366. Commitment, Pt. 8 (Randall, pt. 2)

Now Randall starts with "Low Levels of Commitment" (the title of the section) and looks at some different aspects of it and then does that with moderate and high levels of commitment also.  So I'll start with the low levels first, as the author does.

The first subsection is: "Positive Consequences for the Individual."

The only comment that caught my eye in this section is: "Low levels of commitment can be a source of individual creativity and innovation (Merton, 1938)."

I didn't relate to the reasoning that followed, however, so I ignored it.  For me, I felt that the mission was stifling and they just had their own narrow way of doing and seeing things, so in that particular situation, a low level of commitment I thought was very conducive to individual creativity and innovation. They just kept squeezing me into their narrow idea of what they seemed to what of me that seemed so degrading to me and counter to all my values and what I believed in. 

So having a low level of commitment in my case allowed for more creativity.  I think that this was true even for creativity in the mission, not just for creativity on the side (i.e., with the Austrians).  For example, if I had just dropped everything and done everything the mission had asked right away, such as had a roommate and the started going to the English speaking church sooner, then I'm sure I would not have done near as much entertaining because I was have been more demoralized and not as eager to reach out to others.  I would have been more chained to the secretaries and that identity they set up for me, which I didn't see myself as, except as the job I'd agreed to for 2 years.

So the point is that for me having a low level of commitment to the mission was actually better, I think for me and the mission, although I'm sure the mission wouldn't have thought of it that way.


***
"Positive Consequences for the Organization."

"On an organizational level, the higher turnover and absenteeism typical of individuals with minimal commitment may be functional if those employees are either disruptive or poor performers.  The potential damage done by these employees may be limited; attitudes of others in the organization may improve if the undercommitted employees are absent; and replacements may bring in employees with new skills (Mowday et al, 1982)."

It should be noted that I did not have high absenteeism and I fulfilled my 2 year commitment, so the turnover & absenteeism complaint can't really be used against me, unless it were to say  that I should have stayed longer.  If they (the mission) were to say that there was lost time when I was in the USA I would really blow my top because that was there doing, so I hope they won't even go there because I have lots more you guys don't even know about that I haven't even begun to show you yet, so they better not even go there with that one. 

I wasn't disruptive, as I've said a million times.  I had a good attitude the whole time I was there and I never complained about anything.  It's not like I tried to sabotage them or something.  And I did my job well, and there never was a complaint about that.  So what could be wrong, really.  I was a good worker, I was always there, I had a good attitude, I even took initiative to reach out socially, which is a nice extra since everyone's strangers away from home.  So why did they treat me so badly, then?  Really, why did they?  What could I have done to make them so mad at me to treat me the way they did, considering every other job around would be just very happy to have me.  Even when I went on trips, I did great.  There was not problem. 

Oh, yeah, commitment, that ugly "c" word.  Because of all the stuff I saw right from the beginning I was a tad (!) weak on commitment so if they figured that out that might have fueled their fire and made matters worse.  But the thing is that they had things set up before I even arrived to be very abhorant to my ethical and moral standards.  So I hadn't done anything to deserve those things because I couldn't have because I hadn't arrive yet.  I take that back... if something from the U.S. somehow preceded me perhaps I had done something to deserve it, but if so, it was unbeknownst to myself, because I didn't know it was coming.

***

The next section is titled "Negative Consequences for the Individual."

"Whistle-blowers in particular may suffer severe negative consequences to their careers by making known illegal or harmful conditions to a governmental agency, a news reporter, or media personnel (DeGeorge, 1982).... Whistle-blowers often  are cast in the roles of Judas Iscariot (Walters, 1975) or muckrackers from within (Peters & Branch, 1972). They commonly experience heavy personal costs including loss of income, loss of job security, isolation, defamation of character, exclusion from staff meetings, lost perquisites, less desirable work assignments, heavier workload, Harassment, and more stringent criticism of work (Ernmann & Lundman, 1982, Miceli & Near, 1984; Parmerlee, Near & Jensen, 1982)" ( p. 463)

I wasn't a whistle-blower, but I wish I'd been one.  But I was lucky to come out as together as I did; to even attempt a whistle-blower act would be like suicide, I think.  It was all I could do just to keep myself together.  I doubt anyone's going to take anything seriously against them because everyone's too much in bed with them.  And no one takes biblical mandate seriously enough nor holding each other accountable.  The stuff that I experienced there was absolutely horrible. 

I'm not sure how they described me after I left, but the way the treated me like anathema makes me think they thought I was a real threat to them.  They really shunned me to the child at the end, so that was serious stuff and it was coming from the top for it to be so unified.

Even though I wasn't a whistle-blower I knew when I left the mission there weren't many other mission options left (I knew virtually all the missions and I'd written to almost all of them and the ones that responded most of them treated me like I was a spy trying to get secret information from them!  I was just trying to decide which mission to go with).   So it was going to be a huge change in my life after I left the mission because I wasn't going to be able to go the usual route into my chosen field.  So I was more or less side-lined, really.

Also, while I was with the mission, I experienced isolation (working at the US office when I should have been in Vienna), less desirable work assignments, and harassment.  I think that they caused some problems that to me were harassment, I'm talking about things like computer issues, when people wouldn't cooperated with me, and things like that where it felt like it was intentional but they always acted innocent like they didn't know what they were talking about or had some lame excuse or other that wasn't very convincing to me, especially when it or something similar happened repeatedly.

***

The final section is "Negative Consequences for the Organization."

"Low levels of commitment among professionals also create problems for the organization.  Due to their outside referent groups, individuals with a cosmopolitan orientation may be more difficult to control than those with a local orientation (Gouldner, 1957; Gouldner, 1958). Further, commitment and identification to a profession may be inconsistent with the requirements for success and advancement in an organization (Raelin, 1984). " (p. 463)

You'd think that some of the theologians on staff would have had memberships in professional organizations where this might have been ans issue, but I don't know for sure about this.  I just don't understand even how the theologians could agree to the values and norms of the mission anyway, so I guess anything is possible there.

As for myself, I didn't really have a membership or outside professional group, per se, that I recognized.  The things is that professional groups usually have ethics statements and professionals might feel bound to that statement and this can cause clashes at work. 

The thing is that for Christians we should always have and "extra-organizational" authority that we adhere to, and that is God and the Bible.  The thing is that if you let them, the mission and its leadership, if you let them, will gladly twist the Bible and misinterpret God's will for you until you willingly agree to something you otherwise would say is clearly sin.   So much for external authority.  They just hijacked it for you.

But not for me.  The secret I learned - while in the USA - was not to talk and not divulge weaknesses and not to express deep thoughts.  It's best, I learned, to keep everything on the surface level, nice and light.  I lived like that for 18 months, and pretty successfully for the most part.  I mean, as far as duping them and keeping myself from completely falling apart is concerned.  And at least I didn't get hijacked.

I had values that I held above the mission, but not organizations, like profesional organizations.  Still, my values I think worked similar to how ties with a profesional organization might work, as far as it being in the way of employee management.

***

That's it for tonight

213. Socialization File, Pt. 95 (Roberts, pt. 12)

This next chapter section in the text is titled: "Organizational Commitment and Turnover." I think this whole post will be from the first section: "Definition of the Problem."

"Etzioni (1961) argues that commitment - and the authority that organizations have over members - is rooted in the nature of employee involvement in the organization. Involvement takes on of three forms, ranging from total commitment to no commitment at all. Moral involvement, based on positive and intense orientation to the organization, results from internalization of the organization's values, goals, and norms. Calculative involvement is less intense and rests on an exchange relationship between the individual and the organization. People become committed to an organization to the extent that they perceive some beneficial or equitable exchange relationship. Alienative involvement is a lack of commitment, occuring when members feel constrained by circumstances to belong to the organization by do not identify with it." (p. 144; bold in original)

Moral involvement is clearly what was demanded by the mission in Vienna, but this isn't surprising. What was surprising to me was that it demanded that you internalize everything about the mission (the norms, etc.) and then applied it to your whole life. In this way you practically became the mission and my impression was that in order to stay above suspicion one had to be very transparent.

With these kinds of demands put on the new recruit, I find it baffling, to say the least, as to how all those other intelligent people managed to accept this situation. I've discussed this before in other contexts, and have suggested possible answers. Another possibility, though, is that others didn't experience this level of demand on them. After all, when you consider that I was the only one, as far as I knew (at least up to when I was there), who ever went through anything like what I did with the mission, then it does open up the possibilities that I was treated differently.

I just had a new idea about this dilemma. It seems to me that in, as much as I was the only one who had ever gone through anything like what I did with the mission, there were three possibilities as to why others were able to be socialized and I wasn't. Here are the options (and I'm not sure they're all mutually exclusive):

1. The problem was in me: everyone else had the same demands put on them but these demands didn't bother them because the demands are basically reasonable.

2. The problem was in the mission and their demands: the mission's demands were really out of line but there was something about the others that made them able to accept the demands, and something about me that made me able to reject the demands. In this case I would be right (in amoral sense) and the others would be wrong (in a moral sense).

3. The problem was that I was treated differently than the others were: In this case I might have been right to withstand the mission and the others might have also been right in going along with it, because we were, essentially, facing quite different demands, where the mission's demands on them were reasonable and the demands placed on me were unreasonable.

I can only think of those 3 possibilities right now, but it's a start, anyway. I can always build on it later if need be. But the variables seem to be taking shape as follows:

1. me
2. the other new recruits
3. the mission's demands
3a. the mission's demands are the same for me as for the others
3b. the mission's demands are different for me as for the others

If the problem was in me, in my character, etc., then this was just a case of a poor fit between me and the mission. Period.

If the problem was in the demands placed on everyone alike being immoral/unethical, then the fault would like in the mission and in the others who went along with it and then became a part of the problem (as socializers of other new recruits).

If the problem was in the demands placed uniquely on me (but not on the others), then the question arises as to why I might have been treated differently than the others. Which, I suspect, would lead back to my father's work.

So if anyone in the mission were to read these things about how I felt the mission's demands on me and thought that I was way out of line in my depictions, at least according to their experiences and what they knew of the mission, then I would highly suspect that the last possibility would be true, namely, that I was treated differently from everyone else because of my father.

And if that is the case, then it opens a whole new can of worms, such as, How did the mission know anything about my father? or Who pressured them to treat me differently and how did that pressure happen in the first place? or What concern was it to the mission who my father was?

***

"Kanter (1968) takes a different view of commitment, arguing that different types of commitment result from different behavioral requirements placed on members by the organization. Again, involvement takes three forms, but here the forms are interrelated. Continuance commitment has to do with a member's dedication to the survival of the organization and results from having people make sacrifices for and investments in the organization. Cohesion commitment is attachment to social relations in an organization; it can be enhanced by having employees publicly renounce previous social ties or engage in ceremonies that enhance group cohesion. Control commitment is a member's attachment to the norms of an organization that shape behavior in desires ways. It exists when employees believe that the organization's norms and values are important guides to their behavior." (p. 144; bold in original)

I think, at least based on my own experience, any kind of commitment you can come up with would be required by the Vienna mission, including all of these. The weakest of these might be the first, however, because it was possible to just serve 2 years, and I think it was usual for people to first sign on for a 2-year term, which could later be extended.

***

This next portion of text seems particularly apropos:

"Another interesting manifestation of commitment is the phenomenon known as whistle-blowing, or publicizing unethical, illegal, or immoral behavior. The topic has gained prominence recently from the revelation of various government procurement and regulation scandals, including defense department contracting, the awarding of HUD contracts, and regulation of generic drugs by the FDA.

For the individual, whistle-blowing may be the last resort, the only step left open; for the organization it is extremely threatening when negative information reaches the press. Whistle-blowing may occur because the whistle-blower feels tremendously committed to the organization; it is, after all, borne of an impulse to reform an evil, and few people are willing to risk punishment to reform what they do not value." (p. 145; bold in original)

There are certain people who I hope get to read this particular blog if only to read those 2 paragraphs. I would like to make a correction to something I said earlier: this is one kind of commitment that would not be required by the Vienna mission. Au contraire, mon ami, c'étais un péché très grave.

I would like to take this opportunity to draw everyone's attention to my ongoing, heart-felt commitment to the mission I wasted 2 of the best years of my life at. And it seems that there is professional theoretical literature out there to substantiate my claim (and you will note that here it is applied correctly, which is in direct and complete contrast to the use of a certain "culture shock" article by an unnamed h.r. director; please note the difference in professional ethics).

In all earnestness, I'm not sure if my revealing these things about the mission (which are my experiences and observations, and I can't vouch for others as to what they would say) is out of a commitment to the mission, to my faith and Christianity, or even a commitment to myself. I think that in as much as I am concerned about Christian and spiritual things there is a certain amount of commitment that way. It's too much to expect that anything much might come of my revealing these things, especially now so many years later. But if it causes some people to think in a new light about some of the issues I raise, maybe some good might come of it. I really hope that there would be some response like that, even if it was just among some individuals and didn't go beyond that. However, in as much as the mission has grown since I left (and therefore undoubtedly also grown in prestige and credibility in the Evangelical Christian community) but has remained focused on closed countries, I think I would face a double-thick protective wall around the mission (an apt illustration for an organization so engrossed in security issues): 1) those willing to vie for the mission and try to repudiate me, and 2) the likely continuance of using the same types of methods I experienced (although I'm sure these methods have been modified over the years and adapted to new geographical contexts). The fact that the mission is still probably using those same general types of methods means they would be less open to changing them and the fact that a lot more people are behind the mission means that they wouldn't have to because of all that backing against me a pipsqueak whistle-blower from another era.

Returning to our text, I would like to point out another issue of great importance: "For the individual, whistle-blowing may be the last resort, the only step left open..." I submit that there was never any other step I could take. The choices were: do nothing, talk to anyone (e.g., my boss, the h.r. director, my sending mission's E. European director - who is now, I see, in a position with the Vienna mission) and be sent home, or become a whistle-blower. There were no grievance procedures, at least none working any better than the right to study German (as a new recruit upon arrival in Austria) or take time off to escort visiting supporters.

So, after all these years, my commitment comes back to haunt the mission. Only this time it's not a matter of lack of commitment. But let's not stop here; there's more fun still awaiting us.

***

"Most of the work on whistle-blowing is descriptive and philosophical. Organizations are probably more apt to retaliate against whistle-blowers they value, perhaps because of their potential threat. They may also retaliate against those who are vulnerable because they lack public support. People often fail to blow the whistle when organizational conditions suggest they should. This hesitance undoubtedly results from fear of reprisal and skepticism that their organizations will take ameliorative steps." (p. 146)

Since I'm no longer a worker with the mission, I'm sure the mission doesn't value me any more (or maybe never really did - maybe they valued some straw woman they'd invented of me in their minds and valued her, but they didn't really value me - the real me, I don't think) but might also have less options for retaliation, if they were so inclined. If I were with them when I wrote this, you can bet your life they'd retaliate and I'd be gone under the worst conditions they could conjure up.

That, of course, is exactly why I didn't whistle-blow at the time I was with them. But that's not the only reason either. I also knew these people were smart and I was having trouble making sense of these things I was experiencing (and still didn't understand them several years later, which is why I did the research that resulted in me having these articles). So I wasn't exactly sure what I would protest against and how to even phrase and argue such a whistle-blowing effort. There was also the fact that I knew they could make me leave (one way or another) and my career was on the line, so I felt between a rock and a hard place where the only possible resolution (from my perspective) that might be a happy one was if they gave in to my demand to reserve the right to make my own judgment about individual aspects of the mission's operations as to whether they were right, moral, ethical, or biblical. This, of course, would mean not totally committing myself, which they couldn't stomach, so we resolved our differences unhappily - with me leaving under less than optimal circumstances, but having served out my full 2 years. The other issue (from my perspective of what a "happy resolution" would include), which wasn't specifically about commitment, was that the mission would have had to come to see me as more than a secretary and to break me out of that constraining mold they'd set for me and which I would not accept, especially since that mold determined practically my whole existence with the mission.

***

That ends this post, and this sub-section of the text.