Sect,Church, and Organizational Change

Abstract

Advances in research on national and local influence structures suggest that comparative study of the relationships among the influential in the context of the centralization of power and decision-making is both possible and fruitful. Techniques based on graph theory may be used to operationalize the concept of centralization. We applied Nieminen's (1973) index of centrality to a sample of the elite of the Valle region of Columbia.

Positional, reputational and decisional methods were combined to select the sample, and relationships among respondents in a regionally active core of the elite were mapped from the organizational affiliations they had in common. The adjacency matrix produced by these data showed that direct links among the leaders were structured by organizational brokers in several of the seven cities in the region. The derivative distance matrix and index of centrality incorporate the indirect relationships that exist. All but one person in the sector are closely interrelated in a network, or one clique. An individual's centrality to the network appears to be associated with indicators of status rather than class, but the possibility that differences within this sector of the elite may arise from the interplay of class and status in an industrializing society disappears when the effects of the one deviant case are removed. Reinforced by this finding, we conclude instead that this subset of the elite forms a group of people likely to be in the kind of contact and communication with one another from which consensus emerges. Centrality to a network therefore becomes an indicator of centralization.     

A New Approach to Religious Commitment

Abstract

The authors propose a new framework for studying religious commitment. Commitment is viewed as a general social process which occurs in various aspects of life (e.g., marriage, work, politics, and religion). It consists of subjective and behavioral components. Religious commitment is defined as the interaction between people's religious consciousness and religious participation. Other religious beliefs, feelings, and intellectual inclinations are considered to be parts of people's religious orientations, not aspects of commitment as other approaches have suggested. Data from members of six Christian denominations are used to explore this conceptualization and the relationships among these variables. Some determinants and consequences of commitment also are considered. The evidence yields several propositions regarding factors that affect commitment and the effects of religion on people's attitudes and behaviors. The paper's implications for future research on religious commitment in particular and commitment in general also are discussed.     

Involvement in Family,Religion, Education,Work, and Politics

Abstract

This paper explores the relationships among five spheres of individual involvement: family, religion, education, work, and politics. A theoretical framework stressing the extent of structural differentiation in modern societies led to the hypothesis that the spheres of involvement would be quite independent. Within the context of differentiation, it was hypothesized that the spheres of education, work, and politics on the one hand and family and religion on the other would be most highly related. Data from a national sample of retired professional baseball players allowed examination of these hypotheses for three age cohorts (30–49; 50–69; 70 and over) and three life cycle stages (early in the respondents' playing careers, late in their careers, and at present). The data generally supported for the hypotheses, but also suggested some important extensions of the theory. The implications for future theory and research on involvement are discussed.     

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Practicum Instruction: An Empirical Study

Practicum instructors play a strategic role in assisting students gain the competence essential to effective practice. This article reports on a comparative study that tested the efficacy of traditional and experimental competency-based/task-centered methods of practicum instruction. It revealed that students taught under the latter method performed at a higher overall level of competence and had more confidence in their skills than those taught under the traditional method.