MINDSCAPE TYPES SURVEY (MTS1)

MTS1 was created by DAVID M. BOJE September 6, 2004; it is adapted from works by Magoroh Maruyama (All survey and website materials are Copyright © Magoroh Maruyama and David Boje); Surveys may be used for educational purposes only; for any other uses please contact dboje@nmsu.edu

Last Name ________________________________ First Name ____________________________

Date _______________________

1. As a Leader, pick the phrase that describes you best?
   1. I set up written job descriptions
   2. I give people freedom to define jobs according to their talent?
   3. I like to rotate people through various jobs until they find their fit?
   4. I like to rotate people through various jobs until so they garner new experiences?
2. As a Leader, pick the phrase that best describes your “concept of personal integrity”?
   1. I adhere to my concept of personal integrity regardless of the situation.
   2. I adhere to my concept of personal integrity regardless of what others say or think.
   3. I make my personal integrity consistent with the behavior and opinion which are in the social situation and context.
   4. I make my personal integrity concept consistent with the mutual benefit of the new situation and context.
3. As a leader, how would you set up your organization; Pick the phrase that best applies to you?
   1. New people will be socialized into homogeneous groupings; there will be a hierarchy of groups and subgroups and the executive supergroup; a feeling of cohesion is important.
   2. Forget scheduling and planning; central control is capricious and dictatorial; self-design is the rule.
   3. Organize with an emphasis on mutual dependency, sharing of intimate concerns, and preservation of social harmony.
   4. Organize with an emphasis on networks to make new contacts, generate new purposes, and interaction to generate mutually beneficial relationships, while dissolving relations no longer beneficial.
4. Pick the phrase that best describes your leaderly approach to decision-making?
   1. Decisions are made by majority rule (voting), or leaving it up to the experts who know the best way. Once the decision is made, it is applied uniformly to everyone.
   2. Each person should be independent of others’ decisions.
   3. Decisions make use of the heterogeneity and individual differences so that mutually beneficial outcomes are sought.
   4. Decisions make use of the heterogeneity and individual differences so that novel outcomes can be originated. 
5. Pick the phrase that best describes your concept of employees?
   1. An organization is a hierarchy of specialized employees, each of whom belongs to one job classification.
   2. An organization is an aggregate of employees who think and act independently.
   3. An organization consists of heterogeneous employees who interact for mutual advantage, without subordination.
   4. An organization consists of heterogeneous employees who interact for mutual benefit, and in ways that generate new diversity.
6. Pick the phrase that best describes how you recruit and promote people?
   1. Applicants are hired who are best fit to job description and are obedient in following instructions faithfully.
   2. Applicants must have unusual talents, and would be bored unless they went through frequent job rotation.
   3. Applicants have the ability to put their knowledge into context; must be willing to rotate jobs across departmental boundaries in order to experience one another’s work, learn different points of view, and maximize efficiency of the total organization
   4. Applicants have the ability to put their knowledge into context; when doing someone else’s job in rotation, they do it with originality and make unexpected combinations of old and new.
7. You get to design the new office layout; pick the phrase that best describes you?
   1. Budget is important; I would choose a deign that is the best possible choice for all concerned.
   2. Each person needs their own “cubicle” which they can design anyway they choose.
   3. Each person will have specific needs; so we need to collaborate with an architect who can develop mutually beneficial combinations until a satisfactory pattern is found.
   4. Every person has specific needs; the patterns of relations between groups keeps changing, and generating new needs and new relations. Therefore, the budget must allow for permanent redesign.
8. Pick the phrase that best describes your preference for training?
   1. Training materials are sequentially structured for ease of memorization and clear steps to follow.
   2. We do not train; people expected to teach themselves.
   3. Our training is mainly non-verbal, multi-sensory, and contextual; on-the-job training is given in context instead of classroom training.
   4. Our training is mainly non-verbal, but with more emphasis on exploration, experimentation, and innovation.
9. Pick the phrase that best describes your favorite learning style?
   1. I like a step-by-step approach where information is presented sequentially, and fits into categories and structured hierarchy.
   2. I am an independent learning and prefer to teach myself.
   3. I like a visual map of what I am learning, and to be experiential and hands on so I can judge what I learn in context.
   4. I like a visual map and to learn by experience that results in exploration, experimentation, and innovation.
10. I prefer a professor who (choose best answer for you):
    1. Tells me exactly how I should write my paper.
    2. Gives much freedom in what and how I write the term paper.
    3. Has a hands-on style, so I can experience the content.
    4. Points out relations between seemingly unrelated things.
11. Assume you have to drive to someone’s house where you have never been before. You telephone to a friend who knows the place, and ask for direction. Choose one answer among the four below?
    1. I prefer the type of instruction which says: Turn left at the second signal, go five blocks and turn right.
    2. I prefer the type of instruction which says: Go south for three miles until you come to a gas station, turn east and go until you come to a church, then turn north.
    3. I prefer the type of instruction which says: Drive parallel to the freeway until you cross a river, turn toward the mountain. The roads curves several times but keep going until you cross a railway track.
    4. No matter ho the instruction is given, I convert it in my mind to a mental map, and follow the map.
12. When designing a university dormitory, which is for you the most important consideration?
    1. Make all rooms the same dimensions and furnished the same.
    2. Each room should be a little different, since students’ tastes vary.
    3. A common kitchen with tables should be designed as a social gathering place.
    4. Design halls or corridors so that there are individual spaces where students’ art work can hang like in a gallery.
13. If you were to design an orbiting large-scale outer space community for several thousand people, which one statement best reflects you?
    1. Video cassette scenery with movements such as waves, clouds, birds, ships.
    2. Painted pictures of somewhat narrow scenery such as living between hills or living in a village, which can be replaced from season to season.
    3. Painted pictures of wide horizon scenery such as desert, cornfield, prairie, ocean which can be replace from season to season.
    4. Painted pictures of enclosed views such as living in a forest or living in front of a small waterfall, which can be replaced from season to season.
14. Pick a phrase that best describes your overall philosophy?
    1. The parts are subordinated to the whole.
    2. Society is merely an aggregate of individuals who think and act independently.
    3. Society consists of heterogeneous individuals who interact to mutual advantage (in non-hierarchical ways that are socially harmonious).
    4. Society consists of heterogeneous individuals who interact for mutual benefit (new patterns and a new harmony).
15. Pick the phrase that best describes your ethics?
    1. The stronger should dominate the weaker; what benefits the greater number of people is better than what benefits a smaller number of people.
    2. Everybody should be self-sufficient; being poor is a person’s own fault.
    3. Different individuals help one another by virtue of being different; there is harmony among diverse individuals that should be maintained.
    4. Different individuals should help one another; Sameness generates competition and conflict, while diversity enables mutual benefit and new patterns of harmony to be generated.
16. Pick the phrase that best describes your values?
    1. I like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; values ought to be ranked from most to least important.
    2. Each person has theory own value system; the meaning of life varies from individual to individual; ranking needs is blatantly absurd.
    3. Values are interrelated. You cannot separate needs into independent categories; needs cannot be rank-ordered in real life. Meaning depends upon the situations, contexts, and cultures. There is no universal need hierarchy.
    4. Values are interrelated; they are no independent needs; they cannot be rank-ordered. But values do interact and generate new values and new needs as the situations and contexts arise.
17. Pick the phrase that would be your ideal environmental policy?
    1. One person’s gain is another person’s loss. Therefore, to provide industry, some parts of the environment must be sacrificed; these are zero-sum tradeoffs.
    2. If people abandon the city for the countryside and each grows their own food, there will be sustainability.
    3. Nature has attained a delicate balance; killing a single insect is disturbing nature; leave nature alone.
    4. Nature is changing all the time. A mutually beneficial relation between humans and environment can be created.
18. Suppose you get to decide on how to design the city’s architecture and set its aesthetic principles; pick the phrase that suits your taste the best?
    1. Unity is achieved through repetitions, similarities, and symmetry. There are dominant and subdominant themes; a boundary between indoor and outdoor.
    2. I place emphasis on randomness, on the unexpected, and capricious, so that the cityscape is not boring.
    3. I think repetitions and similarities are to be avoided; harmony is in the diversity of elements and their interrelationships; outdoor and indoor interpenetrate without boundary. Keep spaces flexible so that new configurations can adapt to the situation.
    4. Repetitions and similarities are avoided, and there is a changing harmony of the diverse elements; outdoor and indoor interpenetrate without boundary.  Builds should be designed with multiple and changing interpretations, not a single style.
19. Pick the phrase that best describes your view about religion?
    1. There is one creator who is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly designed this universe; he monitors it constantly and has everything under control. All religions worship the same god by different names.
    2. Each individual is their own god.
    3. There are many different gods, as well as animal and natural forces, and spirits of the dead.  There is no hierarchy among gods, humans, animals, plants, and so forth. Gods are not perfect or omniscient, nor are they omnipotent.
    4. There are many different gods, and harmony keeps changing as new gods are added and as the interaction among gods, humans, animals, plants, etc. keeps occurring.
20. Pick the phrase that best describes your research methodology?
    1. I like to quantify-data into tested categories, or gather qualitative-text in sequential step-by-step way to fit into typologies.
    2. I prefer to be an observer and follow my own steps to resolve a problem.
    3. I immerse myself in the research situation with eyes and ears open, and no preconceived categories.
    4. I immerse myself in the research situation, and prefer to track many verbal and non-verbal aspects that happen simultaneously.
21. Pick the phrase the best describes your view of cause and effect?
    1. Two things cannot cause each other; one is the cause, the other the effect; the cause-effect relationship may be deterministic or probabilistic; things can be jointly-caused.
    2. There are independent events, each with their own probability; these events create nonrandom patterns, whose structure emerges or decay; equilibrium is an illusion.
    3. There are long and short term causal loops. Deviations from the pattern are corrected over time by mutual interaction; the system regains its equilibrium.
    4. Many things can cause one another in short and long term causal loops; interactions of these loops maintain a pattern of heterogeneity; deviations from the pattern are deviation-amplifying over time.
22. What kind of logic fits you (pick the best statement)?
    1. I like a deductive logic, from the general principles down to the specific case. Reasoning is sequential, without loops.
    2. Each question has its own answer; I do not buy into deduction (from principles) or induction (building to some general principle).
    3. Logic involves simultaneous understanding of mutual relationships in social contexts; these relations do not have sequential priority; they are not hierarchical; categories are not mutually exclusive, but get socially constructed.
    4. Logic involves simultaneous understanding of mutual relationships in contexts; these are not sequential or hierarchical, and the categories keep changing and rearranging with each new event.
23. Pick the statement that describes you best view of what is knowledge (epistemology)?
    1. There is only one truth. Thos who are sufficiently educated and rigorous can agree upon the truth. Knowledge follows general gules, from universal knowledge to specific facts; objective reality exists as a facticity.
    2. One should seek the specific pieces of information needed for one’s activity; it is useless to look for universal principles or to learn beyond one’s self interests.
    3. People see through different eyes; knowledge is subjective, constructed socially to appear objective; some ignore parts of reality; others distort parts of reality; so no one sees the entire reality.
    4. People see through different eyes; knowledge is subjective, constructed socially to appear objective; no one see the entire reality; it just keeps changing and rearranging as contexts collide.
24. Pick the answer that describes your being-in-the-world (ontology)?
    1. The world is a place of order; there are accidents, but deviations play no central role in the world; we are in a world that has a grand design we do not always fathom.
    2. People isolate themselves from one another; what is unique is unrelated to what others do; there is no universal design; stuff happens.
    3. Meaning depends upon context and the social situation; people perceive multiple situations of reality simultaneously.
    4. There are multiple realities; they keep changing and rearranging as new meanings arise; people socially workout alternatives to current reality.
25.  Pick the answer that best describes your view of the cosmos?
    1. The universe is homogenous in time and space; there is no relativity, only probability at different times and in different places that this or that will occur.
    2. The most probable state of the universe is random distribution of independent events, each having its own probability. The universe decays, which is its nature.
    3. The cosmos has harmony between its heterogeneous elements; harmony is maintained because of mutual interaction that corrects disharmony; decay is therefore counteracted, so the universe maintains itself.
    4. The cosmos has interacting heterogeneous elements that generate more and more diversity; new combinations of mutually beneficial relations emerge as the universe keeps on growing.

Instructions for calculating your Mindscape scores:

H-type – add up the number of A-answers __________.

I-type – add up the number of B-answers __________.

S-type – add up the number of C-answers __________.

G-type – add up the number of D-answers __________.

Write down your score values, then move along to MINDSCAPE MTS1 survey feedback.

Go along to the MTS1 survey feedback, based upon your scores