Search results

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the causal link between government regulation of religion and the choice of investing in human and physical capital.

The paper uses an analytical model with a government setting the output quota to transfer to religious activities. This depends on the extent to which it is an ideological government that uses religion either for legitimacy aims or for the ideological control of population. Workers and entrepreneurs observe the quota and simultaneously choose the investment in human and physical capital, which may trigger, à la Acemoglu, social increasing returns.

Directing resources to religious activities may be detrimental to output performance. This may occur if an ideological government sets the optimal quota above the quotas preferred by private agents. This negatively affects the investment in physical and human capital and output performance.

Despite the importance of government regulation of religion in the literature, its effect on output performance has not been thoroughly analyzed yet. In this respect, the paper aims to further investigate the causal links between religion regulation related to government type and the investments in human and physical capital and the output level.

The purpose of this paper is to examine ethnic entrepreneurship within the contexts of religion, cultural hybridity, segregation, diasporic network and enterprise.

The study collected two sets of data from 15 black African respondents/entrepreneurs through face-to-face interviews in London, UK.

Findings point to immigrants’ entrepreneurial adaptation through traditional and dogmatic interpretations of religious beliefs in the informal sector.

The paper offers fresh insights into the religion/faith and socio-cultural meld in the sagacity of black African entrepreneurship. Such insights afford great opportunities to construct new sites of meaning or frame new explanations of entrepreneurship among the ethnic group – using religion and culture as important environmental munificence.

This study aims to perform a systematic review of the dialectics and telematics strategy for regulating religion during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also analyzes some important issues related to religions, state, and society.

A critical literature review was performed to complete this study, using media, institutional, national, and international reports, as well as recent and previous studies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Religion was one of the social entities that had a crucial effect on the COVID-19 pandemic. The new system in the form of social distancing affects its performance. Furthermore, the response of religion in Indonesia is unique when its status is considered as the largest Islamic country in the world. Therefore, this study attempts to analyze and demonstrate the dynamics of relationships between actors, religion, and state in the process and strategy of religious regulation.

This study was carried out using a single methodological approach.

This study provides input to both religion and the state (government) in building a synergy of constructive responses to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It provides input to society in understanding the critical intersection between religion, state, and society.

This may be the first academic study that analyzes the problems of the process of regulating religion in the context of COVID-19.

What has been called “the McDonaldization of universities” (another name for top-down and strong corporate managerialism) has gained momentum as a model for governing and managing universities. This trend exacerbates the traditional tension between academic freedom and managerial control – a major challenge for the administration of academic institutions. The ideas of Charles Darwin represent an opportunity for overcoming such a challenge. However, traditional managerial models show inadequate, pre-Darwinian assumptions for devising organizational designs. This paper aims to show not only the opportunities but also the challenges of embracing a Darwinian paradigm for designing social systems. The case of managerialism in universities is an illustrative example. The paper proposes evolutionary guidelines for designing universities capable of maintaining managerial control while warranting academic freedom.

The paper proposes to understand the tension between academic freedom and managerial control in universities as the same tension between freedom and control that Karl Popper identified as successfully handled by evolutionary processes. The paper uses Darwinian theory, understood as a broader theory for complex systems, as a heuristic for designing social systems – universities in this case – able to adapt to changing environmental conditions while handling equilibrium between freedom and control. The methodology articulates the Popperian model of knowledge with the Darwinian scheme proposed by David Ellerman known as “parallel experimentation” for suggesting organizational forms in which university administrators and faculty can interact for generating free innovations in pseudo-controlled organizational arrangements.

A salient characteristic of strong managerialism is its pre-Darwinian understanding of survival and adaptation; such an approach shows important flaws that can lead universities to unfit designs that changing environments can select for elimination. As an alternative, the philosophy behind the ideas of Charles Darwin provides guidelines for designing innovative and adaptive social systems. Evolutionary principles challenge basic tenets of strong managerialism as Darwinian designs discard the possibility of seeing managers as knowledgeable designers that allegedly can avoid mistakes by allocating resources to “one-best” solutions through ex ante exhaustive, top-down control. Instead, a Darwinian model requires considering survival as a matter of adaptability through continuous experimentation of blind trials controlled by ex post selection. The key is to organize universities as experimenting systems that try new and different things all the time and that learn and improve by making mistakes, as an adaptive system.

Governing and managing universities require to acknowledge the uniqueness of academic institutions and demand to look for appropriate forms of organization. The proposal of this paper opens possibilities for exploring and implementing action-research initiatives and practical solutions for universities. Studies in management and administration of higher-education institutions must take into account the characteristics of this type of organizations and should consider wider spectrums of possibilities beyond the core ideas of managerialism.

University managers face a special challenge for achieving equilibrium between managerial control and academic freedom. Darwinian models of management invite to reconsider several management creeds, for instance, that “errors are bad things” – instead of innovation triggers and learning opportunities or that “one solution must fit all” – instead of considering bottom-up, different and adaptive solutions triggered by local academic units, each facing different environments.

Currently, there is no clear picture for governing universities. This paper introduces principles and guidelines for facing the current challenge that strong managerialism represents if universities are expected to maintain academic freedom and also survive in volatile environments.

This paper seeks to highlight the contribution of the Catholic practice of confession and the Protestant Reformation to the development of the modern concept of accountability.

A historical analysis of the literature is carried out to identify the contribution of key features of the practice of confession and the reformation of the Church to the development of accountability in Protestant societies.

The study highlights that the practice of confession is similar to accountability and the Catholic Church developed the emotion of guilt necessary for accountability. The Protestant Reformation provided for the further development of accountability to its modern form, through the restructuring of the practice of confession and the extension of the principles of accountability to itself. The conditions necessary for the practice of accountability such as popular power of the people, the concept of contracts and the emotion of guilt developed within the above environment.

This paper highlights the historical development of accountability to provide some insights into understanding of the environment and conditions necessary for the spread of accountability, which is becoming increasingly important in the current economic environment characterized by global integration of markets.

The exchange approach in management has viewed employee and employer relationship as a mutual relation, and this notion offers a causal explanation for the exchanges that occur between employee and employer. The purpose of the paper is to use the notion of “mutual relations” in the employment context to reflect on similar conceptions from the Islamic perspective and to throw light on Muslim obligations in employee–employer mutual relations seeking for benefits and preventing harm.

This paper draws on observations of other scholars in exchange theories based on reciprocity norm, well-being (maslaha), Islamic spiritual bases (taqwa, seeking for halal), work ethics in Islam and other Islamic teachings play toward understanding the nature of employee–employer mutual relationship from Islamic perspective. Two main social exchange theories (SET) are discussed to give a comprehensive view to the paper’s issue along with the literature reviewed from early Muslim scholars’ works, sayings of Prophet Muhammad PBUM and Holy Qur’an.

The literature indicates that it is possible to identify common ethical and contractual obligations in the employer’s and employee’s mutual relations from Islamic ideology. Given the paucity of research on employment relations in Islam, the paper offers an original perspective on this topic.

The paper concludes that a Muslim work obligation has to be based on the understanding of the scope and nature of the contract between employee and employer. Allah (The All-Knowing) knows that even if all obligations in employee and employer mutual relations are clear, human error might occur.