The Decline of European Christianity Research Paper

The Decline of European Christianity - Research Paper Example However, the rise of â€Å"religious diversity† at present is challenging the status quo because it allows other ‘non-Christian’ denominations to enter Europe and Asia, for instance, Islam.1 Significant events in history shape the formation of religious pluralism. 2 The 9/11 hijacking permits the flow of migrants from one country to the other. In addition, countries with strict immigration policies now allow people from southern Europe to work or even settle permanently. Those countries with strict immigration policies expectedly shared the same religion and sect until such time that migrants from all over the globe, some of whom were missionaries, also brought with them their religious beliefs, consequently converting Europeans into another religion outside of the realm of Christianity. This essay will explore some of the fundamental reasons why Christianity (both Catholicism and Protestantism) has declined in terms of popularity. It is noted that secularization is considered as one of the reasons of the â€Å"slow and steady death† of religion. 3 According to some critics, under secularization theory lies issues about religious fundamentalism especially in the Muslim world and the decreasing popularity of churchgoers. These and other reasons will be discussed in this report. 2.0 Reasons for the Decline of Christianity 2.1 Secularization Theory Secularization is defined as deinstitutionalization or a â€Å"decline in the social power of once-dominant religious institutions whereby other social institutions have escaped from prior religious domination.† 4 This observation is evident by the lesser power possessed by the â€Å"once-dominant† religious institutions such as the Catholic priests and bishops and even Lutheran and Anglican bishops. 5 An initial result that comes to mind would be the decline in the patronization of religion. C. John Sommerville interpreted Rodney Stark’s ideas towards secularization as me rely an observation of people’s adoration towards the culture that associates with the religion; in simple terms, secularization meant the cultural interpretation of people towards their religion and not concerning the spiritual aspect that binds them together.6 In another perspective, secularization theory prompted not only the possible demise of religion in the future but also its â€Å"reinvention† and â€Å"resurgence† of traditional religions, as well as the rise of newer religions.7 This is an offshoot to the common notion regarding secularization theory as merely predictive of the future rather than focused on the past and present. Historical events, by the way, pointed out to the significant role of religious denominations in affecting the political state of the country. Among such events were the Christianity’s impact into overthrowing the communist empire in the former Union Soviet Socialist Republic, and the impact brought by the September 11, 2001 attack in the United States. The lack of religion in Europe is primarily being asserted by the secularization theory, particularly with respect to Christianity. Along with modernization comes the discovery of other religions outside the traditional Christian affiliations. Authors of the book Predicting Religion state that there is a continued increase of the number of Christians who are no longer attending church. From 15% church attendance in 1903, the

Assignment of Managing Organisation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Assignment of Managing Organisation - Essay Example A series of facts can contribute to above outcome: a) the plan attempted has not been appropriately designed – in terms of the resources available for its realization, b) the reaction of employees – internal organizational environment – towards the specific plan has not been the one expected; the resistance developed has led to the cancellation of the plan or to the delay in the completion of one or more of its phases, c) the conditions in the organizational environment have changed at such level – referring to the period between the beginning of the planning process and the beginning of the implementation process – that the development of the plan became non-feasible or the value of the plan for the increase of the organizational performance has been eliminated. Current paper focuses on a particular aspect of the strategic management: the cross-cultural management; reference is made especially to the multi-national firms of the tourism and hospital ity industry. The cross-cultural management practices initiated by the managers of these firms are presented and evaluated. It is concluded that even if a range of such practices are available to the managers of these firms, still problems exist in the successful implementation of the relevant projects across these organizations. It has been proved that the above problem is mostly related with the lack of consistency of these strategies across the various departments of these organizations; moreover, failures have been identified in the service delivery to customers from different cultural backgrounds. These issues are analytically discussed below by referring to appropriate literature; the findings of empirical studies, where available, have been also employed in order to highlight the challenges of cross – cultural management in the tourism and hospitality industry worldwide. 2. Cross-cultural management in modern organizations 2.1. Cross-cultural management – descri ption, framework Culture may have different forms within different frameworks or using different criteria: for instance the national culture is differentiated from organizational culture; however, it has been proved that the former can influence the latter (Browaeys et al 2008, 20). The above view can be verified by referring to the study of Hofstede who emphasized on the fact that ‘management can be affected by differences between cultural groupings’ (Browaeys et al 2008, 21); the above researchers studied the performance of the strategies of IBM in markets worldwide – the performance of the firm in 64 countries was reviewed. It was proved that differences existed in the behaviour/ performance of employees in various organizational activities under the influence of the national culture - involved in each case (Browaeys et al 2008, 21). From a different point of view, Adler et al. (2008) noted that, in the context of international market, the understanding by glo bal firms of the national culture is important because of the following reason: being aware of the culture of a foreign country multi-nationals are able to make the necessary adjustments to their existing strategies so that the latter are implemented successfully in the firm’s branch in the particular country (Adler et al. 2008, 13). In this way, the culture of a country is closely related to the strategies used by the organizations operating across the specific country. In order to understand the challenges for the cross-cultural mana