Christ vs. Communism: Communism as a Religious Social Problem in Finland's Proto‐Fascist Lapua Movement in the 1930s

This article traces the emergence of religious anti‐communist discourse in Finland's proto‐fascist Lapua Movement in the 1930s. Applying constructionist social problems theory, it discusses the constructions of communism as a religious social problem, Christian piety as a solution to the problem of godless communism, and the religious legitimation of violence. The article argues that by identifying Christianity with the Finnish nation the construction of communism as a religious problem—itself an outcome of the influence of revivalist Lutheran ministers in the leadership of the movement—resonated with the broader audience, but that this indigenous religious nationalism lost support with the increasing belligerence of the movement.     

Does managers' motivation matter? Exploring the associations between motivation,transformational leadership,and innovation in a religious organization

Religious organizations are social systems operating in a complex and changing environment. By looking to an authority beyond themselves, religious organizations have comparatively little control over defining their own goals. In this juggling between sticking to the ultimate goal of an organization and adapting to complex changing environments, that is, in the juggling between tradition and renewal, transformational leadership seems to play an important role in religious organizations. The extensive body of literature on transformational leadership has focused more on the outcomes of transformational leadership than on its antecedents. We extend the existing literature by linking managers' motivation to their transformational leadership behaviors in a religious organization. More specifically, we examined the associations of intrinsic and prosocial motivation with transformational leadership, and we investigated the relationship between transformational leadership and innovation among 252 managers in the largest nonprofit organization in Norway, the Church of Norway. Analyses in structural equation modeling revealed a positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and transformational leadership, whereas the relationship between prosocial motivation and transformational leadership was not significant. Transformational leadership was positively associated with innovation. Based on the results of the study, we discuss practical implications regarding how to support intrinsic motivation, transformational leadership, and innovation in religious organizations.     

Formal Polity and Power Distribution in American Protestant Denominations*

The purpose of this paper was to determine whether differences in religious denominations' formal polity structures (i.e., congregational, presbyterian, and episcopal patterns) contribute to vertical power differentials among their structural levels. Formal polity structure was measured as authority of local churches to hire and fire their ministers. Data from 26 Protestant denominations suggest a relationship between formal polity and the power distribution which was operationalized as the location of the pastoral placement bureau. This relationship was obtained independent of such important variables as size, administrative specialization, and bureaucratic formalization. The findings suggest that when studying power distributions, especially in purposive organizations, constitutionally defined and normatively shaped aspects of organizational polity (i.e., formal polity structures) should be taken into account.     

Policy advocacy and leadership training for formerly incarcerated women: An empowerment evaluation of ReConnect,a program of the Women in Prison Project,Correctional Association of New York

There is limited knowledge on re-entry initiatives for formerly incarcerated women specifically on building women's advocacy and leadership skills. Our research highlights an empowerment evaluation on ReConnect, a 12-session; innovative advocacy and leadership development program rooted in an integrated framework of empowerment, and transformational leadership theories. Using thematic analysis, we coded three focus groups with 24 graduates, for themes that matched our framework's concepts. ReConnect graduates reported being empowered by the information they received on parental rights, housing, and employment. Participants agreed that ReConnect improved their communication skills, preparing them to advocate for themselves and community members.     

Cultivating knowledge of resiliency and reintegration among military youth through a national youth leadership program

Youth in military families are frequently challenged by the adjustment demands associated with the deployment and reintegration of a parent. A positive youth development approach was undertaken by the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to develop and implement a Military Teen Ambassadors (MTA) training for youth in military families that would facilitate knowledge of resiliency and reintegration and foster leadership skills to build assets for themselves as well as their peers within their local communities. To determine if MTA was functioning as intended and to refine future programming, this preliminary formative study assessed perceived participant learning outcomes associated with MTA on variables pertaining to knowledge acquisition, perceived skill acquisition, and community needs awareness. Data were collected prior to the training, immediately following the training, and 6 months after the training. Repeated measures analysis indicated significant mean increases over time in knowledge and awareness of resiliency and reintegration; perceived leadership skills; and community awareness. Qualitative findings provided triangulation in the aforementioned areas. These findings strengthen the body of knowledge on resiliency by demonstrating that the 7 Cs model may be an effective strategy to incorporate into leadership development programs seeking to build knowledge of resiliency among military youth. Study limitations, lessons learned, and recommendations for further research are delineated.     

Gendered Leadership: The Effects of Female Development Agency Leaders on Foreign Aid Spending

This article examines the effects of gender on the leadership of bilateral development aid agencies, particularly their official development assistance (ODA) allocations toward gender‐related programming. Drawing on earlier research on gendered leadership, the article tests the hypothesis that female director generals (DGs) and ministers responsible for aid agencies will allocate more ODA than their male counterparts toward gender programming. This existing literature on gendered leadership is divided: some scholars argue that women and men have distinct leadership styles on account of their gender, while others argue that the only distinguishing factor is the institutional context in which they lead. Drawing on data collected on aid flows and agency leadership within the major Western aid donors of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) over the period from 1995 through 2009, we use pooled time series analysis to examine the effects of gendered leadership on aid allocation. Our analysis reveals a tendency for female DGs and ministers to focus ODA on gender‐mainstreaming programs, while male DGs focus ODA on gender‐focused programs. We argue that these divergent priorities reflect the women's desire to reform gendered power structures within their respective aid agencies, and the men's desire to maintain existing gender power structures from which they benefit.     

Organizational Resources and the Gender Gap in Congregational Lay Leadership

The purpose of this study is to examine how organizational resources affect the gender gap within lay (volunteer) leadership in religious congregations. Using institutional theory as a framework, this study situates congregations within a larger field of organizations competing for legitimacy. Congregations with higher levels of resources—such as wealthier members, better-educated members, or larger memberships—are more likely to be connected to the core of the field and therefore more likely to have gender egalitarian practices in order to signal their legitimacy. Therefore, I hypothesize that women in resource-rich congregations will have greater access to volunteer leadership positions than women in congregations that are resource deficient. I analyze 70,942 individuals in 344 religious congregations from the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey using multilevel modeling. I show that religious congregations with more members, better-educated attenders, and wealthier attenders have smaller gender gaps in volunteer leadership positions. Congregational resources can mitigate the gender gap in lay leadership, and women within resource-rich organizations have greater access to positions of authority.     

Kenyan Religious Leaders’ Views on Same-Sex Sexuality and Gender Nonconformity: Religious Freedom versus Constitutional Rights

Religion plays an important role in framing the public discourse on sexuality, especially in countries where religion fully permeates social life. We explored the perspectives of Kenyan religious leaders on sexual and gender diversity in their country’s specific context. A total of 212 Catholic, Islamic, and Protestant leaders from urban centers and rural townships completed a self-administered questionnaire specifically developed for this study. The leaders’ perspectives were predominantly negative. Limited acceptance was conditional on sexual minorities not engaging in same-sex practices or seeing such practices as sinful. A substantial minority (37%) endorsed the use of violence for maintaining social values, especially regarding homosexuality and gender nonconformity. The majority of religious leaders agreed on the difference between civil law and religious doctrine. Human rights principles enshrined in Kenya’s Constitution were considered to be applicable to sexual and gender minorities. Decriminalization of same-sex sexuality was seen as against one’s religion. Perspectives were less negative if leaders were familiar with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. Interventions that promote intergroup contact could be effective in changing religious leaders’ mind-sets and advancing human rights and health for sexual and gender minorities.     

Building Community Leaders in Underserved Communities: An Exploration of the Role of Seed-Funding for Community Projects by Program Graduates

Investing in community leadership development (CLD) remains a strategy with promise in creating vibrant communities. Although many low-income CLD programs teach effective leadership skills, these often lay fallow due to lacking opportunities for graduates to apply the skills. This study explores how providing competitive minigrants fuels the creation of value-adding community projects. In-depth interviews were conducted with 55 graduates of a low-income CLD program, 19 facilitators, and 12 community members knowledgeable about the program. The study observed that by providing seed money for graduate projects, CLD programs can help translate skills into practice thereby increasing community engagement and socio-economic wellbeing.     

State of the Arts: Using Literary Works to Explore and Learn about Theories and Models of Leadership

Skills and knowledge in leadership are frequently cited as being key to delivering a vision of quality services and this supposes a relationship between ‘effective leadership’ and transforming services. How students engage with learning about their own leadership potential, however, is a challenge to educators. Leaders are constantly presented with moral and ethical choices within a rapidly changing and challenging environment and are expected to promote distributory and participatory leadership models. This paper shares our experiences of arts-based leadership pedagogy where students were encouraged to confront fundamental moral challenges in their everyday work and to develop leadership skills in moral analysis and judgement through the examination of case studies embodied within well-known literary works. A structured evaluation demonstrated that this method facilitated deeper learning in relation to the students' interrogation of key leadership concepts, and promoted a safe learning environment for engaging in the experience of taking up a leadership and respective followership roles.     

Changing generations in today's workforce: Leadership skills for Millennials

The focus of traditional leadership expectations is the individual leader's developmental experience. However, Millennials are seeking to take on leadership roles more quickly than previous generations. The Practice‐Immediacy Model provides a framework where Millennials can take on these leadership roles while continuing to develop their own behavior and skills. The present article expands on the four basic behavioral components of leadership—vision building, standard‐bearing, integrating, and developing. The article then describes the associated specific skills within each behavioral component. Finally, the article proposes an interdisciplinary model that professionals can use to develop leadership skills for Millennials.     

Providing nursing leadership in a community residential mental health setting

The worldwide burden of mental illness is increasing. Strong leadership is increasingly emerging as a core component of good mental health nursing. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the ways in which nurses can provide strong and consistent leadership in a values-based practice environment that embodies respect for individuals' dignity and self-determination within a community residential mental health service, which provides a structural foundation for effective action. This is accomplished through the presentation of two vignettes, which highlight how the seemingly impossible becomes possible when an economic paradigm such as agency theory is exchanged for a sociological and psychological paradigm found in leadership as stewardship at the point of service. It is through stronger nursing leadership in mental health that stigma and discrimination can be reduced and better access to treatments and services can be gained by those with mental illness. Nurse leadership in mental health services is not new, but it is still relatively uncommon to see residential services for "high needs" individuals being led by nurses. How nurses meet the challenges faced by mental health services are often at the heart of effective leadership skills and strategies.     

In the service of God and the parish: Professional ideologies and managerial control in the Church of Sweden

Professional ideologies are not only shared norms, beliefs, and values but also ‘operational philosophies’ – actual practices – that both constitute and regulate a professional community. Professional ideologies may both accommodate and even embrace certain managerial practices and counteract them if they are regarded as a threat to professional jurisdictions and other privileges. A study of ministers of the Church of Sweden, the established church in Sweden, demonstrates that new demands for managerial control, deriving from shrinking financial resources as the church loses members, are, on the one hand, recognized in terms of providing a joint perspective on the activities of the parish while, on the other, there is a significant skepticism toward more elaborate evaluation methods and performance metrics. For ministers, religious services must not be regarded as being like any other market-based activity, and the church, as a faith-based organization, needs to carefully position itself vis-à-vis industry and public administration. The study contributes to the professionalism literature, the accounting literature, and the study of faith-based organizations.     

“I Just Want to Do God's Will:” Teaching Martin Luther King,Jr. as a Religious Leader

Teachers often respond to the perils of teaching about religion by simply avoiding the subject. An investigation of secondary lesson plans on three prominent Martin Luther King, Jr. websites reveals little attention to the ideology of the civil rights movement, especially those touching on religious ideas. Ignoring King's religious views risks fundamentally misrepresenting his identity, his ideology, and his motivation for nonviolence. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, King's 1958 account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott articulates three key features of the theological framework that inspired his activism: the spiritual motivation for his leadership, the ethical basis for his strategy of nonviolent direct action, and the theological understanding of human nature that undergirded his leadership and strategy. These points provide a useful model for introducing King's ideas in the classroom. The effort to intentionally and thoughtfully teach religion could contribute one step toward inculcating genuine tolerance among students. Civil discourse is not fostered simply by identifying core principles everyone shares but also through thoughtful, critical engagement with disparate ideas, including what are, for many people, the most heavily freighted ideas.     

Sariling Gawa Youth Council as a Case Study of Youth Leadership Development in Hawai'i

SUMMARY

This article describes Sariling Gawa Youth Council as a case study of youth leadership development in Hawai'i. Since 1980, thousands of young people-primarily Filipino youth-have participated in Sariling Gawa activities which have developed their leadership skills. Many of them have continued to lead the organization and utilize what they learned with numerous local organizations and state agencies. The authors examine Sariling Gawa's growth, structure, and other factors that contribute to its longevity. The model includes (1) youth empowerment through building their leadership skills, (2) fostering and strengthening peer social support and social networks, (3) promotion of positive ethnic identity, and (4) community capacity building by involving youth in civic and community affairs.     

The Malawi 1964 cabinet crisis and its legacy of ‘perpetual regression of trust’ amongst contemporary Malawian politicians

Malawi's cabinet crisis was one of the most critical incidents in Malawi's political history. The crisis emanated from a disagreement between the Prime Minister and his six cabinet ministers over domestic, as well as foreign policies. The end result was that the six cabinet ministers resigned or were fired from government. While this article acknowledges that the link between the cabinet crisis and Dr Banda's leadership style during the one party era is undisputed, it argues that a further link between the crisis and contemporary Malawian politics has remained unexplored. The central argument of this article is that the cabinet crisis did not only determine the nature of political relations during the Banda era, but also that of contemporary Malawian politics in what may be identified as the legacy of ‘perpetual regression of trust’ among politicians.     

Spiritual Competence: What It Is,Why It Is Necessary,and How to Develop It

Various professional standards underscore the importance of providing effective services to all people, including those from diverse religious backgrounds. Yet despite these standards, studies have repeatedly found that most social workers receive little training in navigating this aspect of diversity during their graduate educations. To address this lack of training, the present article discusses a concept that is foundational for effective service provision with spiritual clients from diverse religious backgrounds—spiritual competence. More specifically, this article outlines what spiritual competence is and why it is important in therapeutic work, and then offers a number of strategies for developing spiritual competence. As such, this article helps equip practitioners to provide more ethical, effective services in a nation characterized by increasing religious diversity.     

Outstanding leadership in nonprofit organizations: Leadership competencies in Roman Catholic religious orders

Effective leadership is essential for nonprofits to focus their energies beyond survival and toward accomplishment of their unique missions. This article describes a study of the leadership competencies of a sample of outstanding and typical leaders of Roman Catholic religious orders. The authors present a framework for understanding the characteristics that define excellence in the leadership of nonprofits.     

The Role of Social Networks in the Immigration Decision-making Process: The Case of North American Immigration to Israel

This study focuses on the role of social networks in the decision-making process in migration which occurs between developed countries, specifically in immigration from North America to Israel. The central declared motives for immigration were religious; nevertheless, “materialistic” issues were also mentioned. The decision-making process was long, usually taking from 2 to 10 years. Information was gathered via personal contacts from social networks, during visits to Israel, and from Jewish organisations. The Internet also played a major role in this process. Networks that were set up by Israeli and Jewish organisations were found to be especially effective in organising immigration because they connected non-numerous dispersed individuals, who were thinking about Aliyah, and needed various kinds of support.