Internal communications and goal achievement: The CEO’s perspective

By effectively utilizing internal communications, CEOs are able to influence organizational culture and communications, inspire employee loyalty and engagement, and build brand image at both company and personal levels. In fact, some scholars believe that the CEO is more responsible for fostering forthright, transparent internal communications than the organization’s actual communications function. CEOs who are successful in promoting internal communications can positively influence organizational stakeholder relationships and better achieve their strategic goals. Through interviews with five CEOs, this paper determined that two-way internal communications was regarded by senior leadership as being necessary for organizational cohesiveness, strategy development, strategic reputation management, boundary spanning, and preemptive problem prevention. The CEOs interviewed also considered it their responsibility to model and nurture internal communications and regarded the function as contributing to the achievement of their organization’s strategic goals. Keywords: internal communications, IABC Excellence Theory, CEO, senior leadership, goal achievement

Description of Security Systems — a Few Reflections

This article presents fundamental issues concerning the description of the security system of an organization understood as an entirety composed of people equipped with tools, machines and materials, which are connected with one another by a specific bond and between which there are relations connected to ensuring an undisturbed existence and creating opportunities for development. The description of security systems is a complex undertaking. It is a consequence of its complexity, which is primarily a result of the set of relations between organizational elements. They include: accumulation (expressed in the number of hierarchical levels, range (related to the number of subordinations and dependencies), spread (associated with the number of elements subordinate to a single superior at each organizational level), organizational cohesiveness (connected to the mutual structural and functional dependencies between organizational elements due to performed tasks), information links (reflecting the channels and network of information flow), as well as the division of powers (associated with the right to make decisions), and division of duties (related to the relationship between organizational elements). The complexity of the description of security systems is also determined by the activity of the organization’s security systems, which can be divided into: material (concerning the types of activities), temporal (related to the order of its conduct in a specific time), and spatial (connected to conducting activities in specific places). The description of security systems is only possible through the use of: appropriate methodological procedures and a systemic approach, as characterized within the constraints resulting from the expression formula. This paper also indirectly addresses the determinants of the description of security systems. These are: up-to-date knowledge, concreteness and reliability of the description and sufficient detail.

Lay Buddhists and Moral Activism in Contemporary China (当代中国的佛教居士与道德能动主义)

The last few decades have seen the rise of grassroots groups of lay Buddhists in post-Mao China who, through the composition, exchange, and discussion of Buddhist-themed media, foster moral discourses that critique what they perceive as the materialistic direction of contemporary Chinese society. Disseminated at legal but unregulated spaces within Buddhist temples, these discourses empower the economically marginalized lay practitioners who gather there and provide them with new purpose in life. Practitioners are also able to transmit these moral discourses through networks to other temple spaces. However, they do not yet possess the means to use them to influence the social direction of Chinese society at large. This is due to (1) political restrictions against the circulation of religious-themed materials outside of approved religious activity sites; (2) economic obstacles faced by the practitioners who seek to spread anti-materialistic messages; (3) a lack of organizational cohesiveness among the practitioners; and (4) the influence on practitioners of doctrines within Buddhism that caution against proselytizing to those who do not already possess a pre-fated bond with the Buddha and his teachings. As a result, lay Buddhists do not as yet constitute a social movement in the way the term is conventionally used by sociologists.佛教居士组成的草根社会团体在毛时代之后的几十年快速发展。通过书写、交流与讨论与佛教主题相关的文献，他们促进形成了一套批判当前中国社会拜金主义倾向的道德话语。这套话语在合法且相对自由的佛教寺院中传播，鼓励了经济窘迫的信徒，帮助他们获得新的生活目的。这一道德话语也借由信徒进一步传播给其他的寺院。但是因为以下原因，这些草根团体无力影响中国社会的整体方向：1)宗教政策限制了宗教思想在寺庙以外的传播；2)信徒的经济地位较低，难以宣传反对拜金主义的话语；3)信徒中间缺乏组织凝聚力；4)反对向那些与佛陀无缘的人宣传佛家思想的信条。因此到目前为止，佛教居士团体还没有形成社会学意义上的社会运动。

Modeling Ethnic Protest: The Case of the Middle East and Central Asia

ABSTRACT Theory: Literature on ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia does not provide empirical measures necessary for rigorous hypothesis testing, nor does it incorporate a comprehensive theoretical foundation needed to identify the conditions for ethnic protest. There is also no consensus on the causes of ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia. Hypotheses: To improve our ability to explain ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia and to identify the necessary conditions for ethnic dissent, we test five hypotheses embodied in grievance and political mobilization. The literature on ethnic protest in the Middle East and Central Asia references both models but does not systematically test their relevance. Methodology: We use Logistic Regression to test the explanatory potential of the five hypotheses of the Grievance and Mobilization models. We use Ted Gurr's Minorities at Risk data set, which presents data on 40 ethnic groups in the Middle East and Central Asia. The dependent variable is protest for 1990-95. Findings: Our research does not lend much empirical support for the grievance model, which dominates the Middle Eastern and Central Asian area study literature. Cultural identity and religious freedom variables of grievance model do not provide sufficient condition for the outbreak of ethnic protest. The mobilization model has better explanatory power. It lends significant support to the three hypotheses associated with the mobilization model and suggests that ethnic protest is more likely to occur under conditions of organizational cohesiveness, low levels of autocracy, and international support.

Judaism Triumphant: Isaac Mayer Wise on Unitarianism and Liberal Christianity

Against the background of the dramatic upsurge of liberalism, radicalism, and freethought in religion within the United States in the last third of the nineteenth century, American Reform Judaism and Unitarianism made impressive strides. By the 1880s, Reform Judaism had become the preeminent form of Judaism in both institutional growth and organizational cohesiveness; it remained the favored religious pattern of the elite leadership of American Jewry well into the twentieth century. For its part, Unitarianism by the 1880s had spread beyond the confines of New England, featured a revitalized Western branch, the Western Unitarian Conference, and was experiencing an articulate denominational consciousness.