textbook writing example above, or possibly due to external environment changes that might require organizational change, such as with the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe (which happened after I left, so I can't speak to, although I'm certain it must have affected the mission's operations).    Speaking hypothetically, but quite plausibly, after the break-up of Eastern Europe, the mission might have decided to wind down the East German segment of their work because people would then be able to study in the old West Germany.  So the East German team, including the team leader, might have been facing a change.  If the team leader wanted to continue working in East Germany he'd have to leave the mission to do so.

However, I think this #6 point is speaking not to the dismantling of the position but to the person having long-standing rights to their position as it is.  That is, I think it's speaking more to the expendability of the individual - that someone else could always be found to fill their shoes and the show would go on without them.  For the reasons given above, I think this is highly unlikely, but if a manager did manage to do something egregious, I suppose this statement would prove to be true.  I think that there was enough cross training and people filling in for others during mission trips and furloughs that someone from within the department or the mission could in many cases be found to fill the shoes of their old boss.  If that wasn't the case, at least the mission was used to running without any given staff due to ministry travel requirements, so it could function for a time while it looked for someone to replace the manager gone bad.  Another factor would be that the mission leadership and board members (not to mention some key funders) were well connected in Evangelical circles and if anyone could find a new manager they could, although there could be a steep learning curve to learn the ropes of the mission.

As to #7, I think this was only done in certain cases where it was deemed necessary for a specific reason, often external or for the board, or perhaps to protect themselves.  Otherwise, I think that this was done only very minimally so.  I did work as a secretary (part of the time!) for the assistant director and also the North American director (covering for his secretary on maternity leave), I had some access to these kinds of things, although, since I was never fully integrated into these positions, I can't speak for great certainty.   But in any case, I think I can safely say that they came nowhere close to the kind of documentation that you'd find in a bureaucracy.  As far as this is concerned I mainly remember keeping minutes of management meetings, and they did the same for board meetings.  But I think that's about the only thing along these lines I can remember management doing.

***

 Here's another take on bureaucratic systems:

"Stated somewhat differently, a bureaucracy is a set of jurisdictions operated according to rules... There are certain rights that go with a position, and these rights serve to protect a person against arbitrary actions on the part of a superior.  The climate is both rational and impersonal." (p. 542)

I think that on one level one could say that the Vienna mission probably (or at least might have) operated "according to rules," but those rules were ones not written down in policy manuals (although they did have at least one of those, which they only adhered to as it pleased them, as I experienced first hand).  There may have been some rules elsewhere that I wasn't aware of, but otherwise, I believe that the mission operated more on normative rules, although I've written elsewhere about how the mission seemed to me to have a "legal nihilist" view towards policies and rules, so my opinion any rules that existed (written or otherwise) were only adhered to as long as certain other necessary criteria were met (such as the ever-present concern that security wouldn't be compromised by following the rule).

Or, perhaps it's better to say that in the hierarchy of rules security (for example) was tops and that it was understood that everything else was contingent upon it.  If this were true, then, the policy manual I was given was only relevant in as much as security wasn't an issue, but I couldn't know when security was an issue because I was new, so I had to trust their judgment.  However, no one ever said that the policy manual rules were only actually valid if security weren't an issue, so it would have been left to me to deduce that.  And how was I to know that attending German classes upon arrival in Vienna would be a security risk anyway?  And if it was generally always a security risk, then why did they even have it in the policy manual?  Presumably it would have been a security risk because the new person didn't know how to behave his-/herself outside the mission yet and wasn't yet satisfactorily socialized into the organization.  However, the policy explicitly said it applied to newly arrived missionaries, and the studies allowee were one month for each year of pledged service, so that in my case I should have been granted 2 months.  In any case, I never knew anyone to utilize that rule and study German when they arrived in Vienna, so I wasn't singled out on that account, although I do not know whether anyone else requested it upon learning of the right.

The position this quote refers to is that of a manager post.  So managers have rights in bureaucratic systems.  I can't really speak for management positions specifically, but what I know of the mission as it was when I was there makes me doubt very strongly that managers in the mission had rights that protected them "against arbitrary actions on the part of a superior."  It's not as if they had a grievance system in place or a union with an ombudsman to represent you in difficult situations.  I think that that's the kind of thing the text is referring to.  Think of, for example, teachers in some public schools that get tenure after so many years and whether or not they continue to be good teachers their tenure protects them (to a large extent) from termination.   If a department head went sour, even after being with the mission 15, 20 years, say, s/he wouldn't have had that kind of protection with the mission.  Chances are, if the mission hadn't been able to work with the missionary to correct the situation before it affected the ministry detrimentally, they would either transfer the missionary to another position or ask the missionary to resign.

As far as arbitrariness of superiors vis a vis the manager, I know of a situation in one of the key member missions, which I have already described in this blog, where for some puzzling (to me) reason the mission rather suddenly realized that it was short of funds and within a week's time or so laid off something like a third of its home office staff (in the USA), and it had a reasonably large staff, as they not only oversaw missionary work, managed financies and h.r. functions, but also did some of the short wave radio work and Christian publishing (mainly for the USSR distribution).  To compensate for the lost staff, which were on salary from the mission budget, it took missionaries from the field, who were on faith support, and brought them home to work in the office.  Some of these missionaries had been there, mostly South America, for 20 years or even more, and some of them were really devastated by the move.  Now that's arbitrary, and they had absolutely no rights against "arbitrary actions" on the part of the mission. This is one of the reasons I didn't want to go with that mission, but they were one of the founding missions of the work in Vienna I was part of, and were very influential in East European ministry.

***

Here are some "Characteristics of Hierarchic or Bureaucratic Systems." (I'm skipping a few to highlight the most informative ones.)

"1. Work rules and regulations are established by management.
3. Organizational changes are carried out by management
6. Freedom of action is limited by organizational guidelines.
7. Organizational leaders are appointed by management.
8. Punishments are established by management.
13. Risk of failure is assumed by management.
15. Meetings are called and conducted by management." (p. 542)

1) Rules, etc., such as they were, were all established by management, although sometimes I think that some informal discussions with others might have led up to the establishment of rules, norms, etc.  The Vienna management was always (as far as I know and remember) quick to give credit where credit was do, so that if someone else came up with an idea they would point that out publicly as appropriate.  However, everything did have to go through management and it would have been a major crime against the culture to do anything that smacked of bypassing the leadership.  However, the place of rules, etc., in the organization should be understood as per the above discussion.

3) When I was with the mission there was talk of change - of growth to new countries, etc. - but I wasn't sure if they were being honest or not because I experienced enough from the mission to distrust them.  It turns out they probably did make many of the changes they were discussion, but the fall of Communism would have changed their plans for change too.  Plans for change in the mission did come from the top, from the top leadership and the board, which consissted of representatives from the member missions.  I don't think anyone lower down would have suggested change of any import.

6) "Organizational guidelines" would have to be understood as norms in the Vienna mission setting, but I think that freedom of action was also somewhat individual.  I think I had very little freedom of action, which I attribute to my not being trusted.  However, I should also explain that statement too.  On one hand it could look like I did have a significant amount of freedom of action because I did do a fair amount apart from the mission.  However, my doing so drove a wedge between me and the mission, so I wasn't really practicing freedom of action.  At first I faced a lot of extra work stressors, which I think was aggravated - if not caused - by my extracurricular activities.  Then I felt more social pressure and work demotion.  Finally, I think they sort of let me go and my doing things outside the mission ended out being like a first step of separation from the mission.   (The social isolation and then the physical departure from Vienna would have been the second and third steps of my separation from them.)

7)  It's not as if there was anything particularly democratic about the mission, and the appointment of leadership was indeed top down.  In fact, I'm sure that all the mission representatives on the board had to agree to each appointment, even if it was an internal move.  I don't know this for certain, but I'm pretty sure that's how it would have been.

8) Since knowledge was segmented and the higher up you went in the mission the more knowledge you had, and so many of the aspects of the functioning of the mission were unwritten, it was really only the management that would know enough to be able to discipline someone.  In my case, this is how it might have gone:

I think that the director of H.R., and mission director, assistant director and North American director probably knew about my dad.  The H.R. assistant might have also known, but I don't remember interactions with him that might confirm that.  The H.R. director and assistant were both U.S. military chaplains, although I'm not sure which armed force they were with (i.e., army, navy, etc.).  Since my dad had a military clearance and some kind of military intelligence responsibilities, the chaplains might been in a position to have been told about my dad.

No one else would have known about this aspect of my situation.  So the leadership, if they didn't want to make my dad an issue in my relationship with the mission, would have had to rig other things that would make me leave because of my own doing, apart from my dad, assuming they thought having me there was a security risk.

The other thing is that even if that weren't an issue, few would have known about the history with my having offered to take a course to learn the software they used before coming to Vienna.  So then my being made to sit and read software manuals for weeks on end wouldn't have had that context.  Same with the issue about the roommates where I had asked to not have a roommate and then I got a call from Alaska when I was on deputation in Colorado from another to-be secretary saying we were going to be roommates.  These aren't discipline, but if I respond in ways displeasing to the mission leadership, others wouldn't understand this anyway.  And the mission leadership might have had certain plans for me that others wouldn't have known (and I didn't even know!).  So discipline had to come from leadership and everyone else just learned to trust the leadership.  I don't know what everyone thought at my departure about what had happened during my stay, but everyone towed the "party-line" so to speak and stood with management in isolating me.  Whether or not they knew what horrible sin of commission (or ommission) I had committed is another matter.  Or maybe the mission leadership framed my departure in a light that suited their purposes, and they had a monopoly on framing things, so it's not like there was going to be a competing frame floating around somewhere in the organization.

13)  This one didn't really apply, I don't think.  The thing is that the biggest risk was really for the in-country Christian students (remember, these were in Communist countries).  After that was the risk to the missionary (-ies), mission and member missions.  A few missionaries lived in the countries and they were at a certain amount of risk there, but the missionaries travelling and teaching were also at risk and they needed to b e able to continue to travel and teach to continue the ministry, so they didn't want to botch that up.  Sometimes missionaries could get blacklisted from a country, like the USSR, when they became suspicious in the eyes of the local authorities.  The member missions could also be at risk and that was huge because it involved a major part of all the Evangelical missions working in that part of the world.  So in this case, the bureaucratic model definitely does not fit.

15)  As far as I can remember meetings were always called and led by management, and although portions of meetings might be turned over to others, the leadership was always in charge and clearly so, maybe in a benevolent father sort of way, jovial, but firm and wise.  There was a protocol as to who would lead meetings if the top leadership was gone (on a ministry trip, on furlough, etc.).  First was the director, then the assistant director (whose secretary I was supposed to be, and then thirdly the country coordinator (who managed all the country-focused teams).  I can't remember who came after that.

***

Looking back at all this discussion it seems that there are some aspects of bureacracy that more or less fit the Vienna mission, but I have a hard time considering it really bureaucratic.  The rules - systemic and concrete - just weren't a major enough part of the organization and I think that the informal organization was too strong there.  So I'll look at another system approach next time.

311. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 37 (Bowditch, pt.4)

It wasn't much of a spiritual retreat yesterday, but it was a start.  Today I have a morning appointment with one of my neurologists.  Late yesterday evening my legs got pretty bad so that I had less control of them.  They're a little better this morning though.

***

One thing I got to thinking about over the weekend is the difference between my dad and I.  Both of us were stymied from doing what we really wanted to do, but how that happened and the effect on either of us was completely different.

Dad wanted to be a pilot - an airplane pilot.  He told me about this when I was a late teenager I think.  He said he wasn't allowed because he wore glasses and at that time he was disqualified from being a pilot because of that.

Well presumably that was something that he would have known upfront and that wouldn't have been difficult to find out about, so you'd know early on that you couldn't go in that profession.  So there was that point.  But then there was also the issue that he wasn't going to let that, as far as I could tell, ruin his life.  When he was drafted into the Korean War (although he never saw battle because the war ended before he got out of boot camp), he chose the Air Force because of his interest in flying, and then he worked for Boeing after finishing his draft enlistment.

But I never was told that I couldn't become a missionary to Eastern Europe... although after I left the Vienna mission a missionary with Campus Crusade for Christ told me that sometimes the don't let people with parents in the military work in missions in that part of the world.  (Note: although my dad wasn't in the military he was in aerospace, the "military industrial complex" end of Boeing).  So I put years and years and lots of money (and my parents' money and even my Grandmother's money) into preparing for that profession and if, say, the U.S. government didn't want me in that field I was never told about it.  It wasn't at all like knowing in advance that wearing glasses automatically disqualified one from being an airplane pilot.  I was way way way emotionally invested in this and I really felt that God had called me to that field and I still think that.

So then the other thing is after leaving Vienna I was broken but after some regrouping I was so convinced of God's call that I took another stab at it again.  By myself, Sans mission.

So the thing was that I faced all these nebulous entities, often hard to explain problems that always seemed to make my way difficult - sometimes exceedingly difficult.  It seemed that nothing about my career denial would be clearcut like dad's denial because he wore glasses.  Of course, you could always blame it on me, saying I was incompetent, crazy, or the like.  But that would only work for my Vienna years (1987-1989), not my Russia years (1991-1997), for some strange - or crazy - reason.  And I did have some problems in Russia, just different ones.

The work itself was also much different, of course, which bears noting.  Dad couldn't just decide he was going to try to work around the system and try to become a pilot despite his wearing glasses, as the airline industry is, was and always has been highly regulated regarding licensure of pilots.  He'd probably have to go to a third world country to become a pilot where wearing glasses wasn't an issue, which, if he wanted to become a pilot badly enough, I suppose was possible.

However, in my case, the field "Eastern European missionary" was not exactly what you'd call highly regulated - it's not as if you have to get a license to become one, for example.  Criteria for entering this profession are rather idiosyncratically set by the particulars of individual missions, positions, locations, etc.  So there should have been a lot more opportunity for me to work around any barrier, if I'd known of one.  So, for example, if it was true that children of military members might not be allowed into work in Eastern Europe, does that mean that all missions across the board wouldn't allow them?  does it mean that these potential workers wouldn't be allowed into any position in any country under any circumstance?  etc. And this assumes that all missions cooperate with the U.S. government in disallowing these types of workers.  Otherwise, how do they find out that these potential workers are children of military?  I don't remember being asked about it, so were the mission leadership informed about my dad?  (Considering they had 2 military chaplains on staff this isn't a completely unreasonable supposition, I think.)  Also, it is not completely unheard of for missionaries to work on their own or to set up their own mission.  Even one of our administrators had done that very thing instead of going through a regular sending mission.  So who's to say that I had to go through a mission anyway and be subject to their determination that I was disqualified from ministry to that part of the world because of my dad?

So you see, my area of work did allow a lot more opportunity to try to get around the system than did dad's line of work.  He would have to have left the country to work as a pilot.  As for my line of work, however, there was no way, really, for me to know up front who I could maybe work for and who I couldn't, but then I didn't know that there was a roadblock out there in the first place.  So dad's roadblock was black and white, but very unforgiving, and mine was hidden and only discovered by trial and error.

Another issue, of course, is the gender one.  For me, I began to see more and more that giving up on my dream meant becoming Susie homemaker, and some Christian men thought missionary experienc and the like was very noble and attractive, like it made one more of a trophy wife in Evangelical circles.  That really is demeaning to me.  Is that all it means?  That's it?  That's not what it means to me and that's never what it meant to me.  And I fiind it very disgusting to have it trivialized like that.

Anyway, that's it for the comparison between dad's and my work roadblocks.

***

This next main subject heading is "ORGANIZATION-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONS," and this is from the introduction:

"This section looks at some of the ways in which managers and organizations deal with their environments in terms of: 1) managerial efforts to reduce uncertainty by controlling the environment; and 2) attempts to structure organizations so they "fit" environmental pressures and demands." (p. 165)

***

The first sub-heading is: "Controlling the Environment."

"Thompson has noted five basic ways in which organizations attempt to exert control over their environment to reduce the level of uncertainty in their planning.  First, under 'norms of rationality,' organizations try to buffer or isolate their core technologies (inner operations) from external influences.  Through both input (e.g. stockpiling of inventories) and output (e.g., marketing) mechanisms, managers attempt to ensure that the core task of the organization is not directly affected by external conditions such as scarcity of materials (input) or changes in consumer preferences (output)." (p. 165)

The other 4 ways are basically an escallation if the first one doesn't work, but I don't think those other methods are very helpful for my purposes here.

The "core technologies" in the Vienna mission case would be the various secrets, including names of students, when classes are being held, what the classes are, who the missions are, where the money comes from, how textbooks get to the students, etc., etc.; basically all the things that the security system protects.  So this "buffer or isolate their core technologies" is more or less part of the security system, and marketing might include some of the misinformation ("We're an international publisher.").  But the marketing, especially back home, also serves the purpose of making sure that there are good vibes there to keep the financial support and supply of workers coming so that the work can continue.  Also, they want a certain image of the mission back home and they want to be the ones defining the image, so that everyone has a general appreciation for why it might be necessary to maintain a certain level of secrecy, etc.

They did need to make sure they had textbooks on time or ahead of schedule for the courses to be taught because it was very difficult to reschedule courses since so much advance planning went into the scheduling and it was such a complex process to get everyone on board at the right time in the right place, and even then something could go wrong.  So having the logistics taken care of on the mission's side was very important, leaving only changes to happen on the Eastern European side of things, so they did try to plan ahead for the environmental uncertainties.  They couldn't control much on the Eastern European side of things, so they focused more on controlling what they could of the part of the work that took place in the West to minimize disruptions.

***

The next sub-section is "Struction-Environment Fit."

"As the earlier discussion of mechanistic and organic forms of organization, and the concepts of differentiation and integration pointed out, there is no one ideal form of organization structure... As Burns and Stalker argured, the most effective structure is one that adjusts to these environment requirements - a mechanistic form of organization in stable, certain environments, and an organic design in more unpredictable, turbulent fields." (p. 168)

I'd just say here that the formal structure of the mission was pretty stable, but I don't think my changing position is exactly organic - I didn't choose to change, for example.  One area where the mission might be considered contingent is the constantly changing instructional teams.  They had to keep changing to defy the attention of the authorities at the borders, for one thing, but there were other reasons as well for this, such as bringing in outside experts, introducing other potential recruit missionaries to the mission, etc.

None of the structure descriptions are particularly helpful in describing the mission.  The closest one, I think is "professional bureaucracy," but even that is not that helpful.  Basically it would just say that the theologians on staff couldn't be easily regulated, decisions were decentralized and there was less formalization than in some other structures.  This was largely true as far as the strictly theological aspects of the work was concerned, except that they had to get everyone on board with every single theological jot and tittle - all the missions, all the denominations represented by the students in each of the countries the mission taught in, etc.  So all of a sudden things don't seem quite so decentralized after all, because of the environmental complexity that was integral to the work the theologians did.

***

That's the end of this chapter.

I saw one of the neurologists today. (I have 2).  This neurologist isn't that helpful, but I am afraid to leave him because the other one, while I like him better, when my legs are very bad (from spinal stenosis), then it's hard to get out there to him.  It's frustrating.   He wants to wait to get my heart taken care of before anything else, though, which is probably a wise thing.  He knows my cardiologist and says he's good.

309. Organizatinoal Behavior, Pt. 35 (Bowditch, pt. 1)

Okay, I know I haven't done this next text.

I've been working on macrameing a climbing ladder for the sugar snap peas I planted in the planter on my balcony.  They're already 1/2 inch and growing like weeds, so it's a race against time to get it done.  There are plastic shelves on the cement wall I'm going to hang them from - it's not like there's going to be a lot of weight hanging from them.  So the first one is about 15" long.  The shelves are 8" wide so I'm starting with that and widening it out as I go down.  I don't know, but I may just need one of them judging by the width.  I'm just sort of throwing it together so we'll see.

***

This next text is a book chapter, as follows:

Bowditch, J. L. (1985) Chapter Eight: Macro-organizational behavior: structure, environment, organizational-environment relations. In Bowditch, J. L. A Primer on Organizational Behavior. New York, NY: John Wiley, p. 149-174.

And here is our helpful advance organizer:

"...[T]he chapter will outline some of the broad concerns of macro-organizational behavior in four areas: (1) organizational structure; (2) internal organizational dynamics; (3) organizational environments; and (4) organization-environment relations." (p. 150)

***

"One of the key concepts underlying organizational structure is division of labor... 


Organizations may be differentiated in a number of ways:


1. Horizontal differentiation, where work is divided up on a particular level of an organizational hierarchy
2. Vertical differentiation, where work is divided up by levels of the organizational hierarchy, the distinction between tall and flat organization refers to whether it has many or few levels of heiarchy
3. Personal differentiation, where work is divided according to personal specialty (e.g., a law firm may have trial lawyers, probate lawyers, patent lawyers, admiralty or marine lawyers, and corporate lawyers)
4. Spatial differentiation, where work is divided according to geographical location (such as one company's automobile assembly plants scattered throoughout the country)" (p. 150)

So let's look at how this might have been in the Vienna mission. One example of how horizontal differentiation might have played out there would have been in the textbook writing crew, where they were each working on different textbooks - one on the evangelism textbook, another on the Old Testament survey textbook, etc. so that would have been a kind of horizontal differentiation, I think.

There weren't so many levels in the formal organizational hierarchy, but I'm not sure what the informal organizational diagram would look like.  I think I've mentioned this before, but maybe just once or twice.  I would say there was the board, the director, assistant director, department heads... then after that I'm not sure of the order but I expect the theologians would high up there and maybe the director's secretary.  At any rate, most of the secretaries and the copy editing & art crew would have probably come in last, so that would have included me.

There wasn't really any place at the mission for personal differentiation, which was too bad for me, because that's exactly where I might have excelled.  Even the theologians, I believe, had to pretty much be generalists in that they had to teach all of the courses as needed because there was a set schedule they had to keep as to what courses were taught when and where.  So there wasn't much place for personal differentiation at the mission; you pretty much had to be a generalist, even if you were a specialist before coming.

There was some spatial differentiation, because there was the printing office in the USA and there were also a few missionaries actually living in Eastern Europe (remember this was still in the days of Communism).  So there was some spatial differentiation with the mission.

***

The next sub-section in the chapter is titled "Mechanistic and Organic Structures"

"Another way to view organizational structures is the extent to which the structure is rigid (routine) or flexible (nonroutine) in nature. Rigid organizational structures are referred to as mechanistic, and flexible structures are generally labeled organic. A mechanistic organizational structure is much like Weber's description of a bureacracy..., where (1) there is a clear definition of jobs, (2) senior administrators have more knowledge of problems facing an organization than those at lower levels, (3) standardized policies and procedures govern organizational decision making, and (4) rewards are determined by adherence to instructions from supervisors.


Organic organizational structures, sometimes referred to as adhocracies, are flexibly designed to cope with rapidly changing environments.  Adhocracies are characterized by: 1) a deemphasis on formal job descriptions and specializations (individuals are involved in problem solving when they hae the knowledge to solve a particular problem); 2)  there is no assumption that people in higher positions are better informed than those lower in the organization (many times the reverse is true); 3) horizontal relationships (across departments) are equal or more important than vertical, chain of command, relationships (departmental boundaries are flexible); 4) organizational atmosphere is more collegial (strict superior-subordinate relationships are de-emphasized); and 5) the form structure of the organization is fluid and changeable." (p. 152)

That's a longer piece of text to cite than I usually like to use, but I didn't see how I could use less.  As I look this over I'm sort of torn about it.  I think that people inside the system, especially the professional theologians might say they think the organization is more organic.  I'm not sure about that, but I suspect that they'd at least say that there's a fair amount of organic qualities in it.  I think they'd say they have professional freedom and are able to use their professional judgment to make certain kinds of decisions apart from management involvement and that their knowledge in certain areas might even be better or at least rival management's.

However, that being said, that wasn't my experience of the mission.  My experience was that everyone had a defined position and specific work they were expected to accomplish and generally the work was given to them by someone(s) with more knowledge and/or power.  I never saw where there was particular flexibility in the organizational structure, so I would have to say it was rigid.  I also only witnessed and experienced a top-down approach to management, so there was never any appreciation for participatory management, for example.  So to me organizational structure was something imposed upon me (mechanistic) rather than something I might participate in (organic).

***

The next sub-heading is "General Structural Dimensions."

"Centralization refers to the location of decision-making authority in an organization.  A centralized organization is one in which decisions are concentrated at one or a few points; a decentralized structure disperses authority (low centralization) for making decisions throughout a number of positions in the organization." (p. 153)

In the Vienna mission decisions of any consequence were centralized.  Certain others were given the authority, explicitly or otherwise, to make certain kinds of decisions under certain circumstances.  For example, department heads could make some kinds of decisions, and perhaps different department heads could make different decisions depending on their department.  Also, teams that went into Eastern Europe were vested with the authority to make certain impromtu decisions that had to be made while they were on their ministry trip.

Since the informal organization was so well developed in the mission, I think that some people not otherwise in leadership positions in the formal organization might have been in positions in the informal organization that also gave them some decision making rights, such as for security measures, for example.

I think on one hand decision-making was somewhat decentralized in the mission, but on the other thand the security controls tightly guarded things like decision making and so that maybe made it a sort of guarded decentralization.  I'm not sure.  It's not as if the leadership would have just given the staff a blank check - "Here, go make a decision and come back and let me know what you did."  And it's not as if they'd start setting up worker councils to start looking into options as to how to keep the cost of textbook production down.  I don't think so. So to say the mission's decision making process was decentralized is giving them more credit than they deserve for being democratic, which they most emphatically weren't.

***

"Formalization is the extent to which expectations concerning job activities are standardized and explicit.  The clearer and more detailed these specifications are for a particular role or task, the greater the degree of formalization.  This dimension of organizaitonal structure, thus, reflects the amount of discretion that is built into particular roles and positions." (p. 153)

The thing here is that the writers of this book are refering to your average corporation and not to a mission agency, let along a mission agency with an an apparent espionage complex (i.e., it acted like a spy base).  So I'm going to cut to the chase here and get past all the bologna.

The Vienna mission wanted me there for a 24/7 position and that's how it acted the whole time I was there.  It wanted my undivided attention.  Period.  So in this case, if they wanted me for 24/7, then we have to really account for what they might want me to do for 24/7, right?  Otherwise, why would they want my attention 24/7, right? They want my attention 24/7 for a reason, right?  To do something, right?  To do what?  Hopefully not to do more of what I was doing 8 hours 5 days a week, because that was precious little all too often.

So were they going to formalize these 24/7 job activities?  Were they going to make them explicit?  I mean, I think I'm pretty good at dealing with ambiguity, but I do have my limits.

The point of the matter is that they were going to make all kinds of informal demands on me.  I was moved around so much at work that to say I had formalized expectations at work was almost meaningless because why was I moved around so much?  Then there's the issue of the extracurricular demands which were not all that clear but I did have discretion in them and I think they really should be included in my job description because they were expected of me - especially the things related to my boss' family.

***

"Complexity refers to the different number of components or extent of differentiation there is in a particular organization." (p. 153)

The formal organization of the mission was not complex.  But I think the informal organization was.  Also, the environment and the mission's relationship to the environment was very complex.  If you took away the mission (the work itself), the environment, the informal organization, then the barebones organizational diagram you'd be left with would not be complex.

258. Organizational Behavior File, Pt. 7 (Ouchi, pt. 5/Argyris, pt. 1)

I've been going through mom's old address books to put together a list of who I should send out notices to regarding her death. A lot of the people I don't know at all or I maybe sort of remember but am not sure exactly who they are, especially in relation to mom. I'm almost done with it though.

***

The name of this last sub-section of the Ouchi article is "A Few Closing Observations."

"The student of organizational control should take care to understand that clans, which operate on ceremony and on ritual, have forms of control which by their nature are subtle and are ordinarily not visible to the inexperienced eye." (p. 845)

The significance of this sentence vis a vis my experience with the Vienna mission is that I was inexperienced regarding this type of thing and as such it was difficult for me to make sense of what was really happening and distinguishing meaningful cues from the seeming chaos. This sentence validates my assertion that although it is hard for me to describe what happened in Vienna between me and the mission, that doesn't mean nothing intentional (on the part of the mission) wasn't happening.

***

In discussing the two issues of "clarity with which performance can be assessed" and "goal incongruence" the author says:

"In everyday language, people must either be able to trust each other or to closely monitor each other if they are to engage in cooperative enterprises." (p. 846)

In Vienna I think trust took preeminence, and the mission seemed to only trust people members that had been thoroughly socialized and internalized the mission's norms. Performance, especially aspects of the work in Eastern Europe itself, such as teaching courses there, was often difficult to assess, so trust filled that gap. And it seemed the mission was slow to trust people and very demanding as to what it would take for it to trust someone. At least that was my experience of the mission.

***

Since this seems like too short of a post, I'm going to start on the next article, a book chapter, which is:

Argyris, Chris. (1989). The individual and the organization. In W. E. Natemeyer & J. S. Gilberg. Classics of Organizational Behavior, 2nd ed. Danville, IL: The Interstate, p. 21-34.

***

"One might say that an independent person is one whose behavior is not caused by the influence others have over him. Of course, no individual is completely independent..." (p. 23)

Independence was most emphatically not a mission-approved value. In fact, the mission seemed to go out of its way to create dependencies and my experience was that it censured personal independence of just about any kind.

***

"Another argument for planning offered by the formal organizational experts is that the organization created by logical, rational design, in the long run, is more human than one created haphazardly. They argue that it is illogical, cruel, wasteful, and inefficient not to have a logical design. It is illogical because design must come first. It does not make sense to pay a large salary to an individual without clearly defining his position and its relationship to the whole. It is cruel because, in the long run, the participants suffer when no clear organizational structure exists. It is wasteful because, unless jobs are clearly predefined, it is impossible to plan logical training, promotion, resigning, and retiring policies. It is inefficient because the organization becomes dependent upon personalities. The personal touch leads to playing politics, which Mary Follett has described as a "deplorable form of coercion."" (p. 25)

The Vienna mission did seem to have a structure, but it was, if this article is correct, less than complete. For example, while I did not have "a large salary" I did have supporters, but my position within the mission was, shall I say, somewhat less than "clearly defined". Not only that but it was constantly changing with all the positions I was moved around to. So, at least on the face of it, the mission was illogical in this deficiency.

I did indeed suffer by not having adequate work guidelines or even sufficient work to keep me busy. So in this regard, the mission was cruel.

It was also wasteful because not only did the mission not make good use of my skills and knowledge, but it wasted supporters' money in shuffling me around like a hockey puck, and not having clear grievance procedures in place made it impossible for any mutually satisfactory resolution to my unsatisfactory treatment.

Lacking these organizational structures and meaningful policies (i.e., policies that they actually adhered to) the mission became an instrument of the whims of its leaders. As such, efficiency was not something the mission excelled at, although it's possible that in the publishing end of things this was otherwise.

Now, if I were to ask for support from the average Christian in the pew who might be interested in supporting a missionary to Eastern Europe, how likely is it that this person would support an organization known to be illogical, cruel, wasteful and inefficient?

***

After discussing principles of task specialization from the field of industrial economics, the author goes on to discuss weaknesses in these principles:

"First, the human personality we have seen is always attempting to actualize its unique organization of parts from a continuous, emotionally laden, ego-involving process of growth. It is difficult, if not impossible, to assume that this process can be choked off and the resultant unique differences of individuals ignored. This is tantamount to saying that self-actualization can be ignored." (p. 26)

I don't think the issue of task specialization fits the Vienna context, except that there was a segmentation of knowledge for security reasons, but it didn't result in an assembly line type of situation, which would be more closely illustrative of what the author is talking about here. However, this statement about the human personality, can be taken, I think, apart from any consideration of task specialization. The Vienna mission clearly tried to "choke off" my self-actualization efforts in several ways. First of all, they pressured me to leave off my Austrian interactions. Secondly, they denied me meaningful work. Thirdly, they did not seem to value my unique assets (in as much as my background was significantly different from others' in my European Studies specialty).

***

"Proposition I. There is a lack of Congruency between the Needs of Healthy Individuals and the Demands of the Formal Organization.

If one uses the traditional formal principles of organization (i.e., chain of command, task specialization, and so on) to create a social organization, and if one uses as an input agents who tend toward mature psychological development (i.e., who are predisposed toward relative independence, activeness, use of important abilities, and so on), then one creates a disturbance, because the needs of healthy individuals listed above are not congruent with the requirements of formal organization, which tends to require the agents to work in situations where they are dependent, passive, use few and unimportant abilities, and so forth." (p. 31).

I wonder if the military chaplains who comprised the Vienna mission's h.r. department knew about this kind of thing...

In any case I would say I was "predisposed toward relative independence, activeness, use of important abilities, and so on," which, according to this author, describes someone of "mature psychological development". I would also say that I was required to work in situations where I was "dependent, passive, use few and unimportant abilities, and so forth," and the incongruity between me and the role I was to play caused "disturbance" because my needs were not (evidently) congruent with the requirements of the mission.

Since I was at a great disadvantage in not knowing the inside workings of the mission before arriving in Vienna, it would have been difficult for me to deselect myself beforehand. So then the onus is on the mission as to why they would take me on knowing that such an incongruity existed. That is why would they accept someone with my education and work background to do the kinds of work they had me do? For all the advanced degreed workers at the mission it is hard for me to believe that they didn't know there would be a clash between me and the position(s).

***

"Corollary 1. The disturbance will vary in proportion to the degree of incongruency between the needs of the individual and the requirements of the formal education." (p. 31)

The degree of incongruency was increased, I think, by the mission's disallowal of my compensatory efforts of Austrian ministry and their cutting off my outside contacts. So, in other words, not only did I have this incongruence, but the mission wouldn't even allow me to make up for it externally. Basically, it seemed to want this incongruence.

***

"Proposition II. The Results of This Disturbance Are Frustration, Failure, Short-Time Perspective, and Conflict.

If the agents are predisposed to a healthy, mature, self-actualization, the following results will occur:

1. They will tend to experience frustration because their self-actualization will be blocked.

2. They will tend to experience failure because they will not be permitted to define their own goals in relation to their central needs, the paths to these goals, and so on.

3. They will tend to experience short-time perspective, because they have no control over the clarity and stability of their future.

4. They will tend to experience conflict, because, as healthy agents, they will dislike the frustration, failure, and short-time perspective which is characteristic of their present jobs. If they leave, however, they may not find new jobs easily, and even if new jobs are found, they may not be much different." (p. 31)

I felt all of these things in my work with the mission. However, in the case of my experience with the mission, I think the mission might have actually wanted me to have this response to the incongruencies, or at least to some of the incongruencies. That is, the "disturbance" wasn't just a product of a neutral organizational structure, but was intentional.

***

That was it for that article, so I'm going to close with this.

220. Socialization File, Pt. 101 (Van Maanen & Schein, pt. 4)

Regarding the program evaluation, since I have to put it in the past so that I can set it up to be an evaluation of the Vienna mission as I knew it from 1987 to 1989, there has to be a certain amount of speculation and making things up (I'll try to keep this to a minimum to stay as close to how I experienced and observed the mission to be). So today I'm going to sort of set the stage for the evaluation.

Since I was working for the mission and the possibility of me actually performing an evaluation while I was with the mission is just altogether too far-fetched for even a make believe evaluation, I'm going to have to have someone other than myself do it. I'm going to say that I have an alter-ego, Erica Elliott, who runs a business (Christian Missionary Evaluation Services (CMEC)) that contracts out for external program evaluations.

* External evaluation: Evaluation conducted by an evaluator from outside the organization within which the object of the study is housed.

Yesterday I mentioned that this evaluation was also going to be a formative evaluation focusing (at least mostly if not entirely) on process factors.

* Formative evaluation: Evaluation designed and used to improve an object, especially when it is still being developed.

* Process evaluation: Process evaluation is an ongoing process in which repeated measures may be used to evaluate whether the program is being implemented effectively.

Here is the scenario:

Big Bucks Bible Foundation (BBBF) has, via undisclosed sources, learned that there are some things going on at the Vienna Mission (VM) that raise concerns for the foundation. The foundation is a major funder of the mission, and has in recent years accounted for roughly one-third of the mission's funding base. Because it has so much invested in the mission, and because it does otherwise think that the work of the mission is vital for the spread and development of Christianity in the parts of the world it works in, has decided it will pay the entire cost of the evaluation, and thereby avoid laying an extra financial burden on the mission. The external environment is such that there is a worldwide recession going on and, as a result funding has become tight and options for alternate sources of income, especially for large sums like the BBBF has been supplying the VM with in recent years, would be very difficult to come by.

The clincher is, however, that the foundation has decided that its continual support of the mission is contingent on the evaluation. That is, the mission must agree to the evaluation and not hinder its being carried out and it must also agree to carry out suggestions for improvement that are recommended based on the findings. The implementation of the findings will also be subject to another evaluation in 2 years. In this manner, the mission risks losing the support of this major funder at any of five possible junctures: 1) not agreeing to having the evaluation done; 2) hindering the evaluation process; 3) not agreeing to recommended improvements; 4) not making the necessary improvements (as determined by a second evaluation two years after the completion of the first evaluation); and/or 5) hindering the carrying out of the second evaluation.

***

Now we'll return to my regular text discussion, which is based on my real experiences and observations of the Vienna mission. These quotes continue the texts used in my last post, in which a three-dimensional model of organizations was discussed.

"Given this model, some key postulates about the socialization process in organizations can be stated.

First, socialization, although continuous throughout one's career within an organization, is no doubt more intense and problematic for a member (and others) just before and just after a particular boundary passage." (p. 224)

In other words, the influence an individual has within the organization is inversely and directly related to influence the organization has on that individual. So, for example, when I entered the mission I had absolutely no influence and after five months, I had even less influence (because of being several thousand miles away from where I was supposed to be); 6 months later I had enough influence to persuade others that the birthday cake should be chocolate this month, but months later I had no influence again and a few months, later soon before my departure I had negative influence potential. Well, maybe I'm not a good example; let's try another, hypothetical, one: When a person enters the mission they have no influence power, but the mission has a lot of influence power on the individual. A year later the individual should have somewhat more influence power (but probably not a whole lot), and the mission has a bit less influence on the individual, until eventually x number of years later the person is the president of the company and has all the influence power and the mission has virtually none on him/her.

This isn't difficult to understand, in general, but I hope you can appreciate, at least a little, how it must feel to be in the career you dreamed about for years and really not like the organization you ended out with, but saw few or no other alternatives, and to end out after 2 years powerless to influence anything that you might disagree with. That is enough alone to crush a serious-minded professional

***

"Second, a person is likely to have the most impact upon others in the organization, what Porter, Lawler, and Hackman (1975) call the 'individualization' process and what Schein (1971a) refers to as the 'innovation' process, at points farthest from any boundary crossing." (p. 224)

I guess I got ahead of myself in the last comments. I could add that after 2 years, though, I couldn't in my wildest dreams have thought I'd have gotten nowhere in my career advancement. I've already discussed, in one way or another, all the reasons why this could have been so, but maybe it's worth stating them again here all together. The reasons, I think, I left the mission as I did with having made no headway at all in my career (and arguably actually going backwards in it) include the following:

1) The mission's demands on me not being acceptable to me morally, ethically and biblically (esp. total submission)

2) My being a woman

3) My not having a Th.M.

4) My thinking of hands-on mission work as something that can happen outside of the classroom (i.e., not limiting it to the teaching ministry of the mission)

5) Possibly intervention because of my dad's work

6) There not being a realistic, workable grievance procedure in place

7) My being the only one with these kinds of problems

8) The mission putting security above just about anything else (the only possible competing value would be that of the teaching ministry itself, but I'm not sure which would have had the upper hand... which I really should address, even though it means going off on a tangent

***

Okay, I'm going off on that tangent, because I need to deal with this at some point and don't want to forget to cover it later.

There are a lot of ways one could try to determine what is most important, but here are a few:

1. the amount of time and energy spent on something

2. the dedicated use of financial and other resources

3. what seems to command most of the organization's culture

4. where the focus is put in socialization efforts

Those are what I can think of now (esp. vis a vis the Vienna mission in this particular issue), but I'll address them very briefly one-by-one. Understand, though, that my vantage point was limited, although I was more of an insider than someone who otherwise didn't work for the mission at all, and everyone else had internalized the mission's values, so I may be the closest thing you have to an insider who is willing to talk (more or less) objectively about what was going on there.

1. I think on this score the mission did spend a lot more time and energy on the actual work. This is because the security procedures, I think, were intended to be in place in the background while the work was being done and as long as everyone had internalized everything and there wasn't anything unusually (e.g., my lack of total submission) threatening to the mission that might demand more dedicated attention the mission could focus directly on the work at hand and put the security issues on the back burner, or in remote control, if you wish.

2. The mission also spent more money on the ministry because the work was fairly expensive (consider, for example, textbook writing, design, publishing and delivery) and it would be hard to exceed that without having security comparable to the U.S. embassy in Moscow or something along those lines.

3. This is where I think the security issue overtakes the ministry itself. I think that the mission's culture was more a reflection of its security concerns than its ministry. Otherwise it wouldn't have made the compromises it had and it would have acted more mission-like and more solidly based on biblical mandates.

4. Socialization is clearly focused on security issues, especially initial socialization. (I can't speak for what internal advancement socialization might look like.) Just taking my experience, you'll see that this is blatantly so, because I basically did nothing (other than reading software manuals) the first 2 months I was with the mission. So you can't say that I was being socialized to the ministry, which in my case was the secretarial work I was supposed to be doing. So my socialization was close to 100% focused on security issues.

I showed yesterday how there weren't any direct verbal cues (along the lines of expressed anger, etc.) that might have been contrary to Scriptural teaching on how we should interact with one another, and here you can see that on paper the security issues also would not likely be picked up because the security efforts fall outside of what might have been easily documentable (such as on a financial spreadsheet). In this kind of a situation, then, you would expect the nonverbal (or only certain kinds of verbal) security-related cues to lie. I hope you can appreciate that it's going to be difficult to recreate those kinds of things this long after the fact. This is extremely important as we head into my chronological narration after I'm done discussing this article.

***

"Third, because of the conical shape typically displayed by organizations, socialization along the inclusionary dimension is likely to be more critical to lower-placed members than higher-placed members since, according to the model, to move up in the organization indicates that some, perhaps considerable movement has already occurred inward. This presumes, however, an ideal-type, symmetrically shaped organization in which central members from the top to the bottom of the organization all share roughly the same norms and values. In fact, as Figure 5-A shows, organizations may be nonsymmetrically skewed, thus, hierarchically favoring the movement up of only those persons coming from a particular functional or inclusionary location. Consider, for example, those business concerns whose top executives invariably come from only certain functional areas of the organization. Similarly, organizations may also be tipped radically to the side (Figure 5-B). In such cases, certain inclusionary pre-requisites for career movements and their associated boundary passages have been more or less altered because 'insiders' at one level are 'outsiders' at another. Nor are 'insiders' in a favorable position to move upward in the organization, as might be the case in more symmetrically shaped firms where certain key values are shared by all 'insiders' regardless of level. To take an example, certain organizations headed by reform-minded top officials may make 'mountain climbers' out of some members who literally scale the vertical dimension of the organization from an outsider's or noninclusionary position. Yet, it is probably also true that during such a climb the climber has little effect upon any of the various groups in which he or she may have claimed membership, since the climber will never have developed a persuasive or influential position within those organizational segments." (p. 225)

Although formal position (within the heirarchy) within the Vienna mission did correlate well, I think, with the informal power positions (influence) in the organization, it wasn't exactly a 1:1 relationship. For example, I think that the director's secretary wielded more informal power than you'd expect. That is, as a secretary she was low in the hierarchy, although because of who she was secretary to she was the highest up of all the secretaries, but in addition to this she also had, I think, a lot of clout in the informal culture, such as with the women's meetings and the like. So in this way her informal power was arguably greater than her formal power. Before I go on let me clarify how I'm using these terms, although I understand it's possible they are only rough equivalents for each other:

hierarchical dimension = formal power = formal position within the hierarchy
functional dimension = departmental membership
inclusionary dimension = informal power = informal position within the organizational culture

Here are some other examples from the Vienna mission regarding how these different dimensions played out:

1. The director of publishing, I think, had less informal power than the director of the in-country work, and the director of publishing would probably have been less likely to have been moved up to a higher management position just because the department he led was less influential.
2. The Romania team had more clout than the others because it was the largest of the country teams.
3. Access to different kinds of information affected the culture of the different segments of the organization, but an attempt was made, for security purposes, to minimize this so that others (including others within the organization) would not necessarily know the extent or type of knowledge differences. The knowledge and skills needed in of any particular department and/or position would probably have had a values and cultural impact on those needing those kinds of knowledge and skills. For example, having detailed knowledge of the work in Romania and skills to function uniquely in that context might have resulted in bonding that team together and also made them, to a certain extent, different from, say, the East German team who had their own different knowledge and skill base, which included (in both cases - Romanian and E. German teams) being able to move about undetected by suspicious eyes within the respective country, for example. Another way knowledge would have affected the culture is that some knowledge of organizational functioning would only have been available at the very top. For example, it was there that they were most likely to know about funding issues, h.r. issues, or issues regarding relations between the various member missions and how it affected the work of the mission. Sometimes the knowledge involved in these various areas, as described above, probably involved ethical issues that the mission and the individuals directly involved had to make decisions about, some of which might have deviated from what one would normally expect of a Christian organization. It is likely that a lot of these things would have been kept under wraps, especially since we're talking about a Christian mission, which everyone expects to live on high moral grounds.

I think that last example could be broken up, but, since it's all inter-related, I'm not going to.

***

In the next post I'll start in on a new major section of this journal article.

Now I have to go put away all the boxes of books strewn all over the place from last night's book search before I can start my usual Saturday laundry.