291. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 17 (Katz, pt. 2)

I saw one of my neurologists this afternoon and he's ordering an MRI of my lumbar and also upping my migraine (?) medicine again (!).  Then when I got home and did some cleaning (I'm trying to do a thorough post-remodeling cleaning, but it's going slowly because I don't feel well) I plugged the steam vacuum into an outlet and discovered the outlet doesn't work, so that's another thing for the plumber/electrician to return and fix.  I forgot to tell him that I found his tape measure in addition to the level I'd already notified him about.

But back to the text.  I'm skipping some parts that don't seem to useful and picking up at a section titled "Types of Motivational Patterns."

***

"It is profitable to consider the possible motivational patterns in organizations under six major headings... These patterns are: (1) conformity to legal norms or rule compliance; (2) instrumental system rewards; (3) instrumental individual rewards; (4) intrinsic satisfaction from role performance; (5) internalization of organizational goals and values; and (6) involvement in primary-group relationships." (p. 135)

The author discusses each of these separately and I'm going to have to follow Katz to get his intended meanings.

***

"Rule compliance or conformity to system norms.  Conformity constitutes a significant motivational basis for certain types of organizational behavior... Once people enter a system they accept the fact that membership in the system means complying with its legitimate rules.  In our culture we build up during the course of the socialization process a generalized expectation of conforming to the recognized rules of the game if we want to remain in the game... We develop a role readiness, i.e., a readiness to play almost any given role according to the established norms in those systems in which we become involved." (p. 134)

Now this is definitely relevant to my Vienna experience, so the thing is just to flush it out.  I already discussed socialization at some length here so we already know about that vis a vis my experience with the Vienna mission.  When I went to Vienna I certainly had every intention of conforming and did not foresee the type of total institution and anti-Christian (in my opinion) aspects of what was going on (deception/lying, misuse of psychology, military connections, etc.).  

So then you have to deal with that pesky work "legitimate" in the text.  as in "complying with its legitimate rules".  The rules (explicit or otherwise) that I was as illegitimate I could not comply with, and the ruler that I used to judge whether they were legitimate or not was Scripture and I thought that that was a fair ruler because this was an Evangelical Christian organization involved in Christian ministry.  In this way then I could not comply or conform to the aspects of their rules that I saw as illegitimate, but I did comply to the "rules" I thought were reasonable and legitimate.  This wasn't acceptable to them, however, because they were a total institution and rules were to be accepted all or nothing, as I've already discussed elsewhere.

***

"Instrumental system rewards. These are the benefits which accrue to individuals by virtue of their membership in the system.  They are the across-the-the-board rewards which apply to all people in a given classification in an organization.  Examples would be the fringe benefits, the recreational facilities, and the working conditions which are available to all members of the system or subsystem.  These rewards are instrumental in that they provide incentive for entering and remaining in the system and thus are instrumental for the need satisfaction of people." (p. 134)

 Operant conditioning? In my case they also used punishment - the removal of rewards, such as when I wasn't allowed days off when supporter-friends came from the States to visit me, when the rules said we were supposed to get days off in such cases.  So that was a case of punishment.  Otherwise, if you were on good behavior you were eligible to receive all kinds of instruments system rewards and all kinds of warm fuzzy group belongingness. 

***

"Intrinsic satisfaction accruing from specific role performance. Here the gratification comes not because the activity leads to or is instrumental to other satisfactions such as earning more money but because the activity is gratifying in itself. " (p. 134)

You'd think that missionaries would generally have a lot of this, and this would have been true for a lot of the people I worked with in Vienna.  But it wasn't true for me because I never felt like I did anything that used my gifts or knowledge and half the time I felt like I was just being shuffled around or not really having much of anything to do even, so this wasn't really true for me in Vienna.

So I came to Vienna convinced that the work the mission did was crucial for the growth of Christianity in Eastern Europe, although I wasn't that excited about the position I was going to, but I was told it would be okay if I had outside ministry with the Austrians so I could have people ministry because I didn't want to just do secretarial work.  But when I got to Vienna the mission made it very difficult for me to have an outside ministry and they made my life hell altogether and eventually I lost faith in them although I tried to keep doing my work to the end.  So at that point neither my part of the work nor the work as a whole gave my satisfaction, because I didn't like my work and I'd lost faith in the organization.

***

"Internalized values of the individual which embrace the goals of the organization. Here the individual again finds his organizational behavior rewarding in itself, not so much because his job gives him a chance to express his skill, but because he has taken over the goals of the organization as his own." (p. 134)

Before I even arrived in Vienna I had embraced what I thought were the goals of the mission, but, as I've discussed elsewhere, I never internalized the values of the mission as I experienced them while with the mission.  That's why I remained somewhat of an outsider until the day I left, and I may be the only 2-year termer that ever left under such conditions, not having succumbed to the mission's socialization processes.  

When you think about all I went through with the mission it's pretty amazing that I didn't succumb, but I've always been the type that reserves the right to make my own decisions and I'm not afraid to be different from others.

***

"Social satisfactions derived from primary-group relationships. This is an important source of gratification for organizational members." (p. 134)

I've also discussed my identification group (the other secretaries) at length, so I won't belabor it here.  I'll just say that if I'd had a primary-group that I really could identify with I may have had more social satisfaction and that may have somehow changed things, although I can't say how because of so many other unknowns.  I do know, however, that the primary group the mission set up for me wasn't one I felt a particular affinity for so it didn't do a whole lot for my "social satisfaction." Sure I did some things with them (mostly on an individual basis), but not really any more than with others.

***

Reviewing my comments above it looks like there might be a motivational problem regarding my organizational behavior while with the Vienna mission.  In light of this, it's rather amazing that I complied at all!  So why did I comply?  What was my motivation if none of these usual bases seem to adequately explain any compliance I may have exhibited?

One possible explanation might be found in Kohlberg's stages of moral development.  I think that stage 5, the social contract, might possibly fit here.  I had committed to 2 years working with the mission and I was going to adhere to my commitment.  So staying, which might be a kind of compliance, and not just up and leaving could be explained by Kohlberg's theory.

The other thing is that although I had major issues with the mission, there definitely were things that I could comply with with no problem.  But the thing was that, as I've mentioned before, since the mission was a total institution, the norms weren't a smorgasbord where you could pick and choose what you want; rather, you had to accept everything, the whole kit and caboodle, preferably with no questions asked.  So I might as well have just rejected everything, because the mission wasn't going to play around with partially compliant members, and it's not like anything was really negotiable, especially for someone like me who was on the outs.  It was really hard for me to believe the mission was as bad as it seemed it was.  

***

I'm going to stop here and we'll continue with this article next time.

83. Defense & High-Reliability Firms File, Part 8 (Radine, pt. 2)

Yay! The lost papers have been found. In the process of looking I also realized I hadn't opened a box with some portfolio documents in it, and there are a few useful things in it too. And the box that has the articles in it also has more Vienna documentation and files on other topics.

I don't know how I'm going to deal with this, because I have so many of these files that fitting them in and still getting to my actual chronological narration is going to be hard. One thing nice about discussing these articles, is that I think it provides more insights, at least to my experience of my time in Vienna. I think it gives a lot richer understanding of it than if I just sat down and told the story.

Since I have a fairly small place here, things are stacked up a lot and these files were in a wooden chest that was under another wooden chest and a small bookcase. So I had to move everything to get into the bottom chest. But at least I was rewarded with success for my efforts.

But now I'm ready to sit down an discuss another chapter...

***

Chapter 2: Coercive Control

Here's one advantage the military has over certain Christian missions:

"There are other forces, such as civilian criticism of the military, that are outside the scope of this study." (p. 35)

That would really be a shocker, to see some real criticism of these missions! In my experience with these missions to former East Bloc countries criticism was all but unheard of. I did find one article from a Christian publication that suggested after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe that this might be an opportunity to remedy some problems in these missions. But why couldn't they have tried to remedy these things earlier?

***

"Writing in the 1960s, Peter Bourne, an Army psychiatrist, divided basic training into four stages. First, there was a stripping away of civilian cues, which are ways of telling the world how one wants to be interacted with and identified. This was done to more easily inculcate new identities and appearances. Second, there was a process of insults and mortifications that were intended to break down the individual's pride in himself, which is essential to his capacity to resist. In the third stage the Army began to rebuild and reorganize the personality by providing a few much desired rewards. Finally, there was some kind of final test of proficiency and often a graduation ceremony." (p. 40)

Not all of these stages fit my experience. There certainly wasn't anything akin to a graduation ceremony. And the second stage wasn't as brutal as it would have been in the Army, but still, I think there was some of this too. So stages one to three fit relatively well in the Vienna mission experience. That's a much tougher kind of "socialization" (which is a prominent subject in another file) than for the average job, or even mission experience. I don't think, for example, that Wycliffe Bible translators are subjected to this kind of experience in their orientation, and probably not Child Evangelism Fellowship missionaries either.

Reading this now (the passage), I was thinking to myself, "Wow, if we can't get you to come as a tabula rasa (blank slate), we'll turn you into one so that we can then make you into what we want you to be."

The author develops these stages more in the following paragraphs.

***

"The first few days a recruit experienced in the military were a period of great stress and shock for him. In this first stage, he actually did very little except respond to routine induction procedures such as filling out forms, being issued uniforms, and so forth." (p. 40)

I have a big asterisk by this section. I'll get in to this more when I get to the chronology, but I felt like I was doing a lot of grunt work, unnecessary work and/or not enough work, especially at the beginning, but it never got very good for me in this regard.

***

In discussing the second stage:

"Recruits quickly learned the do's and don'ts that would please the drill instructor and would keep them from being picked out for embarrassing individual harassment in front of others." (p. 40)

I don't think there was public harassment in Vienna, but the learning of do's and don'ts is worth taking a look at here. Because of the great ambiguity (another subject in a different file) for virtually all the time I was in Vienna (it's very difficult to live that long under so much ambiguity, let me tell you!), I never really caught on exactly to the do's and don'ts. But I think that if I had sort of followed the indirect signals, tested them out more, I would have eventually caught on, but by doing so I would have sort of "entered there world" which I wasn't sure I wanted to do - wasn't sure at all that I liked there world.

You could say, then, that it might have been possible do this testing out, and then proceeding to follow the ones that received positive feedback, as a sort of going through the motions and then be sucked into it so that before you know it your thinking as well as your interaction style had changed. Or, you could approach it the other way and start with accepting the apparent values of the group and then have actions follow. For someone who didn't notice any potential problems with values, or who didn't put as high a value on them as I did, you could probably have gone either way. But if someone had a problem with the values, I think the only way to really gain a good foothold in the organization would have been to have the actions precede the change in thinking process, so that incrementally you'd change your thinking and finally accept as not being so bad after all. Somehow, though, the values struck me as so bad that I couldn't even let myself go through the motions of testing the apparent relatively indirect cues. How they treated me early on made me dig my heels in even more and actually served to reinforce my concerns.

***

"In the third stage of basic training, some of the recruit's repressed desires were allowed to come to the for - for example, a recruit's desire for individuality and recognition - and the Army made use of them." (p. 41)

Shortly before my parents came to visit me in Vienna I was sent my one and only teaching trip (other than ESL trips across the boarder to Czechoslovakia, which the secretaries did) into Eastern Europe. I think this was one way they may have tried this with me and also I started to be involved in a planning group for starting work in the Soviet Union. But it never was exactly clear what the significance of these things were and there were also issues of competition with others for positions, that I couldn't figure out the significance of. Ironically, not long after the teaching trip I was demoted to receptionist. So how is one supposed to read these signals? It was like that the whole time, but the ambiguity increased at the end.

***

"Recruits learned that the way to beat the system was to excel in it.

Uncooperative recruits were isolated and ostracized with ridicule and insults, which even the other recruits joined in...


The harassment (although mixed with rewards) that continued through this third stage functioned ostensibly to ensure that soldiers would follow direct orders immediately." (p. 42)

I think the first line fits my experience in Vienna. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

We didn't have the ridicule and insults, but towards the end I was getting more comments pointing to my noncooperation, for example, and I was also ostracized socially.

The last line here is very interesting. This mixing of positive and negative rewards would be a way to test and/or teach submission and obedience. It could have served that purpose in Vienna too, although the "immediately" part wasn't as crucial there, but you could substitute with with "unthinkingly". That is, don't think too much (critically, I mean) about the instructions, just do it.

***

"The treatment in the novel [From Here to Eternity] requires various officers and NCOs to act in concert to pressure a soldier to conform. These pressures entail social isolation, extra duty, disallowing of passes, withholding expected promotions, and assignment to unpleasant details such as KP (kitchen patrol)." (p. 43)

This describes most of my time in Vienna.

***

Speaking of the Army's efforts to quell dissidents:

"And they mobilize their full efforts to drive the guy nuts, to get rid of him, or disband a unit, or how can we court martial him, or put him in a stockade, or do something." (p. 44)

I wasn't an organizer, and I didn't talk about my thoughts in while Vienna, not like I'm doing now, but I still felt like this at times. I might not have been trying to organize anyone and I didn't do anything (not that I can remember) that might have caused others to join me in my internal questioning of the mission, but the very fact that I wasn't progressing well along the intended socialization path was enough to deal pretty forcefully with me. I'm not aware of anyone else there in a comparable position to me, not during my time there or prior to my coming.

***

During an interview with an enlisted soldier:

"I asked, 'Doesn't the Army want solidity?'

Yeah, but it's got to be a different kind, you know what I mean? It has to be their form of solidity. In other words, if it's going to be esprit de corps, it got to be their way." (p. 46)

The concept that the organization determines the rules of play period, no discussion, was my experience in Vienna. Not that it was an issue of solidity or esprit de corps, but in general about how things were done there.

***

"I asked an exasperated soldier what he meant by harassment.

That's really harassment when they keep moving you around. And not just moving to another unit. They say you can't work here any more; you have to move to this other building. Then they say you can't work upstairs any more, you have to work downstairs. You move downstairs, then they say you're at the wrong end of the building, you have to move to the other end. That's harassment." (p. 47)

I had a lot of that. I like the label "harassment".

***

That's all for tonight and it's late anyway. I've had this light headache all day for some reason. I thought maybe it was sinus related so I took a sudafed, but it didn't help. Maybe Aleve would be better.

Goodnight.

~ Meg

***

38. Cults & Brainwashing File, Pt. 7 (Kent, pt. 1) (Was: The Attribution System)

This next article in general only very tenuously applies to the situation I experienced in Vienna, but there are a couple illuminating points that I could relate to in my attempt to better make sense of what was going on there.

Kent, Stephen A. (1994) Misattribution and social control in the Children of God. Journal of Religion and Health, 33(1), p. 29-43.

I'm citing the abstract here as background to the sections I want to comment on:

"ABSTRACT: This article argues that deviant religions use supposedly godly justifications for their punishment systems by establishing theologies in which members misattribute divine authority to leaders whom they relate to emotionally as to demanding parents. These misattributing theologies 'sanctify' the harsh suffering that members often experience. Illustrations of the theoretical points come from texts published by the Children of God in its early period (the 1970s), supplementd by accounts given by two women who have left the group." (p. 29).

***

"After people accepted the attribution system that Berg [a leader in the movement] provided through his interpretation of Christianity, they would be operating within a social psychology in which all good things - immediate and compensatory rewards - came to them through Berg's revelations of God's intentions, and all bad things - immediate and compensatory punishments - occurred through the workings of their own egos." (p. 34)

This does seem to fit what I experienced in Vienna, that the leadership or specifically one's boss was that bearer of all things good, but we brought with us qualities and beliefs that hindered us in the work we had to do and kept us from receiving the good things offered. In this respect, as was brought out in another earlier article, this was very much a win-lose relationship and also one-directional, where there was no room for things to flow in the opposite direction, at least not regarding anything of consequence. [4/6/2011 clarification: This was my experience, but I don't know that others would have had the same treatment as I did.]

***

"Numerous accounts show how members criticized themselves either for harboring doubts about Berg or his Mo Letters, or for engaging in what they concluded was self-interested, selfish, or self-centered behavior." (p. 34)

In other words, they couldn't be independent in any way, which is what my father's explanation was for my experiences in Vienna, that I was "too independent." You'll see later (I'm sorry to have so many things "later" but I can't cover everything at once) in my post-Vienna journal entries that I expressed a fair amount of this self-flagellation, especially at the beginning of my entries. But I was also ambivalent, and also in one way or another blamed the Vienna leadership and even staff as a whole as I was pretty universally cut off at the end of my time in Vienna.

***

"In other words, COG members, and especially their leaders, were required to obey God, through Berg, in a manner like that of children who obey their parents blindly or forcibly." (p. 40).

I think the likening my experience in Vienna with this description is plausible. The knowledge structure, secrecy and position of dependence of the novice and those privileged to less inside knowledge gave those over the initiate little option but to obey like children. Everything that the novice had done to actually get them to Vienna (minimally, the process of getting accepted by a mission and raising funds) made one very vulnerable, since you couldn't just walk out and look for another job if you disagreed with the leadership, and the leadership also wasn't terribly open, especially coming from people below a certain level, to have a say in anything. And besides, so much information was a secret that you had to just trust anyway, without having the requisite knowledge to make an informed decision. So, in practice, it was like the parent-child relationship in many ways.

***

"Since one implication of the misattribution system that this study describes involves the disempowerment of people by both childlike self-images and group-sanctioned immediate and compensatory punishment (especially against members who doubt or challenge leadership)." (p. 40).

I agree with this two-pronged concept of disempowerment, but I would also add that in the Vienna context there was also a sense of empowerment as the opportunities to get involved in hands-on or meaningful ministry increased as one accepted the group norms, value systems and modus operandi. I don't know what psychologists would call that empowerment, but I think it should be acknowledged in the Vienna context along with the individual disempowerment and almost stripping of self to accept the group as one's surrogate... parent? id? superego? I'm not sure what to call it, but I felt that there was this stripping of (at least part of) self and replacing it with the group and the group's will.

***

And if psychology and social psychology are not your thing, don't worry, we'll get to other topics eventually. If it feels like a lot now, just imagine what it felt like for me... for 2 years!

And, as the saying goes, you ain't seen nothin' yet...

Until next time...

~ Meg