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...

297. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 23 (Gray & Starke, pt. 2))

It never ceases to amaze me how much I can just keep on going on the subject of my tortured tenure with the mission in Vienna and continue to keep coming up with new things that shed considerable helpful new light on what happened there.  This issue of the informal organizational is one of these such instances.

***

I've realized that I haven't been attaching dates to these blogs.  These ones that pertain in general to my time in Vienna (not counting the pre-Vienna deputation) would be 1987-1989.  I'll try to start adding these labels, but I'll have to go and retroactively add them to previous posts later on.

***

This afternoon I have physical therapy.  I'd like to start taking the Special Transit Services for trips of any distances (such as physical therapy, which is ca. 15 miles or more one way) but you have to call a day in advance to make arrangements so I can't do that for today and Friday I have an appointment with the pain doctor that works with the neurosurgeon and it's too close time-wise to my p/t appointment for STS, so I'm going to have to drive Friday too.   I'll have to start next week then.

At home I want to continue my thorough post-remodeling cleaning.  Because I'm not feeling well this cleaning is going slowly, which I think I've mentioned before.  So today I want to clean the guest shower.  That finishes the guest bath except for the vanity top, which I'll leave for now because I'm using it as my central cleaning station for sponges and rags, etc.  However, I offered to host a couple coming through from church Saturday night, so I'll clean it before then.

Then my next room will be the kitchen, so I'll start there next.  I've generally tried to have all my knickknacks and things behind glass, but my canisters in the kitchen are all on open shelves, and so my plan is to take them all down and dust them, so I'm going to start with that in the kitchen.

But I also have cooking to do today.  My next meal is going to be Russian.  Being single I cook a meal and have left overs and also freeze some meals.  Pork chops cooked in sour cream, baby potatoes poached in broth and just plain broccoli (the latter is not particularly Russian).  I also need to make juice for my bedtime smoothies as I finished my last batch yesterday.  This time it sill be ruby red grapefruit and yummy smelling peach juice.  I hope it comes out a good combination.  The peaches were on sale and smelled so yummy peachy I just couldn't resist them and the grapefruit were likewise hard to resist there I was with to fruit that I wasn't sure how they would go together, so we'll soon find out I guess.  I have a feeling it depends on the sweetness of the grapefruit as to how well they'll go together.

Anyway, back to the text...

***

This next section of the chapter is: "FUNCTIONS OF THE INFORMAL ORGANIZATION"

The following quote is the introduction to this section.

"A better understanding of a phenomenon can be achieved if it is known what function it performs.  If we analyze the reasons behind the existence of the informal organization, we can improve our understanding of how it can be managed. While all of the reasons (or functions) discussed below are interrelated, we treat them separately to sharpen our understanding of the behavior patterns operating in informal structures." (p. 431-432)

It sounds like the authors more or less equate reasons with functions, but we'll have to see if that fit the Vienna mission context as we read the text.  In any case, understanding the function and understanding the reason does sound like it could be very helpful to know.  Why did the Vienna leadership decide they needed to create an informal organization?  Why did they make it serve the functions it did?  Why did they make the informal organization in the particular form they made it in?  Why?  Why? Why?  Let's see if we can find out...

***

This section subheading is "Security."

"One of the major functions of the informal organization is to increase the feeling of security of its members... Deviant or abnormal behavior is not tolerated, and this assures members a reasonable degree of stability in their interpersonal relationships.  The informal organization also increases member security by protecting members from outside influences such as management or other work groups...

"A major reason workers find security in the informal organization is that the rules for behavior are set by the workers, not by management." (p. 433)

... Unless of course you happen to in an organization where the management created the informal organization and established the rules for behavior in it.  Well, maybe it's not right to really think of the mission in terms of workers and management, like in an ordinary workplace, but, on the other hand, should we consider the mission a spy agency?   Would your average mission in, say, Bolivia or Thailand go out of their way to purposely and deliberately create an informal organization with all the bells and whistles that might accompany an informal organization? Probably not; they have other things to do... like ministry, for example.

Getting back to this quote, feelings of security in the Vienna mission, in my experience and observation, were acquired when one succumbed and gave in to whatever it is they wanted of you so that you and the mission lived in harmony.  It had to be a relationship of complete mutual trust, no holds barred.  Without that you didn't have security, plain and simple.  People who were there shorter terms (a few months or visitors) would have been shielded from the cruel realities of this kind of thing.

In any case, the workers did not set any rules of any substance, and certainly no rules having to do with whether or not you felt secure or not.  Example of rules workers might have been able to set would be rules involved in the women's monthly meeting, as long as the rules didn't involve things like security or the like, which would be management's sole prerogative to set.

By "workers" I mean anyone below the level of department heads.

***

The next sub-section is titled "Social Satisfaction"

"We learned from the motivation chapter that people have social needs that are manifested in social contact (e.g., the formation of significant interpersonal relations and the striving to be accepted by other people). The informal organization facilitates satisfaction of those needs.  For example, the interactions required by the formal organization tend to initiate the social contacts made, resulting in the formation of attitudes, feelings, and beliefs about other people.  On the basis of these required interactions, individuals then form close-knit groups that provide maximum satisfaction and security...


Moreover, it is easier to develop a social identity in a small informal group than a large formal one.  In many cases, employees become only numbers to the formal organization; they therefore seek personal identity, recognition, and acceptance in their informal groups." (p. 433)

I think what we have here is a case of Habermasian colonization of a lifeworld.  That is, whereas individuals might want social satisfaction the administration imposed their view of that social satisfaction should look like by using their artificially created informal organizational structure to also dictate social mores and relations.  All in the name of Christian love and the great commission.

***

The next sub-section is "Communication Channel"

"As mentioned earlier, the informal organization provides an additional channel of communication for the organization, called the grapevine.  Information that is deemed important by the informal organization is sought out and quickly communicated to interested group members.  Because the information is seen as important (if it weren't the informal organization wouldn't bother with it), it tends to be transmitted rather quickly, the exact speed depending partly upon the degree of importance of the communication...


... But regardless of the accuracy of the information, the mere act of communicating necessary information tends to satisfy the needs of the informal organization... " (p. 433, 435)

Since the informal organization in the Vienna mission was a creation of the administration in the service of the administration, the communication channel was also part of this instrumentation, and such there was no room for error, at least as far as I'm aware, and I suspect that if error did come up it would be quickly corrected and an effort would be made to avoid it happening again in the future, because error could have catastrophic consequences in their work.

In my opinion, formal communication channels were largely fronts from the public view, part of the deception - the partial truths, like saying they were an international publisher.  Communication really happened 1) in informal channels, or 2) behind closed doors (some of which might have been formal channels).  So informal channels were actually pretty important and I think a lot of communication between upper management and department heads happened in informal social situations, whether it was out jogging together or a spur of the  moment discussion on the fly.

The only communication channels that might have been of any importance and also formal would have been the board meetings and the regular management meetings.  These had minutes which were available only on a need to know basis and there was otherwise no written formal communication that I would say was of any significance, other than symbolic and p.r. or fundraising.

Again, it should also be noted that the management had a monopoly on communication, including the informal organization communication.  In fact, there were times I mentioned things to a couple of the secretaries that I (naively, it seems) thought was in confidence, but later on there wee things that happened / that were said that made me think that my confidence had been broken and they had passed on what I'd said.  I suspect their bosses had asked them about out time together.  So then it's clear that the informal communication channels were in the service of the management and these secretaries were, if you will, informants.  An example of this was mentioning that I was feeling stressed and one secretary telling me about the Austrian herbs that some of the workers had tried.  This was before I was sent back to the States.

One other things about this is that towards the end of my time in Vienna, I feel I was fed a lot of dis- or misinformation to confuse me about what was going on in the mission and where it was headed.  So this was a use (or misuse?) of the grapevine.  It seems it would be in the service of the management, but where exactly the dis- or misinformation originated I'll probably never know.  That is, who thought up what to tell me and what who should tell me.

***

This next sub-section is titled "Balancing Device."

"The informal organization serves as a balancing device in several ways.  First, it has the capacity (although not always the motivation) to overcome deficiencies built into the formal structure.  Since it is impossible for formal systems to prescribe every type of decision and behavior that is necessary for effective work accomplishment, the formal organization often relies on the informal organization to take up any 'slack' that may be present or to compensate for important areas that are not specifically covered in job descriptions.


Second, the informal organization serves a balancing function by giving satisfaction to individual members that the formal structure cannot give.  A production worker receiving little respect from management can derive considerable satisfaction from being an informal group leader, by being held in high esteem by coworkers, or by having workmates laugh at his or her jokes." (p. 435)

Although the Vienna mission leadership created and managed the informal organization, if an individual was in good standing in the organization s/he would be given some latitude in carrying out his/her job, although the mission wouldn't tolerate mavericks, so it was generally accepted that regular communication with relevant colleagues and/or superiors regarding innovations needed to take place to keep everyone affected on board (assuming it wasn't something ridiculously trivial like your method of washing the windows or something).  This functioning might not be completely dissimilar to in a regular informal organization, except for the Big Daddy informal organization always looming in the background.

The second balancing device would be irrelevant in the Vienna mission because if the mission management was not pleased with you than no one would be and you wouldn't find anyone who'd cross the mission leadership because to do so would be professional suicide.  So in this case the mission management made sure that their informal organization didn't function at all.  Period.  Explanation Mark.  End of question.  Time to move on...

***

The final sub-section is titled "Source of Motivation."

"The informal organization is often a source of motivation for individuals." (p. 436)

I decided that rather than cite the text, I'd summarize the ways an informal organization can motivate individuals, according to the text.

1. One can be motivated by being recognized by ones peers (as funny, as a good worker, etc.)

2. One can be motivated by having interesting / enjoyable coworkers.

3. One can be motivated by status or position held within the informal organization.

Numbers one and three are only going to happen if you are in good standing with the management, although being in good standing with the management does not guarantee these things.  For example, you could be in good standing with the management, but not necessarily in a particularly high status.

Number two probably will also only happen when you are in good standing with management because if you are not in good standing with them your peers will use social pressure to get you to change (or oust you or whatever management wants to happen to you) and chances are that even if they are otherwise interesting and enjoyable people they won't seem so if you are not in good standing with management.

So if you are not in good standing with management, it seems that the informal organization, which is (s I've said many times already now) an instrument of the mission management, will lose it's motivational properties once you are on the outs with the mission management.

***

In this case, then, the question is what is there to make you want to correct the problem between yourself and the mission management?  The answer, clearly, is beyond the purview of this text, but it is one that seems relevant to me and my relationship (back then in the late 1980s) with the Vienna mission. 

What then is the Mission?  Stripped of a viable relationship with the pseudo informal organization (I think it's pseudo, because it's contrived rather than organic), then I'm left with a relationship with a relationship with the formal organization and, my sending organization.  We already know that the formal organization is basically a front, a shell of an organization mainly for public relations and fundraising purposes (and minimally for financial and legal reasons). That's what my relationship is with after I'm stripped of a relationship with the pseudo informal organization.

How do you relate to a shell of an organization?  How do you communicate with a p.r front? Excuse me for being paranoid.  Who are you anyway, Vienna mission? 

It's at times like these that one can start to believe that books like Alice in Wonderland may not be so fantastic after all. 

***

It is soooooo... late.  I've got to go.

296. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 22 (Gray & Starke, pt. 1)

I don't have any appointments today, but I always have things I can do.  I am getting sort of nervous about making the trip to get my glasses and pick up the two pictures in the southern part of town.  The thing is that my legs are getting worse and worse all the time, and that's a ways to drive going through town, although I can sort of go around it on highways.  The thing is that I won't have the money (accessible) to pay the remainder of my glasses until I get my SSDI deposit on the 3rd.  But I don't know how my legs will be by then.  But maybe I should just go pick up the pictures today and if I can't drive by then I can take the Special Transit Service to get my glasses.    I already paid for the picture framing, so it's just a matter of going to pick those up, but I was going to pick them up when I got my glasses to do it all in one trip.  But when I get those pictures then I'll have all the pictures for the living room and I can start hanging those pictures there and that will be nice.

I still need to try to schedule the pick up for the book case too to get those door repaired.  I can't get through to them and they're not returning my calls.

***

The next text I'm going to use as a sounding board is a chapter from the following book:

Gray, J.L. & Starke, F.A.(1988). Organizational Behavior: Concepts and Applications. Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing.

The chapter is:

12. The Informal Organization and Organizational Culture (p. 423-457)

I find "informal" quite interesting as it pertains to organizations.  There exist several of these "informal" issues, including "informal organization," "informal power" and "informal communication." Generally speaking, in my mind the more you of these informal issues you have in a context the more red flags I see... but that's now and I was naive about any of this when I went to Vienna in 1987.  So this is a case of "if I'd known then what I know now I would have/wouldn't have done X."  But since when do we live in a conditional perfect world? A lot of us might like to at times, but that's just not the way things work.  So we chalk things up to experience, try to learn from the past and move on, more or less, right?

***

"Examples of behavior in the informal organization are many and varied:


1. A production worker may restrict output to conform to the norm of the work group.
2. Management may plan an important announcement for employees, only to find out that the message was leaked earlier through the grapevine.
3. The manager or a department may find that the leader of the company baseball team appears to exert more influence during the baseball season than the line managers.
4. A potentially conflict-laden meeting proceeds very rationally since most of the disagreements on issues were worked out the nigh before over a few drinks." (p. 425)

None of these specific examples would have happened at the mission in Vienna (1. restricting output?  come on! 2. leaking anything in that paranoid secrecy fortress? Hah! 3. baseball team? I don't think so! 4. Conflict-laden? And these people are still  on staff?  Don't they know conflict is not allowed?)

But the point is that people do and say things that aren't strictly reflected in the organizational mission or vision statements, rules and regulations, etc. In the case of the Vienna mission, it would probably be most helpful to say that the informal organization might be what goes on that is not in the public eye.  I think this is a pretty valid way to look at it because all the written rules, etc. (except maybe regarding the details about working "in country" - in the Communist East Bloc countries - this was the late 1980s) were potential p.r. tools to show how wonderful and above board the organization was.  It could always pull out any of these as needed to demonstrate it's lily whiteness, but this did nothing, of course to address what this chapter calls the informal organization and culture, which went largely undocumented... mostly on purpose, and very conveniently so.  This way if anyone had an accusation against the mission they could say "prove it" and it would be very difficult to come up with documentation... and they know it.

***

"In general, the informal organization emerges because the formal structure does not satisfy all employee and organizational needs. The exact form the informal organization will take thus depends on the specific deficiencies in the formal structure and in employee need satisfaction.  It is important to remember that managers do not have a choice as to whether or not the informal organization will develop: informal relationships will be formed within any formal structure." (p. 426-427)

This makes it sound as if managers don't particularly want informal structure, but in the Vienna mission it seemed just the opposite that they wanted to construct a sort of informal underworld what wouldn't necessarily be evident to outsiders and that wouldn't be part of the formal documentation.  On the other hand, the leadership had developed a social control atmosphere that reinforced through positive affirmation or negative rebuke how one spent one's free time and who one associated with.  These are broadbrush assertions, but I think I've gone into more detail about them elsewhere.  Basically, the mission members were so conditioned en masse that they'd pretty much all together confirm or invalidate you depending on whether or not you sought informal social relations other than those intended by the mission leadership.

***

Next the authors discus the difference between job demands and role demands.  Job demands are generally what's written down in a job description, but there may be other role demands above and beyond that, such as to get a raise, or for a profession, etc.

The role demands on me included befriending my boss's wife and sort of becoming a big sister to one of their daughters who they were afraid was becoming worldly (she was a pre-teen at that time).  I did it and I don't remember complaining, but I did feel like I was being stuffed into a stereotypical mold and not given any chance to use my skills or knowledge.  I did like spending time with the daughter, but I didn't like how it was thrust on me, any more than I liked the thought of the secretaries being my main identity group.

***

"Ideally, the goals of the informal organization are in perfect agreement with those of the formal organization.  In actual practice this is almost never the case, partly due to the fact that workers have individual goals that are seldom in complete agreement with formal organization goals." (p. 428)

In the case of the Vienna mission, the goals of the formal and the informal organization mesh very nicely, I'm sure, because the leadership, unlike in most organizations, created both, and doesn't allow other competing informal organizations.  If the mission wouldn't allow me, just one person, I can't even imagine how it would react if an non--assimilated (or only partially assimilated) informal organization  That would REALLY be interesting.

***

"The formal organization equates authority with influence: in other words, if individuals have been given authority, they are assumed to have influence.  In contrast, influence processes in the informal organization occur by approval from the relevant group, not by the organizational decree.  Generally, the individual with the most influence is the person who is most able to satisfy the needs of the group.  This may or may not be the appointed (formal) leader." (p. 428)

So in the Vienna mission you had the usual formal organization, but then you had the formal organization-appointed informal organization, so you can guess who might be the leadership in the informal organization... Well, just in case you're having trouble with it, I'll tell you, the formal organizational leadership appointed themselves to be the leadership of the informal organization too.  Quite clever of them, no? So then they had double the power, formal and informal.

How could they get away with this though?  I think they could get away with this by being the ones with inside knowledge.  Also, department leadership recognized them as leaders, so then those under them would follow suit.  Often at group meetings the top leadership would banter back and forth with this or that department head, often with a light-hearted tone.  They also could be sometimes very humble and sometimes quite firm and authoritative and sometimes very approachable so knowing when to be what helped clinch them as informal leaders also.

***

"In Chapter 10 we discussed how control (e.g., rules, policies, procedures, etc.) are inherent in the design of formal organizations... In the informal organization, standards of behavior, referred to as norms, are similarly communicated to members through social processes. Because the informal organization is a social organization, norms are oriented toward controlling social behaviors, and sanctions are directed at those who violate them." (p. 429)

 I've discussed these a fair amount, but I wanted to bring this up here in the context of the informal organization.  The thing is that what was happening to me in Vienna might have been largely happening in the informal organization, but the thing was that the informal organization was in actuality under the control of the management, so it's not like it was some accidental free-standing set of unfortunate experiences I had with them.  That would be naive at best to think.  However, the mission could try to make it look like the were just some accidental free-standing set of unfortunate experiences I had with them (if they acknowledged that the events occurred.)  So it's a very handy set up they had there, don't you agree?

***

"One of the major functions of hierarchical lines of authority in formal structures is to identify the correct channels of communication.  Therefore, lines of authority can also be viewed as lines of communication... Informally, however, this is seldom happens.  The informal organization devises its own channel of communication (the grapevine) for both social and organizational communicational purposes.  The grapevine carries whatever information the informal organization needs and, although it is selective and often carries inaccurate or distorted information, it is generally faster than formal channels of communication." (p. 429)

In Vienna I must admit that it was through the secretaries (and sometimes others) that I often got the most helpful information during off hours regarding various tidbits that would help me understand that's going on there.  So that would be a kind of grapevine, I guess.  And I do think that that kind of thing was pretty wide spread.  However, I think that the accuracy was pretty high because they got used to requiring high accuracy in their line of work.

One thing about having so much informal communication was that it could be hard to pin down formal rules and the like.  So then you basically had nothing to stand on and you were at their mercy.   Another thing was that the management could manipulate information if they wanted to, which would work for those who didn't yet know whatever information was being manipulated.

This would be another incentive to be part of the informal organization - in order to keep "in the loop".  In my experience, other formal meetings, etc. couldn't provide the information I could have gained from the informal sources.

***

I hope this comes out okay.  I'm really tired.  I drove to the south end of town to get my pictures this afternoon and they were all ready, including the ones at Michael's near me.  My legs are getting worse and the numbness is creeping up my legs; it's not up past my knees.  I still have some feeling, but less and my legs don't move well, so I need to get prepared to start getting rides to places.  My glasses weren't ready yet today, although they were down near where I was today.

When I got home I hung all the pictures in the living room.  It looks a lot better now.  There are still 2 more pictures to hang, but one needs a frame and I'm not spending any more money on house things right now (except maybe potting soil!).

295. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 21 (Katz., p. 6)

I finally went to the dump (the one I'm really supposed to go to) and ended out with a grand total of $2 in charges (figured from ca. $60 for 1 ton, so I had 1/30 of a ton in junk, I guess).

Otherwise, I've just been working on things at home, and I watched a little TV too, for a break.

***

We're still (!) in the section titled "Motivational Patterns: Consequences and Conditions," but now we're in the sub-section "Conditions conducive to internalization of system goals."

"Internalization of organization objectives can come about through the utilization of the socialization process in childhood or through the adult socialization itself.  In the first instance, the selective process, either by the person or the organization, matches the personality with the system.  A youngster growing up in the tradition of one of the military services may have always through of himself as an Air Force officer.  Similarly, the crusader for civil liberties and the American Civil Liberties Union find one another.

The adult socialization process in the organization can build upon the personal values of its members and integrate them about an attractive model of its ideals.  People can thus identify with the organizational mission.  If the task of an organization has emotional significance, the organization enjoys an advantage in the creation of an attractive image.  If the task is attended by hazard, as in the tracking down of criminals by the FBI, or of high advanture, as in the early days of flying, or of high service to humanity , as in a cancer research unit, it is not difficult to develop a convincing model of the organization's mission." (p. 143)

Okay, once again, there's really a lot here. 

The childhood socialization would have applied probably in most cases - with most of the workers - in the mission in Vienna.  Some may not have been raised in Christian families or became Christians later, in their teens or as young adults, so this wouldn't be relevant to them.  Others might have been raised in a Christian family or church that might not have socialized them properly for work with the mission - and I would fall in this category because I came from a church background that welcomed questioning things, which in my experience generally would only come back to haunt you if you did question something there.

Anyway,  getting back to childhood socialization, for those who were raised in the churches that would have prepared them to go to the right seminary and then on to the mission, they undoubtedly had a leg up on transitioning into the system there.   They may have already more or less understood the value system that led to the kinds of precautions and deceptions and they probably even had the appropriate political viewpoint to facilitate going along with these things. 

And it did seem to me like the mission was getting a lot of theologians from one particular seminary, so I wasn't sure if it was a conscious effort on the part of the mission or whether it was just that there were a lot of interested people at that seminary or a combination, so I don't know who was more responsible for the selection, the individual or the mission, or maybe it depended on each case.

As far as adult socialization is concerned, I've discussed this in quite some depth already. 

So the things is, though, that if the person doesn't come already with the internalized goals from childhood socialization, than this would have to come via adult socialization if it is going to come at all.  This author has said that it isn't necessary for everyone to have internalized values and goals, except some voluntary organizations want at least some of their rank and file members to share these traits, and I've already demonstrated that the Vienna mission was a total institution and as such demanded that all it's members shared these traits, so it pretty well had to use adult socialization to make sure all its members shared the appropriate values and objectives.  Unfortunately, however, I tried mostly to take it (the organization) at face value and only got mud in the face, and the thing was to get to the core values and objectives - what they really would have wanted from me - they would not put in black and white, write them down in clear English, etc.  So you had to sort of guess them like a game of charades or something.  One thing I do know, though, is that when I left Vienna I was "standing up on the inside" which is not what they wanted.

So now to the part in this quote about the type of organization, if it has emotional significance, an attractive image, is hazardous work, is adventurous, is in service to humanity, etc.  The Vienna mission really was all of these, when you think about it.  It was a Christian mission.  Churches and Christians back home often look in awe at missions and missionaries, maybe more so than they should sometimes, so it's attractive to many people.  Because the mission was working in clandestinely Communist countries it was hazardous work. Because the work was cutting edge and involved setting up new groups and courses and trying to meet the needs of a wide variety of groups in different countries it was adventurous.  Because we were helping church leaders in difficult situations so that they could do the work in their own countries when they otherwise wouldn't have the resources for this kind of training and we were doing it free of charge to them, it was a kind of service to humanity.  So there were a lot of potential kudos going on there that could very easily draw anyone in to share the missions goals and values.

But in my mind, all of that is still not enough to justify deception, the kind of treatment I got, including the misuse of psychology, their friendship with goverment/military & their demand for unquestioning submission.  I don't give anyone that kind of submission.  EVER! (unless your name is God.)  That means, if you say, "Jump!" I might not necessarily answer, "How high?"  Rather, I might respond, "Why?"

***

I'm skipping a couple paragraphs about internalization that aren't very helpful for my purposes...

"This suggests three additional factors which contribute to internalization of group objectives: (1) participating in important decisions about group objectives; (2) contributing to group performance in a significant way: and (3) sharing in the rewards of group accomplishment.  When these three conditions are met, the individual can regard the group as his, for he in fact has helped to make it." (p. 144)

Here is another good example of why I did not internalize the group objectives in Vienna.   In the context I think Katz is talking about subgroups, but that's even worse because I moved around so much with the mission that I never got a chance to internalized group objectives or become very attached to any group.  I never ever participated in an y important decisions about group objectives.  I contributed to group performance, but not so as to really leave a mark.  It's not as if I was going to  be missed from my position or anything, or like I was indispensable or hard to replace.  No, because I moved around to much and wasn't given a chance to do anything but grunt menial tasks.  As to the third item here, I'm not aware of any "awards of group accomplishment" as pertaining to anything I was involved in in Vienna.

Since none of these were met while I was in Vienna, is it no surprise that I didn't feel like any group was mine? (including the secretaries?)  So much for identification.

***

Can you believe it?  We've finally reached the end of this article!  So next time I'll start with another article.

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

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


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


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

***

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

293. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 19 (Katz, pt. 4)

Jumping right into the discussion of the text, as it applies to my experiences in Vienna, we're still in the section "Motivational Patterns: Consequences and Conditions", but now we're moving on to the sub-section "Conditions conducive to the activation of rule acceptance."

***

"Though compliance with rules can bring about reliable role performance, the use of rules must take account of the following three conditions for maximum effectiveness: (1) the appropriateness of the symbols of authority and the relevance of rules to the social system involved; (2) the clarity of the legal norms and rule structure; and (3) the reinforcing character of sanctions." (p. 136)

The Vienna mission didn't have any tolerance for poor performance of role expectations or poor reliability in any particular individual, so it would have been interested in anything that might have served to increase reliability in individual reliability, so these three things are potentially very interesting and helpful to my purposes of understanding of my experiences in Vienna.

***

"Appropriateness and relevance. The acceptance of communications and directives on the basis of legitimacy requires the use of symbols and procedures recognized as the proper and appropriate sources of authority in the system under consider.  The worker may grumble at the foreman's order may grumble at the foreman's order but he recognizes the right of the foreman to give such an order.  The particular directives which are accepted which are accepted as legitimate will depend upon their matching the type of authority structure of the system." (p. 136

 The thing here is that, as I have mentioned before, I was unique in the mission in that I was raised in a mid-Acts Pauline denominational church (vs. Acts 2 denominational church).  The name of my home church was "Berean" and I had Acts 17:11 drummed into me, as follows:

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

What this says, is that anything we are told is not to be taken at face value no matter who it is that is doing the telling.  Scripture is ALWAYS the final yardstick of truth.  (This being said, I don't want to make them out to be perfect in this because my brother found out that there are definite limits to this when he used Scripture to question an aspect of predestination, but for my purposes I learned to think for myself and not accept human authority above Scripture's.)  Since the mission was very clearly in the realm of Christian work and I thought everything about it should be held accountable to Scripture just as a church or Christian individual should be, I thought I was justified in holding Scripture as a higher authority above the mission leadership, and the mission leadership failed so badly vis a vis Scriptural mandate that I forced to make a sort of patchwork authority system, for myself, where the mission leadership filled only the parts I thought they filled appropriately according to biblical standards.

 I think I did have another standard, though, that consisted of what I knew of European studies/cultural studies and missiology.  I've discussed this elsewhere more in depth, but I think I need to at least mention it here for completeness of the current discussion.  This mission operated by other standards and they weren't accountable to anyone.  What I mean by that is, just try doing an objective program evaluation of them.  Then you'll know what I mean.

So getting back to the appropriateness and relevance of the rules of the mission.   The rules I saw as appropriate and relevant I did accept.  But that, of course, was not enough, because this wasn't a pick and choose sort of situation.  By picking and choosing I was setting myself above the organization as being able to evaluate their rules, which was not allowed.  So this had to be discouraged, but I was a Berean, and my mandate was to search the Scriptures daily to see if these things were as they should be... in other words not accept the mission and their rules carte blanche, but set myself, or at least set Scripture up as above them.

What kinds of things might not have been appropriate or relevant?  I've discussed some of these already, but I'll mention a few here.  The forced trust in them with relatively little knowledge (i.e., no questions asked), forced relative seclusion from local Austrian life (even when my position didn't seem to need it), apparent waste of supporters' money by not giving me useful work to do, etc.

***

"The acceptance of legal rules is also restricted to the relevant sphere of activity." (p. 136)

This applies to my experience in Vienna because I thought while I might have some evening and weekend mission-related activities and responsibilities, I would also have some free time that would be my free time to use as I wish (within reason of course, that is, as long as I wasn't doing anything unChristian, for example).  But eventually it became clear that that was not the case, because, as I later learned in my research, the mission was a "total institution, and as a total institution "free time" is an  illusion that is provided only if you are an insider knowing when how and what kinds of activities are permitted as "free time" and with whom.  For those who are short-termers, however, they aren't aware of this system and they get free-time in the usual sense of the term, and others have to humor them to make sure they aren't aware of the other system and that they return home happy and unaware of the other system.

I didn't think they had the right to completely cut off my free time, especially since I didn't think I was otherwise doing anything egregious or offensive to them in my free time.  Then I began to dislike them for being such "ugly Americans" and stuck in their own enclave.  So that didn't help my transition to work with them.  Here's my vision of what my time was supposed to be like with the mission:

secretary by day, Vienna outreach evenings/weekends

and their view of me:


secretary by day, hobnob with boss's wife and children & other secretaries evenings/weekends


So basically they wanted to throttle me in the secretary role which wasn't at all to my liking to say the least and the ethnocentrism it entailed also went against my values.  So their rules (formal or otherwise) to limit my freetime activities overstepped the line with me big-time.

***

"Another prerequisite to the use of rules as the appropriate norms of the system is their impersonal character.  They are the rules of the system and are not the arbitrary, capricious decisions of a superior aimed particular individuals." (p. 136)


Bingo.  I've already shown how even though there were written rules at least 2 (days off when supporting guests visit and language classes upon first arrival) were not permitted me, and in the latter case I was told there was a lot of work to do, but in fact I spent the first 2 months doing practically nothing (I've discussed that in detail elsewhere in this blog).


Other than this, the socialization process, as I've also discussed at some depth, is mostly quite individual and as such the rules end out being - or at least seeming - somewhat arbitrary and capricious, at least, I imagine, until one becomes initiated to a certain level that I never reached.  I'm not positive about this though, it's possible it always seems somewhat capricious and arbitrary, at least at the levels above which one hasn't reached yet, and/or in the areas one isn't privvy (such as in other departments).

This arbitrariness and capriciousness, as I've described before, if not exactly in those terms, is probably mainly because of the security issue and intentional in nature.  That is, the leadership wants things to seem arbitrary and capricious so as to keep secrets secret from those who shouldn't know them.  This includes insiders.  So, for example, the East German team (remember this was in the 1980s) shouldn't know certain things about the Romanian team and vice versa, and the textbook team doesn't need to know certain things about the Women's ministry team, etc.  And I, who was on the outs with just about everyone, didn't need to know much of anything, so most everything seemed capricious and arbitrary and as such the rules of the system seemed aimed at me and they didn't pass this prerequisite as being "appropriate norms of the system." In fact, they weren't really norms of the system at all, they were just capricious and arbitrary rules aimed at me, although there may have been systemic rules that allowed for these rules aimed at me, but the rules themselves that were aimed at me were not systemic.

***

"Clarity.  A related condition for the acceptance of legal norms is the clarity of authority symbols, of proper procedures, and the context of the legitimized decisions. Lack of clarity can be due to the vagueness of the stimulus situation or to the conflict between opposed stimulus cues." (p. 136)

There were several kinds of "legal norms" going on in the Vienna mission.  There were1)  those that were written down, like the ones about the right to study German when you first arrive in Vienna to work with the mission.  Then there were 2) those technical aspects of the job to be done, which may or may not be written down but were generally pretty clearly specified in one way or another.  Then there were 3) the organizational and social cultural norms and these were mission critical, partly because of it being a total institution and partly because of working together in East Bloc countries and the need to rely on one another sometimes in difficult situations requiring immediate response. 

The first rules were clear except for their being only selectively applied.  The second rules I think were pretty clear and were probably the best, although I can't speak across the board for all positions.

The third rules were the least clear, though, I think.  It's possible, however, that they were the least clear to me because I didn't agree with them.  I've discussed this before too, but I'll just say briefly that I don't let anyone be my end all for final decision making as far as what's right and what's wrong and I felt like that's what the mission required of me.  For one thing, after how they treated me I couldn't trust them, but also, I just didn't like their values and their modus operandi on many fronts.  I didn't think I'd done them any harm and I didn't see how they could justify treating me so badly, for example.  But as to clarity, I all to often didn't really understand what would really make them happy, what they really wanted from me.  I could surmise that "total submission" was what they wanted, but if I gave them that, then what?  And if I did that, that would be going against my beliefs anyway to give such total submission to anyone other than God.  So was it just the submission they wanted?  Or was it something that they thought they would get after I submitted?  It really wasn't clear at all to me. And being upfront and asking directly would be stupid because they'd just give you a stupid look like they didn't have a clue what you were talking about... well, it depended you you asked.  It's possible one of the secretaries my be somewhat helpful, but not the military chaplain H.R. staff or my boss.

***

"Reinforcement.  To maintain the internalized acceptance of legitimate authority there has to be some reinforcement in the form of penalties for violations of the rules... Sometimes the penalties can come from the social disapproval of the group as well as from legal penalties." (p. 137)



In a regular job you might get a demotion, a write up, or even get fired.  For very egregious behavior - say getting drunk or the like - you might get sent home from the mission field, but otherwise missions have to use other means of control.  It's possible the supervisor might call you in to talk with you about a problem that's come up and try to work with you to resolve it.  But usually they'll want to work with you to keep you on the field, so they'll do all they can to make things work out.  After all, it's no small thing to get a missionary to the field.


In Vienna they most certainly did use "social disapproval" in the form of shunning, especially the last months I was with the mission.  But they also used psychology and moving me to the States and moving me internally within the building in Vienna and within positions in Vienna.  I view all of these as means they used to reinforce their rules (written or otherwise).  So, basically, my whole time in Vienna was spent with them trying to reinforce their rules with me... socialize me.

***

This is the end of that sub-category and I need to get on with my day, so we'll continue next time with this article where we left off.

292.Organizational Behavior, Pt. 18 (Katz,pt.3)

I had another eventful day today.  This morning and early afternoon was pretty normal and I got a bunch of things done at home and ran a few errands. But then on my way to physical therapy, walking through the halls of the hospital from the car all of a sudden I got really light headed and had to lean forward and lean into the wall.  I was almost to physical therapy so they sat me down and took my heart rate and blood pressure and both were high.  They had me rest for a bit and then tried me on a machine that's sort of a seated elliptical, but even that raised my pulse too high so that's all I did at physical therapy.

Then on my way home some guy insisted I hit him.  Actually he drove up to me I guess about 2 or 3 blocks after the alleged incident and started yelling at me asking if I wasn't going to pull over because I hit him and I said I didn't know what he was talking about (I really didn't) because I didn't hit him.  So then he followed me all the way home and he even lives in my complex, so he followed me in through the gate.  I got out of the car and he said he reported the incident to the police and he asked if I wanted to see it and he said it probably wasn't much that I just bumped him.  But I said no I really had no recollection of hitting anyone and I wasn't going to act as if I did.

I told him about the incident a week or so ago when I did hit someone when I was parking and I left a note on their windshield, when a lot of people wouldn't have done so, but in this case I really didn't think I hit the car.  He could have reported it as a hit and run, though, which is pretty serious.  So as I sat at home thinking about everything I decided I should probably call my insurance company, so I did that.  I didn't have any information about the driver, the car or anything - I wasn't even sure about the details about the alleged incident except I think it is supposed to have happened in the vicinity of the I-95 northbound exit 16 (Ives Dairy Rd.) and/or the overpass heading West.

IF I did in fact hit this other car then I'm afraid that the affects of fibrofog and this headache are affecting me in a way to sometimes make me not attentive enough, which is very probable.  I've been thinking I should probably start taking STS (Special Transportation Services - a country transportation service for handicapped people, like a group taxi for $3 a ride).  It only goes in the county, and some of my doctors are in the neighboring county, and if I need/want to make multiple stops it's not very practical.  But if I'm going to start having accidents and things like that I should start using STS more.  I think that this would be the only explanation if I did hit this other car, because when that other driver started yelling at me I really didn't know what on earth he was talking about.  I had absolutely no recollection of hitting anyone.  I'm only going to bring up this possible explanation if it becomes evident through the various investigations (insurance, police, etc.) that I did in fact hit the other driver.

Anyway, back to the lightheadedness/heart issue, I have a history of supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), rapid heart beat.  I had a cardiac ablation in 2007 and had no problems until possibly today.  If today's incident is another SVT, possibly an early sign of one, than it's a new SVT, because the ablation cured the old one.  That is, it's when there's an extra nerve pathway in the heart that makes the heart get stuck like a broken record.   So now I wonder if my cardiologist is in network... (i.e., takes my insurance).

But let's forget about my problems and get back to Katz...

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This section is titled: "Motivational Patterns: Consequences and Conditions" and the first sub-heading is "Compliance with legitimized rules."

"In discussing bureaucratic functioning Max Weber pointed out that the acceptance of legal rules was the basis for much of organizational behavior (Weber, 1947).  Compliance is to some extent a function of sanctions but to a greater extent a function of generalized habits and attitudes toward symbols of authority... A great deal of behavior can be predicted once we know what the rules of the game are." (p. 135)

There is really a lot here as several individual words and phrases need commending on and parsing.  So I'll take them one by one.

Bureaucratic functioning.  The Vienna mission did have a fair amount of this, some of which I think was serendipitous, as in, "oh, how convenient that we can hide behind all this bureaucracy" or "oh, well, we have to document everything very carefully and make sure that only those who need to know know but that they do know or have access to know."  And the hierarchical aspect of bureaucracy has already been discussed.  But in the Vienna situation, there is an assumption that the mission leadership, the top/heart of the bureaucracy are paragons of Christian spirituality and as such will develop "legal" rules according to Biblical norms and values.  So everyone (workers, supporters, board members, in-country believers, etc., etc.) pretty much assumes this.  No one questions this or holds them accountable for reasons discussed elsewhere in this blog.  So we have to sort of take Kierkegaard's leap of faith that their rules are "legal" - although I think that I'd rather stand with Kierkegaard on this one and take a leap of faith in God than in the legality of the rules of the Vienna mission (vis a vis biblical teaching).

Legal rules.  The rules of the Vienna mission were legal based on pragmatic principles, as I've stated before.  As I think through the various rules I think this is the main principle, pragmatism - what works.  So as long as it was pragmatic, it was "legal" to them.

I'm not sure to what extent in the Vienna mission compliance was a function of sanctions, but for me this seemed to be largely the case.  That is, I wasn't evidently complying by other ways so I became the subject of sanctions.  Of course, that's assuming they wanted me to comply.  And, as I'm mentioned before, sometimes I didn't really know what they wanted me to do or how I should comply.

Generalized habits and attitudes toward symbols of authority.  This is sort of the kind of thing I've meant when I've talked about complete submission to the mission, but I don't think that Katz necessarily means that here.  The difference is that the Vienna mission was a total institution, where as corporations, for example, usually aren't.   This is where you internalize the culture (habits and attitudes), but also take part in some of the traditions.

A great deal of behavior can be predicted... The problem in Vienna was that I remained enough of an outsider the whole time I was in Vienna that I never became very good at predicting behavior there.   But, as I've said elsewhere, I think a lot of this was purposeful, because they had layers of secrecy that you could only gain access to by being trustworthy and barring that you would remain on the fringes.

...once we know what the rules of the game are.  If you don't know what the rules of the game are you can't predict behavior.  I came to Vienna thinking I understood the rules of the game - that is the rules of ministry to East Bloc countries.  But I didn't understand the rules of corrupt, paranoid, politicized ministry to East Bloc countries.  So that's where I messed up.  Big time.

***

"It is not necessary to take representative samplings of the behavior of many people to know how people will conduct themselves in structured situations.  All we need is a single informant who can tell us the legitimate norms and appropriate symbols of authority for given types of behavioral settings." (p. 135)

So this is exactly what the Vienna mission tried to do in setting me up with the secretaries, especially the secretary of my boss's boss to be sort of my mentor.  As I've said before, however, that was okay, except that I didn't really see myself as a secretary other than that was my job for 2 years, but not my persona and how I viewed myself.  That one secretary was good for giving tips and instructions, but I didn't really relate to any of the secretaries such that I really clicked with any of them.  

Then some of the norms that they shared with me were really insulting and degrading, although I did try to do my best to go along with them.  I've mentioned them before, it's the old single missionary help with the married missionaries' children bit.  Or the wife of the boss is jealous because you spend all day with her husband so you should pay some attention to the wife too to make her feel better about the situation.  (Sheesh, send them to marriage counseling if she's so vulnerable!)

  ***

"In the third area of behavior necessary for effective organizational functioning, namely innovative and spontaneous acts, which go beyond the call of duty, rule compliance is useless by definition... organizations cannot stimulate actions by decreeing them.  In general the greater the emphasis upon compliance with rules the less the motivation will be for individuals to do more than is specified by their role prescriptions." (p. 135)

In the Vienna organization there were at least two areas where this kind of innovation was particularly needed, and that was in the teaching & textbook writing end of things and in the in country aspect of the work.  The former is sort of the typical academic type of license you'd expect in a higher education institution and academic publishing institution, and the latter is what you'd expect in a spy agency, for example, for all the secrecy and elaborate precautions that were taken.  Innovation was necessary because one had to be on one's feet and able to make snap decisions as needed.

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I'm tired and it's late, so I'm going to take another break.  Sorry this is going so slowly.