461. Discipline & Justice, Pt. 11 (Greenberg, pt. 3)

I messed up big time and forgot to bring my CPAP to the doctor's appointment this afternoon.  I've been so engrossed in this blog that I just forgot.  The nurse told me that was was mad about it, but he didn't say so directly to me which was nice.  I felt very badly.  So now I need to help them get som prior sleep studies, so maybe I can try to make ammends by at least doing better in that.  I think I have all of them, except I'm not positive about the most recent one.  Then I just need to fax them to them.  There's something strange with the programming in my computer I think and it's made getting networking set up difficult.  I have to double check the fax set up.  I think we had that working, but I haven't used it since we first set it up. 

On my way to the doctor's appointment I thought of some other things I wanted to say on the last post, so I added them just now.  I can't tell you how liberating this is for me to go back and begin to under stand really more and more what happened back then.  It was so monumental in my life.

***

Extending these finding, Bies, Shapiro, and Cummings (1988) found that perceptions of procedural justice were enhanced only when explanations were believed to be adequately reasoned and sincerely communicated. (p. 412)

Continuing the discussion from the last time regarding the use of Jer. 12:5, the journal article, or even the psychological test - given in the context of the stress the mission had intentionally put me under, the mission, in the person of the H.R. director, had me in a difficult corner to get out of.  His reasoning sucked, as some would say.  But he had a pretty formidable collection of documentation that no one else in any rational context would ever accept.  But this wasn't about rational acceptance, I don't think, so much as it was about fear.  He had the power, I didn't and this is what he could do with his power if he had to.  The mission was like that though, so don't be surprised.  How he used it, was definitely not acceptable if it was to use psychology for the mission's ends (socialization). That is unacceptable.  (And to remind you, there were 2 other women who had experienced that also.)

That much I got.  The other thing was I thought I also had a decision to make about the mission (not just about going to the U.S., and whether I'd agree to it.)

Basically, while he must have thought he had adequately reasoned his explanation for why I should be sent to the U.S., I could argue away most of his documentation and he totally lacked any sincerity as far as I was concerned and I absolutely couldn't stand his ridiculous fatherly pitying demeanor. 

That's it in a nutshell.  Procedural justice basically didn't exist; that goes for the whole 2 years I was with the mission.

***

Thus, this study supported the idea that high status job titles may function as outcomes in the equity equation. (p. 413)

Initially (i.e., in the 1990s when I first copied the article), I had a larger section of text highlighted, but it goes more into things that I don't think are relevant enough to warrant using.  The thing is that when I was a secretary of the assistant director technically I did have some status.  That doesn't mean that it really was the career I wanted but when I was moved to other positions I didn't even have that status, so I lost the status even.  And it's something that people know.  It's not a secret, and this even is the kind of thing that might happen at other companies or jobs, so you might know what I mean.  You can tell if someone has been demoted and loses status, right?  So if I'm going to be a secretary, it might as well be the secretary to someone at the top.  But it was my sending mission who offered it to me, suggested the position, it wasn't my idea to ask specifically for that one position. 

***

Greenberg (1988a) compared the performance of insurance underwriters who temporarily performed their jobs in either the offices of higher-status, lower-status, or equal-status co-workers.  Reasoning that the opportunity to work in a higher status office constituted an increase in work rewards, it was expected that such individuals would report feeling overpaid and would increase their performance.  Likewise, reasignment to a lower-status office was expected to be a source of underpayment, leading to a decreased performance.  Finally, workers in a control group performed their jobs in the office of another person of equal-status and were expected to experience no change in their perceptions of payment equity and to exhibit no changes in their performance.  Very strong support was found for each of these predictions, thereby suggesting that the status-value of offices constitutes a valid source of outcomes in the equity formula. (p. 413)

According to this, then, I should have lowered my productivity when the mission transferred me to the lower positions.  Rats.  I missed out.  I rather like the application of this journal article.  This should be something that is brought to the attention of all future recruits to the mission - that they come with a full collection of journal articles ready to present their case for whatever it is that they want to suggest or ask of the mission.  At any rate the mission does it, so maybe it's worth a try.

***

I'm going to include this next section because I had it so marked up from the original reading (1990s), but I'm knocking my head trying to piece together what was so important about this text.  Actually, I'm just glad I haven't had this happen more often.  Here goes.

Griffeth et al. (1989) found that a sample of part-time proofreaders were more uncomfortable being overpaid relative to another to whom they were attracted (i.e., someone who was attitudinally similar to themselves) than someone to whom they were not attracted.  Greater attempts to reduce the inequity theory's prediction that states of overpayment may be undesirable and motivate efforts at redress.  Apparently, this effect is stronger when the overpayment disadvantages a comparison person who is liked than one who is not liked (see also Greenberg, 1978).  (p. 414)

I'm sort of stumped.   The mission didn't pay anyone, so you can't take it literally.  As far as favors and rewards, the one thing I can think of is maybe the last year I was with the mission I began to hear about some cases of either jealousy or a couple of people both wanting the same thing - these were women.  I stayed out of it, but just heard about it.  So if someone succeeded in getting this position or whatever, maybe that would fall into what this verse describes, or something like it. 

The thing with me was that I was living on thin ice, remember, so I couldn't risk getting in the middle of anything. (I was keeping my true thoughts and values hidden from the mission, but if they'd know about them all hell would have broken lose, believe me. This was after I'd returned to Vienna from the U.S.)

This was part of the ambiguity of the mission, and I never knew when these things were true.  That is I didn't know if the things these women wanted were just fabrications to confuse me or something the mission was really considering to happen in a year or two.  And I didn't really know if that particular person was telling the truth that she really wanted that position.  But in the end it didn't really matter much anyway because I wasn't going to be there, right?  So good luck, have fun, I hope you get the position.

That's an oversimplification, too, though, because I was also doing a few things trying to figure out what I was going to do next.  Certainly, by winter before I left I was doing serious thinking about what I was going to do after I left.

***

It was found that when managers attempted to resolve disputes by the use of threats or coercion, the disputing parties judged these actions and the resulting resolution to be unfair.  The use of mediation procedures was judged to be procedurally fair, and the compromise solution solutions that typically followed from them were judged to be unfair.  The use of mediation procedures was judged to be procedurally fair, and the compromise solutions that typically followed from them were judged to be distributively fair... Specifically, "Third-party roles viewed as procedurally just are those in which a manager acting as a third party tries to mediate a resolution rather than bullying the parties into a resolution by threatening sanctions, promising benefits, or imposing ideas" (Karambayya & Brett, 1989: 703) (p. 415)

This is the kind of thing I could have only dreamed of in the Vienna mission.  Of course, it would have had to have been me vs. the mission, rather than me vs. John Doe.  To me being sent back to the USA was a kind of threat, a wake up call, if you will.  It let me know what extent the mission was willing to go to to socialize me.  And what if sending me home didn't work?  What else could they do to me?  I didn't find out, of course.  (Thankfully.)  The thing was that I hid the fact from them that I hadn't been socialized even after being sent back to the U.S., so that when they they did finally out it was almost time for me to be leaving to be going home anyway. 

But what if something had happened and they had found out earlier that I still wasn't socialized?  What other tools would there still have been left up their sleeves to use?  I don't even want to think about it. That would have been the worse hell I could have imagined.  All I know is that I would not be the same person today if they had found out, believe me.

***

Participants in one laboratory experiment (Brockner, Davy, & Carter, 1985) witnessed one of their coworkers get laid off for no justifiable reason and without receiving any compensation for the work performed to that point.  Relative to their laid-off colleagues, the survivors were hypothesized to feel overpaid.  Consistent with the equity theory predictions, the survivors reported feeling guiltier and worked harder when they witnessed such layoffs than when no layoffs occurred... (p. 416)

They may have been afraid that they might have been the next to go too, though, so you can't forget that issue as well!  But that aside, I suppose it would be too much to think that anyone at the mission thought I was treated wrongly and felt like these workers felt when I left.  The thing was that it seemed like the mission was already formulating a myth or explanation about  me and people were staying away from me, so I don't know what they were saying but they were telling people what to think about my departure and maybe about my whole time with the mission even, for all I know, since it was so rocky.  I even had a high school friend who had worked with another Eastern European mission and she shunned me after my time with the Vienna mission too - her mission had ties with the Vienna mission too.

So there you have it.  Basically, because I refused to back down on my values I was anathema.  That's exactly what happened, because that's the whole reason I would not commit to them.  And if they think that's crazy, so be it.

(That being said, they did not know upfront that on my end I was holding out because of values.)

It's only my values that I stood up for the whole time, but my knowledge and wisdom made it possible. 

(I'm not saying that to brag, but it did take intelligence that I was underestimated for, it was difficult.)

***

And that is the end of the Greenberg article.

455. Discipline & Justice, Pt. 5 (Furby, pt. 2)

So this is one of those cases that we actually get beyond pt. 1 in the article.  Sometimes it does seem silly to have the "pt. 1" in the articles, but then situations like this come up and then it's worth it.  Or, of course I could just leave the "pt. 1" off unless I end out going past more than one post for an article.  In the end I guess it's not all that important.

So let's just get back to where we left off...

***

"...people in an experimental setting will view allocations 'in terms of retaining what they have been led to believe is the rightful and direct consequence of their own, individual action" rather than in terms of "meting out just shares resulting from a common enterprise" (p. 16). This individualistic bias has been evident in other areas of psychology as well (e.g., Furby, 1979) and is consistent with the individualistic ideology in Western, industrialized society (Weber, 1930). (p. 160; The quotes were from Cohen (1983), as identifed a bit earlier in the paragraph.)

Technically this was not a problem at all in the Vienna mission because this was exactly the type of thing that the socialization worked out of the newcomers.  Also, "allocations" in the missions setting is not the same as in a corporate setting anyway so, you have to keep that in mind as well.  Nevertheless, if they were used to thinking of their good works helping to get them ahead - such as moving up the academic ladder (there were a lot of teaching theologians in the bunch, remember).  So that wasn't going to happen here.  It was a group affair and any sign of a nail sticking up it was going to get pounded down - taking from a Japanese saying.  And that was me really, because whereas they has put everyone else in positions relatively resembling the work they really did and using their skills, I was the worst fit and I just did not feel like I could ever ever accept the image they had of me, I don't care what the group concern was.  No one had to face as total a remake as I would have had to. 

And the thing is that even if I did accept the group pressure and everything went well and I became a successful part of the group and was given more ministry opportunities.  The thing is that they would have still undermined the part of me that was all the background in Eastern European studies, religion in Eastern Europe, language studies, and being able to think for myself regarding all the studies I'd done in research about religion in Eastern Europe.  They would have wanted me to give all that up as if I didn't have that and just rely on them.  I wasn't supposed to come with all that background because that would make me more independendent, and it might even make me more knowledgeable than some of those above me so it was a threat to them probably.  So that was unacceptable. 

So all that would have had to go.  And what would I have been left with?  A shell of a person.  A completely different person.  But when I left Vienna what was I left with?  A shell of a person.  A completely different person. 

I didn't think like this when I was there because some things were hard to grasp and wrap your mind around.  It was a miracle I was able to understand as much as I did, I think.  So I missed some things.  And some things I'm not getting until now as I go through these articles. 

I think the difference between staying and leaving, even though the above statements make it look like the end is the same, is that if I stayed I'd be grinding it out more and more so it would be continuing to have its effect and I'm not sure where it would have eventually led to.  So you'd have to take that into consideration.  All I can say is at the time I was scared spitless, which is how I was able to not tell anyone anything.  It was the fear that kept me going and that fueled the poker face that hid all the thoughts and pain and anger they didn't know about underneath the sweet demeanor and endless agreeableness.  So you know that's a whole lot of fear to be able to do that.  I never ever had that kind of fear in the Soviet Union, even though I lost my child under questionable circumstances and the garbage I put up with my undoubtedly arranged husband 5 time zones from Moscow out in the middle of nowhere.  Nope.  I never had fear there, really, and the Vienna mission absolutely terrified me.  And I'm talking about an Evangelical born-again Christian mission.

And I came home to the U.S. and I thought my sending church would be supportive and maybe check into what happened, but all they did was sort of take my had and say there-there, it'll be all right.  That's how I felt.  So I sort of drifted away from that church, absolutely disillusioned.

***

Another difficulty with psychological experiments on justice is the fact they are interpreted solely in terms of justice concerns, whereas one or more other motives are often involved such as politeness, fear of retaliation, status assertion, and impression, and impression management... Follow-up interviews indicated that children knew perfectly well that their self-interested allocations in response to the former instructions were not necessarily "fair." (p. 161)

These children were told to share "as you want" and then "so it's right."  In Vienna I don't even think that the mission even really needed to do a lot of socializing into this, but I suppose that it could have come up here and there in the occasional individual.  The thing is that as missionaries generally they should have been pretty high up on the moral ladder (although judging by how they treated me, that does raise a big question mark, doesn't it?), and as such I don't think the share issue was a major issue.  At least it wasn't as far as I knew of.  I think that if issues came up they might have wanted to keep them localized as much as possible (such as in a department), so then I might not have heard about it.  Still, it wasn't that big of an organization and if something was at all common I think I'd have had an idea of it.  But I don't remember it.

The thing here, then is specifically how I fit in the mission.  The status assertion was a big one, really, and I don't think I can overstate it.  The mission absolutely insisted not only in making me being a secretary, which is one thing and I had agreed to, but also in branding me and making me sort of forever join the ranks of secretary-hood.  Really, it was like if there was a caste system, I was being sent down to the absolute lowest rank... well maybe the second lowest, because there was the gardener and the receptionist (as I eventually found out later) who was still lower. 

There was that, but then it was silly, because I wasn't even a secretary, so it was stupid that they were so insistent, I thought.  I had never even expressed an interest in becoming a professional secretary. 

I most definitely had a fear of retaliation, but it wasn't a fear that an individual would retaliate, because the mission wouldn't allow for that kind of pettines, but that the mission would retaliate.  The mission would retaliate for just not agreeting with it or attempting to fall out of line to do your own thing.  But retaliation could be subtle or in your face.  The subtle things the mission would deny knowing anything about and the in your face things the mission would deny having anything to do with retaliation.  But you just sort of knew.

As to impression management, I'm a little more flexible there.  I don't have to be front and center stage, which is why I didn't respond so well when I was given the uber-flattery when I first arrived.  It was just too much and struck me as strange.  I'm not the type that really needs it.  Sure, I like some encouragement and acknowledgment, but not like that.  So I'm willing to give some in impression management and I can sit in the background and I'm willing to just sit and watch and see what's going on.  I'm okay with that.  Does this make sense?

So justice, as the author says, is one thing, but then you have these other issues too.   The thing is that the mission does not negotiate with anyone - well, I don't know - maybe if you're a famous professor, but I wasn't famous enough, I guess, despite all the hype they heaped on me when I first arrived.  So justice was what the mission decided it was, and that's the end of the story.  At least, that was what my experience with the mission.  If you didn't like it, tough luck Charlie, you could just leave.  And maybe that's just what they wanted me to do because of my dad (and his work in the U.S. Star Wars - which they could have known about via the two U.S. military reserve chaplains comprising the H.R. department).

 ***

Thibaut and Walker (1975) found that perceived fairness of procedures affects satisfaction with those procedures, independent of outcomes. (p. 163)

Since there were no objective written rules and guidelines - that were effective by any stretch of the imagination, I mean - then we were left to our own devices to determine what "fairness" might mean.   Since we were all Christians and it was an Evangelical mission, the Bible might be a good place to start.  Of course, there was the individual conscience, which in this case would be mine.  And finally, there would be the social norms of the mission.  The problem with that latter alter ego is that I never really understood it well; it always sort of eluded me.  That being said, I did feel like I understood it better in certain areas than others.

This is a very serious issue and one that deserve biblical addressing, but I believe that some of my discussions on posts 164 and aspects of the discussion in post 218 deal with the issue fairly well.  I think there may be one or two other places that I touch on it as well.  It's not something to be taken lightly, in my opinion; God's idea of "fairness" isn't necessarily the same as ours, but He isn't an unjust Judge either. But it's hard, in my opinion, to isolate the issue of "fairness" from everything else regarding the mission, and how it is answerable to God for how it operated in general.  These other posts address that a bit and I deal with other aspects of the mission in relation to  Scripture elsewhere in the blog as well.

I suspect, although I can't know for certain, that members of the Vienna mission, learned with time to just not really think in terms of fairness, or to bury that type of thinking deep enough in their psyche for the duration of the time they were with the mission that it wasn't a problem for them.  Alternately, some may have maintained their fairness reasoning just below the radar, where they could sense it, but it was undetectible to others.  If this was the case, then there would have been others living secret lives more or less like I did, but they cooperated more.  And they didn't have a father in Star Wars either probably to complicate things. 

The management probably would have expected the theologians to live like this and wouldn't have gotten away with totally eraticating their id, if you will.  But that's what it felt like they wanted to do with me.  In this case, they thought that secretaries weren't intelligent enough and they could get away with doing this kind of thing with secretaries because they wouldn't have the intelligence to fight back and know what was going on. 

Part of my problem was that I didn't have the prestigious position to rally support behind me.  So that was a huge drawback against me.  And to top it off, I was female.  You know how much status females have in evangelical churches?  Enough to be secretaries, for sure, and maybe lead preschool Sunday school.  But in my church, women's ministry hadn't even evolved beyond support for missions. 

So even if I did have something close to the knowledge of the theologians - especially when you count in the Eastern European expertise - I didn't have the prestige to rally support.  And the more time went on the mission kept knocking me down more and more, which just knocked my self-confidence down.  And if my self-confidence is knocked down and I don't have great prestige to start with (but I might have had some if I'd known how to work it when I got home), then what are the chances that I could rally support?  And the mission had done everything it possibly could to discredit my testimony. 

Under such conditions, what am I supposed to say, that I am jumping with joy and just oversatisfied with the fairness of the mission's procedures and the outcomes they produced?  I don't think so?  Do I think that the mission was biblical in its operations - in general, not just in how it treated me? No, not at all!  That's a good chunk of why I had a hard time joining their inner circle.  And why I'm glad that I kept my values intact.

People need to know what goes on in these kinds of missions, that it's not all cookies and cream.  Lay out your values straight and plain so that people like me who don't like the type of values espoused by the mission in their actual day in and day out can have a chance to opt out instead of having the wool pulled over our eyes.  Yes, that means supporters.  There may be a few who don't like it.

 ***

This has taken hours to write and my day is half over.  We still have a ways to go in the text too, so this is a very meaty text it's turning out to be.

I had to go back over a lot of the older posts trying to find the links to the posts with the verses in them that I wanted, and I realized that in one of the times when I had had to make adjustments to the numbering systems it seems like the post numbers in the "Scripture Reference" page are off, so that's a bummer.  I have so much to do and I don't see getting to it in the near future, so, unfortunately, it's going to have to stay that way.  I'll just have to add a note at the top that I know that some of these are not correct and I'll get to it when I can which may be quite a while. 

Well, I'd better go, so I have to leave at this.  This is an emotional process for me, though.  And it is all the harder now that I see that my family has been dying since the beginning of the blog.  So they were some of the ones that had the front seats to all this, even though they were some of the problems too.  And now I have to deal with my brothers and they think everything is all my fault.  So now I feel very alone and my health just isolates me all the more.  So it's rough.  It would have been able to go through these notes like this a long time ago but you see how much time it's taking and when have I had this much time?  Never.  So realistically I never could have done it until now so it's just a miracle that all the pieces fit together that I even have these articles and I marked them up, because I'm commenting almost solely on the highlighted parts of the articles that I marked up in the 1990s when I copied the articles in Minneapolis.  So at that time I though that this passage that I commented on today was important and here you are today and I still think it is important and I'm commenting on it today and none of the other parts of the article that aren't marked up; I'm not commenting on any of the unmarked up parts of the article.  That's true almost completely on all these articles with very few exceptions.  So these are things that have stuck with me all these years.

300. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 26 (Gray & Starke, pt. 5)

I'm almost ready for church, but one thing I want to write before I forget is that the "Stateside" (U.S.) offices/branches/representatives of the mission and member missions did have bona fide standard formal organizations.  So it was just the Vienna office (and the "in-country" - i.e., East European - resident missionaries) that didn't have what you'd expect in a normal formal organization.  However, that being said, if a mission specialized in "closed countries" chances are even their "home offices" had some of this going on, but not to the level found in Vienna.  That is because they would have to have at least a certain amount of transparency for government tax purposed (I.R.S.) and they couldn't get away in the USA with the measures they used in Vienna even if they wanted to maintain strict security there too; social mores wouldn't accept it and it would raise too many eyebrows in society at large (if word got out) if not in the Christian community.

***

Okay, I'm writing this now after church (the preceding was written before church).  Unfortunately, I lost my sermon notes, but I asked pastor for his notes.  But in the meantime I think I can remember at least a primary issue regarding tentmaking, and then I'll revisit it when he sends me his notes.

I've written about tentmaking before and there's a keyword for it, so you can pull up the previous discussions on it.

The main text today was Jeremiah 29:4-14.  The the primary take-away from that text is that we are supposed to pray for and work for the success of the land we are strangers/pilgrims in, although we are to live according to the values of our heavenly citizenship and not the values of our earthly residence.

I could say this better if I had my notes in front of me, but the issue just hit me as he was saying all this that tentmakers - what modern missions call tentmakers, I mean - generally would not be living according to this principle.  That is they would not be praying for and working for the success of the land they go to work in.  Not hardly!  Rather, they are more likely to pray for the demise of the country or regime or country.  So this is another issue I could add to my tentmaking article.

For the reader who is not aware of this, "tentmaking" in the last 100 years or so has come to mean someone who uses a profession to get into a country that otherwise won't let religious workers in.  So these missionary-tentmakers use deception in hiding their missionary intentions even when they might have an intricate and even sizable mission agency backing them, even if only very surruptitiously.  So it can be quite an underworld of these missionaries and more or less invisable organizations - at least they're invisible within the country, or have some other persona in the country.  In this kind of a setup they're more or less an antithesis to the government, something contrary to the government, even illegal.  How hidden this all might be would depend on the country, of course, but the very fact that it exists like this at all really irks me as being not a biblical way of doing things at all.

I spoke with pastor about this after the service and at least he did seem in agreement about the tentmaking application of his sermon, although he was thinking more in terms of local outreach.  If I were healthier it would be easier to be more involved in ministry, but then I'd be working too.  Maybe we'll figure out some way I can do something reasonably within my limitations.  My faith in Christianity is gaining a glimmer of hope through this church.  So often I've felt like I'm just a oddball or a voice in the wilderness where all these churches are wilderness to me.  I don't think pastor thinks that way though.  He's not disillusioned like I am.  I'd really like to meet Jacques Ellul though.  I should read more of him, I think.

***

The next sub-heading in our text under the main heading "CONCEPTS OF THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION" is "Communication Systems." 

I have become convinced that communication is super critical and the first job where I'm living now is a fantastic example of that.  When I was brought here for an interview (I'm a librarian) and during a group interview with the entire cataloging department I directed a question to the department head about her approach to departmental communications.  She said she didn't really have one that it wasn't really that important and she just made sure everyone knew what they needed to.  Whoa!! Red lights went off big time in my head and when I got back home I mulled that one over big time.  No communication system?  C'mon! You can't be serious!  Well, let's see what this text has to say about that, before I go on and on about my job here... basically I think that informal communication leaves the door open for more manipulation and formal communication, and that's exactly how she operated.  When she did call meetings it was ad hoc and unpredictable.

***

"We have previously described the informal communication system known as the grapevine.  It is important to view this system within the context of power and status systems, as the three together constitute the major social processes that are characteristic of informal organizations.


The general principles of informal communication systems closely parallel the concepts discussed in power and status systems.  In other words, interpersonal communication tends to follow established status hierarchies, and communication content is influenced by power relationships." (p. 443)

I decided to break this section up because it would be too much to discuss at once.  So, just to reiterate what is stated in the text, the grapevine, power and status systems are what comprise the informal organization.

Status:  how the group values the individual, based on such things as demographics, skills, knowledge, congeniality, or whatever the group values (or disdains, for a lower status)

Power: the ability of a person to influence others in the group; there are different kinds of power

Grapevine: status affects flow, but power relationships affect content of communication.

So going back to Vienna, when I first arrived there I was (as I've said before) overwhelmed by the welcome I received, so I felt valued, but I don't think I let it get to my head, especially since there soon came to be glaring inconsistencies in my treatment.  Since I wasn't given any work to do, and only computer manuals to read, I felt my skills were underappreciated and that this was intentional (even then I thought it was intentional because I'd offered to take a computer class and the North American office of my sending mission had passed my offer on to Vienna, who had responded that it wasn't necessary, that I could learn on the job.)  So I felt of moderate status as the secretary of the vice president, but of very low status based on the work itself.

Regarding power, I had no idea I'd come to Vienna being so powerless because in other circles I was reasonably accepted as competent and versed in work in Eastern Europe so now to come there as a career missionary and be in a position where I felt like I had almost no power was difficult.  The main area I might have had some power was socially by initiating social events, but as far as anything in the office I felt powerless almost the whole time and certainly in the beginning, although in the beginning I was trying to watch and figure things out too.

So now on to the grapevine.  Where would I have fit in the grapevine?  The thing is that in Vienna the grapevine had another aspect to it and that was the issue of trust.  If you weren't a trusted member, (i.e., one of the initiated) than you probably weren't even part of the grapevine, or maybe just part of it for certain inconsequential or non-security issues.  But I also think that the grapevine could be used there for disinformation and misinformation as needed, and that would have to come from management, I'm sure and probably just travel down carefully guarded communication paths.  I think I was a victim of this kind of thing at the end of my time in Vienna though.  But than are we dealing with the formal or informal organization if it comes from management?

I think the status thing, now that I think of it, was part of what really killed me emotionally.  It was like they never really cared that I got a B.A. in European Studies with a minor in Russian, did a short-term ministry with Russian emigres in the States one summer, spent 2 years in Bible School, did a short-term ministry in Eastern Europe one summer, volunteered at a research center, studied German in West Berlin and did some things in Eastern Europe, visited a ministry team in Hamburg, etc.  They didn't care that I was serious about this work and ministry and they really didn't give a rip about it or about me.  I was a big 0 on their status rung and it didn't feel like there was anything I could do to change that.

But then if you go home people probably think that, oh well, she's a woman anyway and she'll just get married and settle down and forget this all happened and everything will be okay.

Didn't they understand that this was my life?  I gave everything for this and this is what I wanted to do and that's why after I returned home a year later I turned around home and I went back to school and I was able to go back to Russia (still the USSR then ) without any mission to tell me I'm a big 0.

So what happened then?  I met with politics.  Thanks, dad.  Star wars trumps missions any day, doesn't it, now?  My dad was a program planner & "controller" at Boeing.

That's my life in a nutshell.  Let's continue.

***

"Although power and status systems are first established through communication as the social system evolves, once the system is in operation, communication tends to be the result of status differences rather than the cause of them.  Subordinates, for example, communicate differently to managers than to peers, both because the manager is in a position to exercise authority and power and because the manager has higher status than the subordinate. " (p. 443-444)

I think that since I was never firmly established in a position in the mission they probably had to do a fair amount of the "establishing." Exceptions, however, to this would be when I was temporarily filling in for someone or in the position before I left the mission, in which cases they wouldn't really have needed to establish me per say although maybe what they would have done would have been something like pseudo-establishing or something.

Another thing is that I'm generally not very intimidated by authorities and if I really want to I'll come up and talk to someone even if they might otherwise be thought of as having great authority.  I mean, really, look at what I'm doing with this blog - I'm taking on some pretty great minds - so I can't be too timid, right?  (Although, that doesn't mean I might not be in person.)

Here are examples of my not being timid.

One time when I was living in northern Indiana a few years back I attended a church and I believe in the separation of church and state because I think it corrupts the church and biases the state to that it doesn't serve everyone equally as it should (that's a nutshell version of why I believe this).  So I sit down in the pew and open the bulletin and what should I see but an insert from the state version of the Moral Majority.  Other than that I liked the church, so after the service when everyone shakes the pastor's hands as they leave I asked him about this and we ended out having a bit of a talk about it and I think I maybe got him thinking more about it in ways he hadn't before.  It sounded like he just used the flyers because everyone else did too kind of thing.

Also, in Russia one time I was curious about the central office of the Znanie, the adult education organization.  I had finished my adult education master's degree while living in Russia and had attended and given a presentation in Moscow at a conference, so I wanted to see the headquarters.  When I got there I was actually invited to meet the director and had a chance to sit and chat with him about adult education in Russia.

Similarly, when I was living in Seoul, South Korea about 10 years ago now I was trying to find an adult education program there - that is where they trained professionals.  In my search I met some very interesting people.  I joined ASPBAE and had to have a local current member vouch for me so I met a director of a women's shelter, but her membership had lapsed, so then I met a woman who had created these literacy programs for women all over the country.  And so much more... I even went to the Seoul National University of Education, their top education school and spoke with some leadership there and got some leads.  Very fascinating, let me tell you.

So I'm just telling you that I'm not timid and I don't care whether you're President Obama or someone living on the street.  But, of course, if a communication system doesn't operate like that then I could be asking for trouble.

Ostensibly, communication was very open in the Vienna mission, the administration had open doors, etc.  But there was a limit to that and there were certain things what were communicated to certain people, and undoubtedly along certain channels.  Since I was never really an insider, however, I can't really say much, about how that operated.  Whenever I learned anything of substance I think it mainly came from my boss' boss' secretary, who I believe was supposed to be my mentor.  And I'm not talking just about work-related information but stuff like how it's hard for my boss's wife to be home all day and it would be nice if I became friends with her and things like that.   That could have come from my boss (maybe worded a little differently) or another secretary or even my boss' wife herself (say by taking the initiative to get to know me), but it didn't.  And I think that how it happened was generally the way things were planned and it was a test too as to how I would react, what I would do, etc.  My boss didn't give me that much new to do, other than letters to write or maybe preparing for something new he had coming up, so mostly it was him telling me he didn't know what to do with a secretary and his boss' boss' secretary telling me everything.  So that was the main communication channel, via the secretary, and communication with my boss was some work and some bonding (described elsewhere).

So although the social system was fully evolved (although it was constantly changing) when I arrived, I never really assimilated into it, so communication had to serve the purpose to assimilate me.

In addition, I'm not very status conscious and not liking some of the things I saw in Vienna I wasn't going to let myself be fully assimilated, although I did try to respect the aspects of status that I could reasonably respect.  But the fact that I made an independent determination about some aspects of the mission meant that I rejected aspects of their authority which would have been intolerable to them, I think.  However, I'm not sure they knew I was thinking like this, questioning their authority (in as much as I felt like they were asking for comprehensive trust that only God deserves).  If I had told them some of the things I've written in this blog (and that I was thinking at that time) I would have been sent home as soon as they found out about it or as soon as they could arrange a viable cause - insanity, most likely.  That's why I stayed quiet, since I didn't want to go through again what I went through some 5 months after I arrived in Vienna.

***

This is all for now and I think it's a lot.  We have about 10 pages left of this chapter.  My computer is jumping around a lot.  I think it's because of some tab(s) open, but I'm not sure which.  sometimes when I type it skips the typing and I try to catch it, so hopefully I've caught them all.

298. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 24 (Gray & Starke, pt. 3)

I'm sorry about the sudden break in posts, but these things happen in life... my health is a roller coaster, and you just witnessed an example of this.


I think I mentioned having a lightheaded experience on my way to physical therapy a couple weeks ago which ended out being a high pulse and heard rate and raised concern because of my history of supraventricular tachycardia (rapid heart beat).  Then I had a couple incidents of erratic heart beat, but I was the only one to catch them on my oxymeter because by the time professional medical people were involved it had stopped, although the second time my heard rate was still ca. 115 or so, which is high for me as a resting heart rate.

The first time it happened I went to my primary care doctor and I brought my oxymeter and we did verify that mine is accurate (it's new and fr a reputable company).  So then when it happened again the next day at about the same time I decided to call 911 (emergency) and they took me to the hospital and they ended out admitting me for 24 hour surveillance and I had a heart monitor.

Well, the other thing was that I was supposed to be hosting a couple coming through town for church and a lot of people were away at a conference and we're not a large church, so this was a problem.  I thought I'd be out by Saturday night, but by late Saturday afternoon when the cardiologist still hadn't come by and my discharge was dependent on his say so, I resigned myself to another night in the hospital.

Another couple, who'd just hosted a bunch of people for a wedding and had their house all upended and even had the door off the hook for the guest room for some project that needed to be done, came by to get the key to my condo from me at the hospital so that the guests could get in and I tried to think of what they needed to know.  I didn't have everything ready for them, but fortunately, they were very laid back.  At least the place was mostly clean.

When I left the hospital I really felt vulnerable.  I think that's a good word to describe how I felt.  It's not just that everything seems to go wrong, because not everything does - some things don't.  But it's like I have absolutely no control over anything.  No matter how hard I try, that's what it seems like.  That's how I felt when I got home from the hospital.  I wanted to be a good hostess.

Then I got another shock.  When I saw my primary care doctor the first time I had the erratic heart beat the nurse, in reviewing my meds as recorded in my chart listed ultram (a narcotic pain medicine) and I corrected her and said I haven't been on that for quite some time now (since last summer).  I thought she corrected it then, but when I was in the hospital (and it's my primary care doctor that admits me) in the first round of meds they tried to give me ultram!  I told the nurse I do not take ultram!  (Really and truly, I am NOT a "drug seeker"!).  That didn't happen again.  But I wanted to get my medical records because I might have appointments with doctors who might be interested in some of the information.  It turns out I was also interested in some of the information.  Here's from my Laboratory Tests  in the emergency room (before I was admitted) at 16:05

Toxicology:
Urine Opiates Screen (2000 CUTOFF)                              None Detected
Ur Barbiturates Screen (200 CUTOFF)                              None Detected
Ur Amphetemine Screen (1000 CUTOFF)                         None Detected
Ur  Benzodiazepines Scrn (200 CUTOFF)                          None Detected
Urine Cocaine Screen (300 CUTOFF)                                 None Detected
U Cannabinoids Screen (50 CUTOFF)                                None Detected

I just hope it wasn't my primary care doctor that ordered those tests.  If it was, maybe she should have added ultram to the list.

 I had made an appointment with the cardiologist who did my cardiac ablation in 2007, and when I made the appointment I asked if they take my insurance now and they said they'd deal with that later, which surprised me, but this week they called to say the don't take my insurance so I would either have to pay out of pocket or if I wanted to pick a doctor under my insurance I could run some of those doctors by my old doctor to see who he might recommend.  So I e-mailed the list of about 15 or so doctors late yesterday afternoon and am waiting for a response.  I hope there's someone there he likes.  

***

Anyway, I've been trying to get back in gear since my 36 hour stint in the hospital, but I sort of feel like I've been through the wringer and my medical conditions just keep multiplying.  One thing I've been doing, though is continuing to work on the settling in process, so that's been sort of a positive concrete diversion to keep my mind off serious things (like health, family and mom).  I learned how to use "Mint" my robotic vacuum.  It actually sweeps and mops, but it does a pretty good job and then it frees me up from that task, or at least much of it, which is nice.

Tomorrow they're finally supposed to pack up and take the defective book case/cabinet (it has glass doors) to be fixed.  I also had to call Samsung because my refrigerator ice maker isn't working and repairmen are supposed to come for that tomorrow too.  I just remembered, though, that they didn't call to confirm and I forgot to call them when they didn't call.  I hope they still come.

Even though I'm really burned out but I'm doing my best to find strength, peace, meaning and joy even in the midst of trials.  I'm used to picking myself up and dusting myself off and continuing on - heaven knows I've done it enough.

***

There's still some 15 pages, approximately, of text left, so I probably won't finish.    This next main chapter section is "CONCEPTS OF THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION."   The first sub-section we're going to look at is "Status."

"Status is the rank or relative position of an individual in a group...


A certain status attribute is valued if two conditions are met: the attribute must be perceived by the relevant group as being scarce and desirable. " (p. 436)

What attributes might have been perceived as being scarce and desirable to the Vienna mission?  I think education - a certain kind of theological education - would be right up there near the top.  Experience, especially if accompanied by education, might be valued, but not as much as education, I don't think. Teaching and leadership skills might also have been valued.

***

"Status itself can be of two varieties, ascribed and achieved.  Ascribed status is that social position occupied because of attributes inherent in the individual, such as race, sex, and age, while achieved status is the position a person attains through personal choice, such as education, skills, or marital status. In both formal and informal organizations, the actual status of a person is the result of an interaction of ascribed and achieved status, with the effect of each determined by the relative weight given each by the group." (p. 437)

In the Vienna mission we were all Caucasian, so race was not an issue.  But the issue there was gender, and roles within the mission were clearly divided along gendered lines.  For example, all the textbook writers were males, all the secretaries were females, all the layout staff were females, all the h.r. administration were males, all the senior administration (including h.r.) were males.  The only female instructors were in the women's ministry team.  If you needed help moving, men did it; if you needed a babysitter, the gals did it, etc., etc.  The mission was so divided along gender lines that basically, whether you were male or female, you could just look at half the mission and see what your ministry opportunities might be because that half that matched your gender would give you an idea of your options.

***

Some of the authors' discussion on status is interesting, but I'm not sure I want to quote the whole large section(s).

The first topic is about status symbols, such as the proverbial corner office that everyone covets.  In the Vienna mission the administration had their offices on the second floor, everyone, including the two secretaries had their own offices (with a view).  But the women's ministry team was also up on the second floor.

On one hand the idea of status symbol in a Christian mission seems like an oxymoron (at least to me it does), but when you consider the other things going on there and that they did want to maintain their authority and control over things (for security's sake, etc.), then it's not so surprising after all.  It wasn't the kind of thing that the administration just gloated in for it's own sake, having such great office locations, for example. But on the other hand, the fact that they had those offices and others didn't served as a reminder of who was in charge and where the buck stopped.  I'm probably making more of the offices than I should, but that was just one thing among many that under-gird that way of thinking about the administration.

The text also discusses status symbols in the informal organization, but, as I've said before, the informal organization in the Vienna mission, was really created by the administration.  But since the organization was run virtually completely by men (the women's ministry team had a say in the administrative meetings), the informal women's monthly meetings, which was run largely by wives of the instructors, was one opportunity for women to be in leadership positions and run their own program.  In this women's world of the Vienna mission I think there were some somewhat different views on status.

For example, in that world, it was not only where your office was, what your position was, and how long you'd been with the mission, but also who your husband was and who you worked for and what your relationship was like to your boss' wife or to certain other wives or female staff members.  So among the women, especially when you included the wives in the mix, you might come up with a different status system than if you were just considering the office workers alone.  The men wouldn't have had to deal with that, because all the adult males were working at the office; it was only adult females that might be at-home wives & mothers.  If a male worker had a secretary he would have had a vested interest in seeing to it that his secretary and his wife got along, I think, though.

***

"Why Is Status Important? Status is important in organizations because it satisfies the basic human need for personal identification... When individuals behave in a manner significantly different from what is expected, social sanctions may be used to bring behavior in line with expectations: or, if the behavior does not change, social interactions may cease." (p. 439, bold in original)

It's hard to know where to begin with this one.  In principle, I should have wanted to identify with the Vienna mission and gain some kind of status in it.  But that's assuming that the mission was something other than what I seem to have found it to be.  Practically the whole time I was with the mission I had a hard time identifying with the mission, although I always could identify with its stated purpose.   The things I witnessed and experienced in the mission that I disagreed with and even gave me great concern were greater than my need for personal identification or status in the mission.

However, this being said, I think giving these things up were part of the great internal struggle the continued the first year or so after my return home to the States.  It was a very difficult thing for me to hold my own, and I did keep hoping that they weren't so bad as it seemed and I'd be able to talk with them and they'd make concessions and we'd straighten things out.  But the way things were I couldn't identify with them, at least not as much as they'd have liked.

As to the sanctions, etc.  The thing is, and I've mentioned this before, I often had trouble figuring out exactly what they wanted.  I mean, I don't want to hear something like "unconditional trust," because that only goes to God.  So I'm looking for concrete things that they wanted me to do or not do.  And I don't think that if you looked at me that I did anything that was really amiss for a missionary.  No one ever said I complained, did bad work, had a bad attitude, was lazy, led a raucous lifestyle, whatever.  I was hospitable, friendly, sociable, took initiative at work, etc.  So what did I do wrong?  The only thing(s) I could possibly have done wrong would have been something regarding security, such as being my father's daughter, for example (he was working as a program manager in the strategic defense initiative - star wars).  So, maybe they just didn't want me there in the first place because of him.  That's not the only possibility, but it's a promising theory.  In any case, I definitely did something wrong because I was most certainly sanctioned and social interactions did cease towards the end of my stay in Vienna.  So the issue then is what I did wrong, because I most certainly did something wrong.

***

I'm tired and I think I'll stop here.  I went to Home Depot this afternoon to try to figure out a way I can connect my outdoor hose to my shower.  All my other faucets, etc. are not the types to connect anything too now that I got all new plumbing fixtures (except in that shower).  I have indoor hoses, but they all have permanently attached sprayers and they're 50 feet (ca. 16 meters)  long which is like 10 feet (3 meters) or so too short.  So the workers at the store helped me, but the connecting piece is a little too wide for the shower head, although the hose fits perfectly on the other end of it.  So I have an Oxygenator showerhead (which I took off for doing this) which fine but came with instructions as to what to do if it didn't fit, so I'm going to see if there's anything there I can use to help me get this piece to fit.  The things is that often enough I shouldn't be lifting heavy things because of back problems so if I can water my plants on my balcony with a hose rather than a watering pot it would make things a lot easier for me... if I can ever get this thing to work...