310. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 36 (Bowditch, pt. 2)

I'm going to skip parts here, using only what I think might provide something new.

This next main chapter section is titled "ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS."

"In classical management thought, organizations were viewed as relatively closed systems....

...[C]ontemporary organizational theory takes a muchbroader perspective of organizations and their management.  Organizations are viewed as open systems, one that have to adapt to changing external conditions in order to effectively perform, succeed, and even survive over time." (p. 158)

I believe I've said before on this blog that the mission acted like it wanted to be a closed system in it's complex security measures to protect it's boundaries and interests.  But, in fact, it wasn't and couldn't be a completely closed system, so the mission tried to control the access points as much as possible, maybe like how the Soviet Union used to control the phone lines into and out of the country when it was still the USSR, only then they really could control that, although information could always find some other way of getting through such as through samizdat (self-printed/underground printed materials).  So he Vienna mission could be looked at as sort of a pseudo closed system, perhaps; at least from one perspective.

***

I'll now take a look at a sub-section, "Defining Organizational Environment" and the first sub-section under that "General and Specific Environment."

"The general organizational environment refers to the broad factors, trends, and cconditions that concern all organizations...


...[T]he specific... environment focuses on those external factors and conditions that have immediate relevance for an organization.  Such a specific environment usually includes an organizationals customeers, suppliers, unions..." (p. 159)

The general environment the mission worked in was very broad, because it included North America (e.g., where a lot of its funding came from), Eastern Europe (e.g., political conditions), and Austria (where the main office was located).  Changes in any of these could have significant affect on the ministry.

The specific environment includes what is often called the stakeholders, including the boardmembers, in-country translators, foundations, students, etc.

It's largely because of the nature of the environment that the mission took the form that it did, although that doesn't mean I agree with this logic.

***

The next sub-section is "Actual and Perceived Environment."

"Another important analytic distinction is the difference between the actual (objective) environment and the one that managers perceive (subjective). .. The perceived environment... reflects the subjective interpretive of that environment.  Although these perceptions are also 'real' events in their consequences, they take place within an organization.


Although we might assume that there is close correspondence between these two dimensions, empirical research has indicated that correlations between measures of a firm's actual environment and measures of the perceived characteristics of that environment are not very high.  This is significant since people react according to their perceptions rather than what is actually 'out there'." (p. 160)

I think it may be possible to distinguish some difference between the actual and perceived environment of the mission.  The "perceived" element would be the emotionally charged view on things East European, or Communist, or politically unfriendly to Christianity (the latter is looking ahead to where the mission went later on after I left).  In other words, it's one thing to look objectively at the situation in those countries, and I think I was more objective than they were, because they were more into the anxiety-prone paranoid mode than I was and I wasn't so politicized about the work as they were.  So I think that their perception of the environment the mission was working in was colored by their political views, their pragmatic philosophy, and perhaps their theology too, since my theology conflicted with some of their practices and views,  and my theology made it very difficult to work with them.

***

There's more about the environment, but nothing helpful, so I'll skip ahead to something else next time.

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

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

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

***

This next text is a book chapter, as follows:

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

And here is our helpful advance organizer:

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

***

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


Organizations may be differentiated in a number of ways:


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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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


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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

308. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 34 (Katz, pt. 5)

I just realized I think I'm commenting on this article for the second time.  I'm sorry about that, but I'm finished now, so I'll just leave it.  If I get around to it, it might be interesting to compare my comments...  I must have had it twice in my file and hadn't realized it.

***

So I finally started my mini spiritual retreat and I didn't even know what I wanted to do.  So I just started by telling God that and sort of waiting in silence.  I have so much sadness from everything from the past year and it just never ends.

So finally I managed to find a few words and then I pulled out the Concordance and somehow decided on the word "great".  Well, that's, of course, is a pretty multipurpose word, but it helped me focus.  I knew I wanted to focus somehow on God's greatness, but then that wasn't it either.

So then I decided to open to one of the passages in I Timothy and then before I knew it I was thinking more along the lines of how one publicly reveals sin in others.  So I just wanted to quote the First and Second Timothy verses here that are examples of that kind of thing.  These are from the New King James version.

I Tim. 1:18-20
¹⁸ This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, ¹⁹ having faith and a good conscience, which some having rejected, concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck, ²⁰ of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

II Tim. 1:15
This you know, that all those in Asia have turned away from me, among whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes. 

II Tim. 2:17-18

¹⁷ And their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort, ¹⁸ who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past; and they overthrow the faith of some. 

II Tim. 4:10
 for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica—Crescens for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia.

I'm just showing this because there is a biblical precedence for making public error, especially among those who minister since they can do more damage.  I'm not saying that any of these particular actions have anything to do with the Vienna mission; rather, I'm just saying that making such things public (like what I'm doing in this blog) isn't completely without biblical precedence.  The way I'm doing it, of course, is novel, and not just the use of electronic media, but the concentrated focus on it.

***

Continuing with the text, the author goes on to discuss system rewards, which doesn't apply well to the mission context, as it deals more with rewarding employees for quality and quantity of output, like in a corporation or factory, and I'm not aware that this was a problem in the mission.  The textbook end of things in the mission did have deadlines, but they knew how to work with them and didn't require (as far as I ever knew) anything like these kinds of rewards.


However, the next sub-section goes on to discuss the conditions conducive to effective system rewards and that discussion does end out, in perhaps a convoluted way, saying something worth commenting on.  


How we can make this discussion relevant is if we consider the advantages of being an insider in the mission system.  Not only does the trust factor get solidified and one becomes more of a central fixture in the social sphere of things, but there's also the issue of knowledge, so that now you might have access to more of the secret knowledge - at least as it applies to your position.  So these are great boons.  And now instead of wondering whether you'll be on the receiving end of the stick (as in carrot and stick), you might be one of the ones on the giving end of the stick helping to socialize someone else. 


So the thing is that the reward is to move inward in the system or perhaps move up, although there weren't very many opportunities for that in the mission.  Those moves could be seen as rewards and as such could be motivators.  They could be very strong motivators under certain circumstances or for certain people.

***

I'm skipping instrumental rewards (pay) as basically irrelevant), and the next 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 in doing is the man who will not worry about the fact 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... This type of performer is not the clock watcher, nor the shoddy performer.  On the other hand, such a person is not necessarily tied to a given organization... He may, moreover, contribute little to organizational goals beyond his specific role." (p. 141).


This is me and this is not me.  That is it could have been me in the Vienna mission, given the right position, but not exactly either.  The Vienna mission would never ever have let me have anything like the leeway I'd have liked because they were too paranoid of everything, in my opinion.  I'm talking about if I had had a position using my skills, not as a secretary, which I wasn't  -  I wasn't a professional secretary.  


So in the secretary position I acted like the description above in that I would have preferred to contribute little to the organizational goal beyond my specific role, unless it was something of substance they were going to offer me, otherwise, I wasn't to interested.  I mean to be a secretary and on top of that more filler stuff to to in my off time?  I did it, but my heart was more in the Austrian outreach efforts.  


I'd done other East European work that fit this description, whether on short term ministry, volunteering in England at the center there, in the specialized library in the USA, etc. I needed next to no oversight and I was very self motivated and diligent and no one ever complained about my work or anything.  So I was like this person with the intrinsic job satisfaction.  But the Vienna mission did a number on me and they did it big time.  How could I go full time finally to the work that I'd prepared so long for and not an ounce of intrinsic job satisfaction at it?  Well, for one thing they never gave me hardly any work to do!  So I was so often doing filler work to do!  How demeaning is that!  So much for intrinsic job satisfaction.  Down the drain.  Heck, why did they even bring me there if they didn't have any real work for me to do?  Now that's a good question!  I hope God asks them that on the judgement day when they face Him.  (Well, of course, He knows already, but I don't - I'd like to know.)

***

The next sub-section also has to be addressed: "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. " (p. 141)


This makes sense, but I still stand by what I just said that my work too often seemed pointless (virtually unnecessary) and the job was a poor match for me and didn't utilize the skills I'd trained for.  Beyond that, yes variety, complexity, challenge and skill would be important too.

***

 

307. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 33 (Katz, pt. 4)

I messed up on the cake because I used the version of it I'd transcribed into the family heirloom database and I'd left out the baking soda... so I went back to the original 3x5 card and it looked like it ran into another ingredient, so I missed it, and when I was measuring out the dry ingredients I was tired, so I didn't think about there not being any leavening agent.  So I called pastor to explain the situation.  I hope they're able to fill in for the missing dessert.  I just don't feel up to trying to rush around making another one.  I thought about it, but I just can't do it.  I'm just on overload right now and can't take one more crisis.  And the thing is that these things also affect my fibromyalgia and migrain too.

***

The idea was, however, to try to have a spiritual retreat today.  I think it'll end out being a half day, but I'm going to try to stick to my plan at least that much.  So I'll write another entry here and work a little more on my first macrame sugar snap pea runner (to hook over a small shelf on the wall on the balcony), then I'll start in on earnest on my little retreat. At least I have some spaces here conducive to that, which is nice.

***

The next major section in this article is "MOTIVATIONAL PATTERNS: CONSEQUENCES AND CONDITIONS."

"... 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 generalized habits and attitudes toward symbols of authority... Individuals often assume that they can control their participation with respect to organizational requirements when they enter an organization.  Before they are aware of it, however, they are acting like other organizational members and complying with the rules and the authorized decisions." (p.t 135)

The Vienna mission leadership seemed to understand very well the connection with compliance and attitudes towards authority and, as I have stated many, many times, they demanded a very high level of compliance.  The mission leadership was particularly concerned about the connection with authority because they felt they needed to maintain control for the maintenance of security, so that any disobedience (lack of respect for the authority that the disregarded norm represented) was also a security concern.

As to whether individuals thought they might maintain their individuality in the beginning, I'm not sure how many thought along these lines.  The fact that most members were highly educated might argue for some resistance to the kind of assimilation process that was so all inclusive, but on the other hand, many if not most of these people came from very similar background ideologically (theologically, politically, etc.) as the leadership, so it may have been an easier change for them.  I'd like to know if any of them knew beforehand of the types of changes that might be expected of them or what kinds of things were surprises.  Of course, my being a poor fit for my position if the position meant that my whole life - 24/7 - had to revolve around being a secretary, was a poor fit.  I've also said before that I made it clear before leaving North America that I wanted more people ministry and intended to be involved in local Austrian ministry while there and I was given the impression that this would not be a problem.  That was what the North American office of my sending mission told me at least.  So I did not expect that the secretary position was going to be a strait jacket identifying virtually my whole existence while I was in Vienna.  This made it a lot harder for me to accept the mission's rules, in addition to the other disagreements I had with them, and other missionaries didn't have that problem, I don't think.  That is, other missionaries arrived in Vienna doing what they really wanted to do and were fit to do.  So that was already right there less hurdles to accept the mission's norms.

I hope this makes sense.  Basically, what I'm trying to say is that if you come to the mission and feel like the mission is trying to change you to accept their norms, values, rules, etc. that's one thing, but in addition, if it's also trying to make you fit into a 24/7 job role that you don't feel comfortable in than that's a double whammy and they might as well try to remake you altogether.  That's pretty much how it felt.

***

The author goes on to describe rules regarding quality of work, setting higher standards, and going beyond the call of duty and innovating.  I'm not sure if the first two were ever problems, but it's possible they might have been, but it was handled privately and not known to me.  However, the third thing - innovation - was important to the mission and it needed workers that were reliable, competent and able to do their work professionally without having someone constantly breathing down their neck, although there were always security checks of various sorts, I'm sure.  This was part of the trust factor that needed to be there.  There was a lot of cross-training and mentoring, such as when I took the women's ministry trip under the leadership of one of the full-time women's ministry missionaries.  So then trust would build up in that new area for the person being mentored in it, and if s/he did well (and didn't make any egregious security blunders!) s/he might be invited to participate again in that part of the ministry.  So that was part of the trust element involved.

But the people in the full-time positions would be the ones most likely innovating, thinking of new takes on a course, resolving an interpersonal issue in the field, etc.  But the other thing is that these innovations rarely happened in isolation; they almost always involved several people.  For example, the new take on a course might involve the other instructors, the textbook writers, the illustrators, or perhaps (depending on the nature of the concept and how involved it was), the mission administration, board members and even in-country church leaders.  If it was just something like using group discussion instead of brainstorming it would probably be a nonissue, but if it involved reconceptualizing something or adding or subtracting from what is already in the textbook or workbook, than that would be a whole other story.  The missionary-instructors might be able to add one exercise into the workbook via xerox copies they bring with them, but is that something they want to do often?  Or at all?  What is the policy on that kind of thing?

So the mission, I think, encouraged innovation, to a degree, but some things were very difficult to change after a certain point in the program development process.  They could be a bit of an unwieldy organization in some respects.

***

The next sub-section in this article is "Conditions conducive to the activation of rule acceptance."  Maybe we'll find out more why I had such a problem in Vienna with rule acceptance...

"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 consideration.... The particular directives which are accepted as legitimate will depend upon their matching the type of authority structure in the system." (p. 136)

This is very good... I mean good for thought provocation.  Let's start by parsing this a bit, starting with the last sentence:

1. directives
2. directives accepted as legitimate
3. directives not accepted as legitimate
4. directives matching the type of authority structure in the system
5. directives not matching the type of authority structure in the system
6. directives accepted as legitimate  IF the directives match  the type of authority structure in the system
7. directives not accepted as legitimate IFdirectives not match the type of authority structure in the system

I would really add to 4 & 5 (and hence also to the IF clauses in 6 & 7) "perceived as" so that 4, for example, would read:

directives perceived as matching the type of authority system

I would do this because I think that perception is the key, and this is true in Vienna, so I am going to take the liberties to re-write 6 & 7 as follows:

6.  directives accepted as legitimate  IF the directives perceived as matching  the type of authority structure in the system

7. directives not accepted as legitimate IFdirectives perceived as not matching the type of authority structure in the system

Okay, so now I'll comment on this version of these statements.  It is my hypothesis that the other workers in the Vienna mission believed that the directives (most of which were norms, implicit, in the informal organization, etc.) were legitimate and that they did match the authority structure in the system because the mission had the right under the circumstances and (evidently) based on their understanding of Scripture to make the demands on them that it did.

My problem here is the type of authority structure in the system.  There's not getting around it that in the end I had to point blank denounce the type of authority structure.  I never thought that ALL of their rules and norms were bad, but looking at this statement makes me realize that maybe my partial, pick-and-choose obedience wasn't really obedience at all, because I really was rejecting their basic authority structure, the leadership that presumably was ultimately behind any demands placed upon me by the mission.

I probably came to this conclusion when they sent me back to the USA 5 months into my time with them, so after that point I was really an alien in their midst, but I was so committed to ministry to that part of the world and I'd put so much into it already and I wasn't sure what other options I might have, so I (undoubtedly irrationally) held out hope against hope that they'd come to the table and we could talk things out and we'd come to some kind of a compromise because I thought I was a reasonably valuable worker.

***

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

Since I'd told my sending mission before arriving in Vienna about my intent to work with Austrians while serving as a secratary, I thought the Vienna mission's pressure on me to run my off-hours life was out of line, as was their pressure to force me into certain social groups.  So I thought this kind of things wasn't relevant, and as such I never really accepted it as legitimate, although I cowed under it at the end, but only out of sheer exhaustion - I caved in to them.  That's not the same as accepting their legitimacy; it only means they wore me out.

***

"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 at particular individuals." (p. 136)

They also didn't meet this prerequisite either.  One example, as I've shared before, is the written rule that we were supposed to have up to 2 days off when supporters were in town.  I had a couple supporters in town but they wouldn't let me have time off.  I was told there was too much work to do, but I didn't have much to do at all, so that was a plain lie (that was more of a lie than saying the mission is an international publisher!).  And that was one written rule that others actually did get to have, but not me.  And for years I always felt like wherever I went if mom and dad were there they got special treatment.  When mom came to help me pack up to leave Vienna for good they added an extra women's meeting at the last minute (the break for the summer and they'd already had their last one for the year) and mom and dad had recently been to Mexico.  No, the norms were very arbitrary and capricious, all the more to make one want to be on one's good behavior.

***

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

This was a huge problem for me.  I don't know what it was like for other people, but I think it got better once you were socialized and the more you were a trusted worker and the farther you got into the inner circle or higher up the echelons you got.  But for me that never totally got through the basic socialization process I thought the clarity was awful.  I often had a hard time figuring out what the heck they really wanted.  I sometimes experimented with different ways of responding to this ambiguity.  I tried taking them literally; I tried just not being phased by it, basically ignoring it; I tried earnestly trying to figure it out, etc., etc. But I think the only way it could really get resolved it so just concede, submit to the authorities and accept their ways of thinking and doing - which, if you've been reading this blog at all - you can imagine would be very difficult if possible at all for me to do.

The clarity issue was in that a lot of things weren't spoken directly, or if they were then you still might not know why something needed to be done or there could be cross signals from different sources, or actions and words didn't seem to quite match as you thought they should, etc.  So that's where clarity became an issue.  I think this is the only place, including other places I've lived overseas, where I've ever had such a problem with clarity, so this is very unusual for me, and this was with mostly other Americans, my fellow countrymen.

***

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

My contention is that the mission sending me back to the USA was a form of penalty for not submitting to their authority and being a threat to their authority.  After that they used social disapproval, although moving me around from position to position was also a form of official penalty.

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I'll continue where I left off in my next post.

306. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 32 (Katz, pt. 3 )

I got a few things done today, but I also took a bit of a break.  This week I just felt like I just needed to step back.  I promised I'd bring an apple cake to church tomorrow as they're having a group their that comes through every year from the denomination, so they'll be feeding them, but I already told pastor that I might just stay home and have a spiritual retreat.  But I promised to bring the cake so I need to get the cake there.  I also need to get some cream cheese, so I'll have to do that in the morning I guess, as the grocery stores closest to me aren't 24 hour ones.  The cake is in the oven now.  It's the same recipe that I made for the little Austrian church and that I had to translate into German and metric when they wanted the recipe.  A nursing friend of mom's gave it to her, and I got it from mom years ago.

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The next main section of this article is "TYPES OF MOTIVATIONAL PATTERNS."  The author discusses 6 of these patterns or types of motivation.

"Rule compliance or conformity to system norms... Though people may conform for different reasons I am concerned here with one common type of reason, namely a generalized acceptance of the rules of the game.  Once people enter a system they accept the fact that membership in the system means complying with its legitimate rules." (p. 134)

This is probably the basic level that mission leadership was looking for to consider a person past the initial socialization hurdle and accepted into the group.  The word here that tripped me up in Vienna was "legitimate."  I didn't see that the Vienna mission's rules, or at least a good portion of them, wre letigimate and I thought that what they had there was an abuse of power rather than a more letigimate thing, but others seemed to accept it.  I think it was an abuse of power because I didn't think that for a Christian organization they practiced Christian use of power.  A lot of this was via the informal organization, however.

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"Instrumental reward geared to individual effort or performance. System rewards apply in blanket fashion to all members of a subsystem.  Individual rewards of an instrumental character are attained by differential performance." (p. 134)

I think there were some rewards possible, but not like in a regular job.  For example, as one became more trustworthy and perhaps as one's knowledge and skill became known, one might be given more interesting or prestigious work, for example.  But it's not like you'd get a raise or a bonus, for example.  These opportunities might have motivated some people though.  For me, they were interesting, but I got too many cross signals to rely on these suggestions too much.  You'd really go crazy believing everything that was told you as a possibility, so then you never were sure (or at least I wasn't).

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

The mission clearly demanded this of its members.  It might have accepted rule compliance as a first step along the socialization bath, but ultimately it wanted internalization of the missions goals (and values, and norms, and rules, and....etc.).  This is part of it's being a total institution and part of its concern for the attitudes of the individual member.

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"Social satisfactions derived from primary-group relationships. This is an important source of gratification for organizational members.  One of the things people miss most when they have to withdraw from organizations is the sharing of experiences with like-minded colleagues, the belonging to a group with which they have become identified." (p. 134)

Unfortunately, I didn't get as much social satisfaction as it seemed I should have from my primary-group (the other secretaries, because I didn't see myself having that much in common with them.  But I think for most people at the mission this statement would be true that after the stressful ministry context, close-knit working relationships and seclusion from the rest of the world (in many ways) it probably was difficult to leave their primary group relationships when they left the missin to return home.

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As you can see, I didn't fare too well in these types of motivational patterns.  But I really did come to the mission with a reasonable amount of motivation.,  It's just that after I arrived in Vienna, the mission worked hard at eroding that motivation, which sounds counterintuitive, so you assume that wasn't their intention ... unless, of course, they wanted to drive me out of there because of my dad.  I think those are probably your two options, either they didn't mean to erode my motivation or they did mean to and it was because of my dad.

305.Organizational Behavior, Pt. 31 (Katz, pt. 2)

To summarize the rest of the introduction of this article, there are three questions the author is going to address:

"(1) What are the types of behavior required for effective organizational functioning?...


(2) What are the motivational patterns which are used and which can be used in organizational settings?...


(3) What are the conditions for eliciting a given motivational pattern in an organizational setting?" (p. 131)

Not all of these questions are equally relevant to my purposes, but consider this an advance organizer (from my teaching or reading skills days).

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Starting with the first question, which is the first major article section "BEHAVIOR REQUIREMENTS," and skipping a couple sub-sections to "Innovative and spontaneous behavior."

"A neglected set of requirements consists of those actions not specified by role prescriptions which nevertheless facilitate the accomplishment of organizational goals.  The great paradox of a social organization is that it must not only reduce human variability to insure reliable role performance but that it must also allow room for some variability and in fact encourage it...." (p. 132)

Clearly this was very important in the Vienna mission because once it dealt with things outside its walls, especially with things "in-country" - i.e., in Eastern Europe - it needed its workers to be able to think on the fly, problem solve, think creatively, etc.  But there were also serious risks at stake that needed to be kept in mind while doing this, so there had to be, as I've mentioned more than once, trust between members, but also certain relevant knowledge and experience to be able to make good decisions.  So innovation and spontaneity was always under careful scrutiny and only permitted where and to whom it was trusted.

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The next sub-section is titled "Co-operaton."

"The patterned activity which makes up an organization is so intrinsially a co-operative set of interrelationships, that we are not aware of the co-operative nexus any more than we are of any habitual behavior like walking...." (p. 132)

This section cites examples and how one study showed that cooperation among department members increased productivity.  In the Vienna mission this was clearly a very major value and crossed all spheres of life there, including outside the office (home life, etc.).  I think this was a part of the security system to make the organization as self-sufficient as possible and as close as possible to a closed system (a sociological term - go to p. 36) as possible.

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The next sub-section is "Protection."

"Another subcategory of behavior facilitative of organizational functioning is the action which protects the organization aganst disaster.  There is nothing in the role prescriptions of the worker which specifies that he be on the alert to save life and property in the organization." (p. 133)

I think Katz maybe should have qualified this all-inclusiveness a bit, because I have a feeling that the Vienna mission isn't the only organization and there are also certain positions in every day firms that are told explicitly to protect something or the other of the organization.  In any case, virtually everyone in the Vienna mission was supposed to be on high alert virtually all the time (granted some times more alert than at other times).  This was not an organization where people believed in passing the buck regarding protection of the organization and anything related to the ministry.  So if anyone received a signal from a reliable source (such as their boss or the director) that something was amiss, even if they didn't understand or know what was wrong, they would immediately go in defensive mode for the sake of the ministry and be ready to take orders, explicit or otherwise as far as what they should do, if anything.

This might sound as if I'm overdoing it, but if you experienced what I did in my departure you'd see that these people all took a stand in unison against me and I doubt that they all, including my boss' teenage daughter, really knew that my egregious risk to the mission was.  Well, if they didn't know then, and they know who I am as I write this they understand now why I was dangerous, I expect.

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The next sub-heading is "Constructive ideas."

I think this is similar to "Innovative and spontaneous behavior," but maybe it's more along the lines of planning, rather than reacting to problems as they come up.  This might be more like someone suggesting a new course to teach or learning of a new group in another city that they could contact as a potential new group of students, for example.  This kind of thing would probably be limited to the well seasoned workers, and if others had any ideas like that they would have to run it by their superiors who would present it if it seemed feasible, but it would probably be greatly re-worked in the meantime because anyone below a certain level in the hierarchy would be at a disadvantage regarding knowledge level as to what was really going on in the mission to make reasonable suggestions.  And if they did present a good suggestion there would be the issue of rank and power, and the person would still need to be kept in their place because s/he presumably was still in their position/rank for a reason.

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The next sub-heading is "Self-training."

This is ironic, because this was exactly part of my socialization, in that I had been denied the opportunity to take a software class back home (they wouldn't tell me what software was used, saying it wasn't necessary, I could learn on the job), so I spent the first couple months reading software manuals and learning that way.  So this was a management-imposted self-training, which I don't think is quite what Katz means here; rather, I think Katz means the individual taking the initiative on their own to learn new skills.

The thing was in Vienna it was hard to do much of anything for any length of time that wasn't known by someone or the other and approved or disapproved of.  So if they found out you were doing some self-training they would have wanted to consider whether it was really necessary or not and that was their determination or not.  And they determined this not just on the basis of your technical skills, but on a whole host of other things, including whether it was more important for you to help socialize the new secretary, whether your attitude was more important than your skills, whether your boss didn't like that you just up and decided to learn something without talking it over with him first and he wanted to teach you that that's not how things were done there, or maybe your mentor could help you with it (although your mentor was very busy at the moment).

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The last sub-section is "Favorable attitude."

"Finally, members of a group can contribute to its operations by helping to create a favorable climate for it in the community, or communities, which surround the organization.  Employees may talk to friends, relatives, and acquaintances about the excellent or the poor qualities of the company for which they work." (p. 133)

In Vienna they were mainly interested in security, that you faithfully parrot the line about them being an international printing company.  I think as far as they were concerned, that was about all you needed to ever say about them to outsiders if you had to say anything about them at all.  So then you didn't really have to worry about the negative or positive issue, just the security issue there.  Same thing is more or less true in Eastern Europe, although when you were with the students or other believers they obviously knew you weren't an "international publishing company" (catch the deception there?) so you didn't have to pretend to be something you weren't, but they were also discreet enough to know what not to ask and the like.  In private meetings outside of class sessiongs they might send greetings to others back in the mission and ask of someone's welfare (someone who had been sick, who just got married, had been in the States on furlough, etc.).

The negative/positive issue comes into play regarding communications with folk back home - or, in my case, anywhere I happened to have friends, including Australia, E. Germany, or wherever.  That's when they wanted the party line parroted back home.  They might as well have sent me to indoctrination classes or something, or maybe that's what it was inthe States when they sent me back, sort of my own little private GULAG.

Well, I just made a Freudian slip and revealed my attitude, which was not, as you can guess, up to par.  I didn't start out that way though.  They made me that way, really.  I came ready to go and serve do a good job.  I never was on a high really about it though, I guess.  I think I came level-headed about it.  I'm not sure, but that might have thrown them for a loop.  But the thing was that I'd already had all that other experience and training and I was glad to be there but just not on a high about it - not in euphora or something.

I've already written so much here about how my experiences there led to my attitude change how the discrepencies.  I was really rather bowled over by the welcome though.  But it wasn't long before I began to notice the discrepancies, like the software manuals discussed above - 2 months of pretty much non-work, a waste of supporters' money.  And these things ate away at my attitude and I refuse to take the blame for that because I didn't cause these events, the mission leadership did.  The software manual incident was a stupid, manipulative social engineering-type socialization ploy that had no place in a Christian mission and I had no responsibility to accept that kind of playmanship and for them to expect that I should have a positive attitude about it is sorely mistaken on their part.  They were wrong and they misused their power in that and in a myriad other ways while I was with them.  God is not manipulative, Got does not force submission and He does not authorize His servants to use such means either.  In contrast, this is the kind of methodology Satan would use, and also the Communists, for example, used.

This is the end of this section of the article.

304. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 30 (Katz, pt. 1)

This next article is as follows:

Katz, Daniel (1964). The motivational basis of organizational behavior, Behavior Science, 9, 131-146.

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"The basic problem to which I shall address myself is how people are tied into social and organizational structures to that they become effective functioning units of social systems.  What is the nature of their involvement in a system or their commitment to it?


... [W]e need to cope with such organizational realities as the attracting of people into organizations, holding them within the system, insuring reliable role performance, and in addition stimulating actions which are generally facilitative of organizational accomplishment.  The material and psychic returns to organizational members thus constitute major determints, not only of the level of effectiveness of organizational functioning, but of the very existence of the organization." (p. 131)


Presumably the missionaries would come to Vienna with some kind of altruistic motivation, but there would be some range and variation as to the exact configuration this could take, such as how much one knew about the ministry before coming, which could affect (or not) the commitment to the work, what one thought of the Eastern European context of the work, the level of commitment to the ministry type (seminary), etc. And, of course, the role of the missionary in the organization would play a part as well in this configuration.  So to say that they came with altruistic motivations might have been true, but not very helpful in the mix of things.  A lot more could be learned by digging deeper into the specifics of the motivation that workers brought with them. 

In the Vienna mission, sinceit was a total institution and they tolerated close to zero deviance, this issue of commitment and motivation would have been of critical importance to the leadership and if they perceived a flagging of these (commitment or motivation) in any of their members they would have been quick to address the issue so that it could be fixed and also not spread to others.  In my opinion, appropriate levels, expressions and definitions of commitment and motivation would have been provided by the mission leadership, and the inductee and other members learned these by example, trial and error, and other ways.    I think that new members' initial motivations were brought under scrutiny as part of the socialization process (which included concerns with attitudes) and the mission approved, disapproved, tweaked or changed as needed the initial motivations.  This may or may not have happened consciously and overtly, where the new inductee realized that his/her motivations were changing, for example.

The phrase "actions which are generally facilitated of organizational accomplishment" is, as far as I'm concerned, very loaded and open to discussion and disagreement.  If that weren't so, half of this blog would not have been written.  That is, the mission had ideas of what actions were needed to do the job other than what I think were biblical.  I can't say whether or not they would have been able to accomplish exactly what they did if they had followed biblical mandates - chances are things would have ended out a lot different, but perhap they could have accomplished a lot more even if they'd trusted God and set up a ministry under His aegis.  But as things were, the mission saw actions as minimallly facilitating organizational accomplishment that were totally submissive to them and in keeping with their paranoid security norms which basically meant they ran or kept tabs on your whole life (at least while you were outside North America or your home country).  After you met those requirements, then you could go on to become a more productive member, but you had to meet those more basic requirement first... at least that was my experience.

Mission members didn't really expect, as far as I was aware, material returns.  However, it could have been that some of the theologians could have thought that the experience gained there might later on have benefited them elsewhere in their career.  The one person I'm thinking of that maybe thought like this was the head of textbook writing; I was under the impression that eventually they'd have all the textbooks completed (except they might need to keep translating them to new languages and having images made that were appropriate for that new geographical context, etc.).  So that director might have thought of his position as whittling down and his experience there as being helpful for other positions elsewhere.  I didn't know him that well, but that was sort of an impression I had of him that this could have been possible. 

Otherwise, everyone got "psychic returns," which is a very inadequate term to describe the sincere spiritual motivation held by these people.  It's possible that there was also bit of anti-Communism (i.e., political) motivation that fired people up, and that, along with some right-wing politics thrown in, was enough for the management to get away with its extreme paranoid ends-justifies-the-means security measures.  So you had the usual nonprofit altruism feel-good-for-doing-good motivation, the spiritual motivation for obedience to God, and perhaps a bit of politics thrown in.

The spiritual motivation issue might bear some elaboration as, in the world of management, these things would get broken down for the interest of recruitment, productivity, staff morale, retention, etc.  Not that the Vienna mission was particularly interested in these things, but I'm just saying... just in case.  I'm not going to go in to great detail here because it's not extremely relevant, I think to my case, but it's not completely irrelevant either.  This is just to give you an idea of the diversity of people at the mission, where there was otherwise homogeneity in many measures.

Spiritual motivation is a personal thing and I think that often individuals have a difficult time self-identifying such things.  For example, the radio interview when I was asked why I wanted to work with Russian emigrants... But then I was tired (I'd spend the night before up writing a peper for a class) and I also hadn't spent a year going around to churches telling them why I was called to work with Russian emigrants either (in contrast with the missionaries in Vienna).  So this can be a deeply personal experiential thing on one hand, but it can also be something more objectively tied to a specific event (a conversation, a sermon, a commitment call) or to a Scripture passage or passages, or some other similar specific influence.  Here are some examples of what I mean, written as if missionaries were saying them:

• I felt the call to be a missionary as a teenager and my pastors and professors confirmed my gift of teaching and I want to serve the Lord using this gift
• A missionary speaker from the Vienna mission came to speak at my church and I'd been praying for a way to serve God in the Great Commission and I knew my secretarial skills would be a valuable service in this ministry
• I read a book about believers in the USSR and I wanted to serve in a ministry in a Communist country and while I was in seminary I learned of this ministry and I knew this was where I belonged
• etc., etc.

Underneath these stories of how people came to the mission are clues to their motivation to be there.  This is what I'm talking about, but I hope you can appreciate that this is an oversimplification and that there were some 60 of these stories as well, not 3 and in fact there were 300 people including family members, although some of these 300 were children, but at least you should count spouses, so maybe there were 80 or 90 adults altogether with stories that might give clues to their motivation.

So although missionaries, by the time they arrived in Vienna, should have had a pretty good idea, at least on one level, of their motivation to serve in the mission, it's possible they still had some blindspots.  But the thing is that the socialization process could really have done a number on that initial thinking, as well.  The usual obvious motivations would be the ones that mirror the mission's mission statement and perhaps one's relationship to it vis a vis (formal or otherwise) one's role in the mission.

As for myself, though, I was really pumped about the mission's work, but not so much about my role in the mission. I was only very minimally motivated to carry out what I saw as the mission's extracurricular demands on my time.  While I didn't agree with Communism, I didn't see a need for politics in missions and I wasn't otherwise politically oriented.  I came to Vienna motivated to to have a people ministry (that is, outside the mission) because I believe that there was a need for people to hear the gospel and have opportunity to grown in the faith, and I didn't see that hanging around missionaries off hours had anything to do with that. These motivations were based on Scriptures and years of teaching and some experience and the influence of various people on me over the years.)

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But we've only just begun the article and I'm not even done with the introduction!

Until next time..