Leadership in faith‐based nonprofits

This case study illustrates the unique challenges of leading a faith‐based nonprofit organization within a multifaith constituency in Asia. The core themes of the case are based on research conducted with the staff, executive team, and board members of an international faith‐based nonprofit organization in Asia. Specifically, the case focuses on three identity‐based leadership dilemmas in relation to (1) creating a shared sense of organizational identity, (2) talent management, and (3) board governance. By describing the challenges faced by the CEO, the case shows how a strong faith‐based identification can positively bind an organization together, but also result in organizational blind spots with unintended consequences.     

The perils of e‐mail communications in nonprofits

Nonprofits typically operate in a multicultural and global environment. Critical to their success is effective communications by their leaders. But effective communications is a challenge as e‐mail has become the medium of choice for communications among most nonprofit executives. Communicating with their culturally diverse stakeholders using the less personal medium of e‐mails could be jeopardized unless nonprofit executives consciously focus on how recipients might decode their message. By understanding the interactions of the linguistic, cultural, and social processes inherent in the encoding and decoding of communications, they can attenuate misunderstandings. Learning from a series of personal and damaging e‐mails experienced by one of the authors in a global nonprofit organization, the authors underline the need to be culturally sensitive in e‐mail communications in a multicultural organization. This article highlights the challenge faced by leaders and managers of nonprofits to be direct yet polite when not communicating face‐to‐face with their stakeholders.     

The role of county‐based funders in sustaining nonprofits within rural and urbanized counties

Social service nonprofit organizations in the United States originally relied on private donations and charitable events to sustain their operations. Using case studies, this article examines the role played by local officials in the thirty‐year survival of certain Indiana Youth Services Bureaus (YSBs) and highlights the salient factors that influenced the viability of some nonprofit organizations over the others.     

Migrants' minority‐language newspeakerism: The pervasiveness of nation‐state monolingual regimes in transnational contexts

From a critical sociolinguistics perspective, this paper investigates processes of minority‐language newspeakerism among 23 migrants from heterogeneous socioeconomic and language backgrounds. Informants networked in a cybercafé and a bench in Catalonia, a European society with a majority and a minority language, Spanish and Catalan. Drawing on audio‐recorded interviews, naturally‐occurring interactions and four‐year ethnographic data, I analyze how informants' language practices and ideologies interplay with self‐/other‐ascribed Catalan newspeakerhood. The results show that migrants do not envision themselves as Catalan newspeakers. They employ ethnicist constructions of Catalan as ‘the locals’’ language, and inhabit fluid identities whereby ‘Catalanness’ is vindicated through global Spanish. They invest in Spanish newspeakerhood instead, presenting Spanish as the language of ‘integration’. I conclude that newspeakerism contributes to understanding migrants’ roles in the linguistic conflicts of minority‐language societies; particularly, the ways in which they invest in majority languages, following nation‐state monolingual regimes which pervade as gatekeepers to post‐national citizenship.     

Human capital inflow in nonprofits: Entry‐level employees’ sector shift

Although recruitment and retention of qualified employees are some of the biggest challenges in the nonprofit sector, nonprofit organizations must maintain human capital inflow due to its significant impacts on organizational success. Through person‐organization value fit, this paper explores the factors that influence labor shifts from the public or for‐profit sector into the nonprofit sector in the South Korean context. Specifically, the effects on the likelihood of employees switching to the nonprofit sector from the perspective of eight job satisfaction measures and three education–job match measures are investigated. Two groups of employees (those whose career started in the for‐profit sector and those starting in the public sector) are compared. Results indicate that there is substantial variation between the two groups. In particular, intrinsic job satisfaction has completely different effects on those working in the for‐profit sector than on those working in the public sector regarding their likelihood of having experienced an intersectoral shift into nonprofits. The more public employees are satisfied with intrinsic job rewards, especially job reputation, the more likely they are to move to nonprofits. These results suggest that when employees in the public sector are satisfied with intrinsic rewards they tend to pursue greater intrinsic satisfaction in the nonprofit sector. This paper also reports that education–job match is only significant for those whose first job was in the for‐profit sector.     

Sustainable societies in the information age

This article interweaves the ideas of sustainable development, sustainable societies, and the power of advanced information technologies toward developing recommendations for social science research on information technology in society. Worldwide concern has arisen over the potentially catastrophic consequences of global climate and environmental change. As a result, sustainable development (i.e., the simultaneous protection of both the global environment and the global economy) is receiving considerable attention. Necessary for achieving sustainable development are sustainable societies, which are capable of designing, implementing, managing and evaluating long-term environmental programs. This article presents ten characteristics that describe sustainable societies and discusses how information technologies, from wireless personal digital assistants to intelligent agents to multi-media database systems, could support the evolution of sustainable societies. Topics for social science research related to designing and ameliorating the negative consequences of eight hypothetical computer-based systems are presented. Bruce E. Tonn is leader of the policy systems analysis group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and co-principal investigator of the National Center for Environmental Decision-making Research. His research interests include environmental and energy policy, computers in society, decision making, and futures studies. He is past president of the Social Science Computing Association. His research focuses on planning, assessment and evaluation, energy use and conservation, and education.     

“The advancing of management”: Cross‐sector agents and rationalization of nonprofits in Eastern China

This study examines and extends former theoretical argument of nonprofit rationalization in the Chinese context. Based on a survey study of 179 nonprofit organizations across Zhejiang province of Eastern China, we find that nonprofits led by individuals with prior business experience and with more extensive business networking are more likely to adopt rationalized rules and practices. Moreover, the results indicate support for the mediation effect of business networking on the relationship between prior experience and rationalization. We also find the moderation effects of management training on the direct effect of prior business experience and on business networking, as well as the indirect effect of prior business experience on rationalization via business networking. Our findings contribute to explaining the formation of rationalization in the Chinese nonprofit sector and provide implications for future research, practice, and policy.     

Strategic implications of the information age

conclusion The continued enhancements of information technologies facilitate and increase knowl-edge intensity in organizations. As such, knowledge and information technologies play critical roles in the development of competitive advantage by firms. For example, IT facilitates organizational learning and helps firms move into international markets by making it easier to coordinate geographically dispersed units and operations. Even entrepreneurial new venture firms are moving into international markets earlier in their life cycle (Oviatt and MacDougall, 1977; Zahra et al., 2000). IT has become especially important to smaller, entrepreneurial firms to facilitate their networking and coopera-tive ventures with other firms in order to compete more effectively with much larger firms for major projects. Furthermore, information technologies facilitate these firms’ technological learning, a critical element to their survival and long-term success (Zahra et al., 2000). IT has also helped firms from emerging markets (e.g., Korea, Mexico) compete more effectively against firms from developed markets that have more resources. Thus, IT has helped facilitate the increasing globalization of businesses.     

Making sense of the information age

This article traces the development in Britain of research on information and communications in relation to trends in Sociology and this discipline's relations with Cultural Studies. It observes at the outset the seminal contribution of Daniel Bell's conception of Post-Industrial Society, characterizing it as blending theory with empirical observation while providing an account of the most consequential features of change. Sociology in the UK during the 1980s largely ignored macro-level analysis and focused on work and employment, took its starting point as opposition to the technological determinism associated with this first wave enthusiasm for the 'microelectronics revolution', and produced localized and textured studies. Manuel Castells' conception of the Network Society, while distinctive, signalled a return to the scale and scope offered by Bell, notably in being a macro analysis that combined theory and empirical evidence. Castells' contribution coincided with a second wave of technological enthusiasm associated especially with the Internet. Alongside this Sociology in Britain has experienced the rise of Cultural Studies, a field that has competed for important parts of what might have been considered Sociology's terrain. Indeed, Cultural Studies has outpaced Sociology in response to recent changes in the information domain. Its emergence expressed little concern with technological determinism, embracing 'virtuality' and being more open to the exploration of expanding culture. Nonetheless, Cultural Studies remains methodologically flawed while, like so much sociological research on ICTs and information, seemingly incapable of combining theory and empirical evidence that identify and explain the major contours of change.     

News and information leadership in the digital age

This paper examines information networks on social media to draw conclusions about influence relationships among members of the mass media. The project considers social networks and information patterns using Twitter data, first at the newspaper level and second at the journalist level. Using a computational approach, we look for evidence of elite-directed information flows, as well as exploring whether we find evidence of an increase in the democratization of newsmaking. This study finds that elite voices continue to dominate information networks in the digital age; however, it also finds evidence that information can move expeditiously from journalists in local and regional outlets to elite ones, and vice versa. We move further to explore the content of tweets among the journalist network, finding that there are substantial, direct interactions among elite and regional and local journalists. Our results taken together uncover new network patterns and provide a novel insight on the role of information technologies in newsmaking in the digital age.     

Persona‐based information shapes linguistic perception: Valley Girls and California vowels

This paper investigates the effect of persona‐based information on implicit linguistic perceptions of a sociolinguistic feature – the backed trap vowel. trap ‐backing is associated both with macro‐social region (California) and with a particular persona that inhabits this region (the Valley Girl). An eye‐tracking paradigm is used to examine these associations in early, automatic stages of perception. One group of listeners was told the speaker was from California, while another group was told that the speaker had been described as a Valley Girl. Findings demonstrate that both the California information and the Valley Girl information caused listeners to expect the speaker to exhibit trap ‐backing. While previous studies have highlighted the influence of macro‐sociological categories on linguistic perception, the present study suggests that persona‐based social meanings can also serve to influence perception, supporting theories that foreground personae as social constructs crucial to interaction.     

Monsters in cyberspace cyberphobia and cultural panic in the information age

This paper explores popular attitudes toward the Internet (and computer-mediated communication more generally) by mapping some of the more threatening, transgressive and 'monstrous' images associated with cyberspace. An account of risk consciousness is developed in three parts: (1) comparisons with earlier information technologies reveals similarities and differences with regard to public attitudes toward cyberspace and its risks; (2) the development of a model of contemporary teratological space derived from images of boundary-dissolving threats, intrusive alterities and existential ambivalences created by the erosion of binary distinctions and hierarchies; and (3) possible historical and sociological explanations of cyberpanic drawing on recent theorizations of globalization (capitalism/information society theory, risk society theory, reflexive modernization theory, and alterity theory).     

Supporting the Posts in Development Discourse: Under‐development,Over‐development,Post‐development

This article seeks to introduce scholars outside of development studies to post‐development thought, and to restate its relevance and value to those working within the development field. It begins with an overview of post‐development thought and its critique of the post‐World War Two development project. Following this, specific critiques levelled at post‐development thought and various responses to these are considered. In the last section, the possibility or desirability of raising the living standards of Third World people to a level comparable to those of the First World through economically based development strategies is questioned. The article concludes by drawing attention to First World overdevelopment and the continued value of post‐development thinking in unsettling the development trajectory for either the First or Third World.     

Philadelphia‐based harm‐reduction advocate joins CleanSlate

Brooke Feldman is well‐known to the Philadelphia world of drug users as a peer counselor active in harm‐reduction work. But starting this week, she will be Center Manager for two sites owned by CleanSlate Centers, a treatment program focused on opioid and alcohol addiction. Feldman has a master's in social work and is able to bridge the “street” world and that of the established treatment center—but acknowledges that there was a leap of faith involved in joining the treatment field.