What is the difference between a religious institution and a system of believings?

A religious institution is an institution that has only religious purposes. It is an establishment, organization or association instituted to advance or promote religious purposes or beliefs. Places of worship such as churches, mosques, temples and synagogues. Religion is a set of practices, and it can be reasonably independent of belief system or faith. Religion is based on worshipping or believing in a god whose physical characteristics cannot necessarily be seen by one that is not enlightened.
Some of the definitions that I had found for belief are:

- The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another

- Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something

- Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.

A belief system can be based on faith or related to religious practice, but it can also be independent of religion and faith. Believing is something that you personally choose to accept. Practicing religion is attending services regularly. You can believe and not attend church, and you can attend church without truly believing. A belief system is faith based on a series of beliefs but not formalized into a religion; also, a fixed coherent set of beliefs prevalent in a community or society

Sources:

http://www.smallbusinessbible.org/featureswebdesigns_religiousinstitutions.html

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/belief+system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_belief

Wednesday October 6

Summary of the class

The teacher talk us about the religious institutions.
Today, the christian church does not have the power it once had, like in the middle ages. In the middle ages the religion was the one that had the control. The Inquisition was a Roman Catholic tribunal for discovery and punishment of heresy, which was marked by the severity of questioning and punishment and lack of rights afforded to the accused. The christian church murdered, tortured, mutilated and destroyed millions and millions of lives both directly through the Inquisition and indirectly through all of the wars they incited. But inquisition ends with illuminism and with the end of the middle ages, and people stop believing in God, and start to study sciences, physics, and also other religions appeared. The church began to loose its power.

Buddhism

It is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha. The Buddha lived and taught in India, some time between the 6th and 4th centuries B.C. He is recognized as an awakened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end suffering (or dukkha), achieve nirvana, and escape what is seen as a cycle of suffering and rebirth. He started to realize that there was a lot of pain in the world and he started to suffer and connect that pain with the religious part. He wasn´t living because he was suffering all the time. Suffering doesn´t resolve anything. There was one thing that creates pain: desire.

Samsara: cycle of reencarnations in the Induism and in the Buddhism.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Inquisition.html

Wednesday Septembre 22

These are the summaries of the expositions done in class:

MOTIVATION IN THE WORKPLACE – ARGENTINA
What is Motivation?
Is the force that makes us do things.
Result of individual needs – Vary person to person.
Determine effort we put into our work.
“Your employees are your greatest asset and no matter how efficient your technology and equipment may be, it is no match for the effectiveness and efficiency of your staff.”

Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory: (hygiene factors)
- Factors that motivated employees in the workplace.
- Factors that prevented job dissatisfaction.

Actions for increase motivation
- If has a small number of employees, you will probably have an idea what motivates each one.
- If has a large number of employees, you may decide to delegate the task of identifying motivational issues to assistant mangers or immediate supervisors of the employees, etc.

WORK ETHICS – VIETNAM
The ethics of an organization, it is how an organization ethically responds to an internal or external stimulus. Organizational ethics is interdependent with the organizational culture.

Ethics in the organizations
1. BUSINESS ETHICS
2. CORPORATE COMPLIANCE
3. CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
4. CORPORATE RESPONSABILITY
5. CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSABILITY

Issues concerning ethics
- Reputation management.
- Accurate accounting.
- Fair labor practices.
- Environmental factors.

"Individualistic approach”
Every person in an organization is morally responsible for his or her own behavior, and any efforts to change that behavior should focus on the individual.

“Communal approach"
Here individuals are viewed not in isolation, but as members of communities that are partially responsible for the behavior of their members.

Vietnamise Culture
80% Vietnamese population is young.

90% literacy rate.
High context: Actions are more important than words.
Longer view of time: Focus time on season instead of weeks.
Formal behavior even in Interpersonal relations.
Saving face is very important for their culture.
They are very collectivist with respect for elderly and wisdom.
Masculine society

COMMUNICATION AND TEAMWORK – USA

Communication problems:
•Cultural differences
•Language barriers
•Gender differences
•“Noise” interrupting a communication process

Communication Styles
• Aggressive Communication
"Everyone should be like me."
"I am always right."
"I've got rights, but you don't."

• Passive Communication
"Don't express your true feelings."
"Don't make waves."
"Don't disagree."
"Others have more rights
than I do."

• Passive-Aggressive Communication
“ I am the most important“
“ I don’t care about others feelings and interests”
“ I do everything to achieve my goals and to be successful”

• Assertive Communication
• Him-/Herself and others are valuable
and important.
• Knows that oneself not always wins
• Handles situations to be effective
"I have rights and so do others."

Teamwork
Definition:
Teamwork can be defined as the process of different people working together to achieve the same goal by taking into account the following factors:
•Communication
•Coordination
•Balance of contributions
•Effort

Organizational Learning – Russia
Ways to design organizations so that they fulfill their function effectively encourage people to reach their full potential and at the same time, help the world to be a better place.

Learning Dimensions
-System levels:
Individual
Group
Organizational
Inter-Organizational

-Learning Modes
Cognitive
Cultural
Action Learning

-Learning Typology
Adaptive
Proactive

-Learning Process
Identification of info.
Generation of knowledge
Exchange & Diffusion

Wednesday September 15

At this class we saw a video about Korea:
North Korea:
- Poor country
- Empty roads
- Militarist men
- Stanlist vision
- Military defense
- Bicycle (universal transport)
- Concentration camps

South Korea:
- Rich country
- Tourists can´t go outside alone
- Social classes divided in three
- Totalitarians: Marxism, Leninism
- 34% of women suffer of “anemia”
- Nuclear weapons
- They create false truths of Americans through the different societies

EMOTIONS IN THE WORPLACE – JAPAN
Emotions: are psychological and physiological episodes experienced toward an object, person, or events that create a state of readiness. Different from Mood: less intense emotional states that are not directed toward anything in particular.

DEFINITIONS
• Events or “episodes: your anger toward a co-worker, for instance, would typically subside within a few minutes.
• Directed toward someone or something: tasks, customers, public speeches we present, a software program we are using, and so on.

TYPES OF EMOTIONS
Six primary categories: anger, fear, joy, love, sadness, and surprise.

Emotional labor: refers to the effort, planning, and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions.
When interacting with co-workers, customers, suppliers, and others, employees are expected to abide by display rules. These rules are norms requiring employees to display certain emotions and to withhold others.

Cultural differences between North Korea and South Korea

First of all there are a lot of political and economic differences between the two countries. After world war II North Korea inherited a communistic form of government from the USSR, while South Korea became a democracy. The war had completely disrupted the country and left an uneasy government. There are great cultural differences because they have developed separately from each other, and while South Korea is doing better and better, North Korea is always into trouble. While South Korea has experienced economic success and Christianity, North Koreans are starving.
The large number of refugees from the North migrating into the South and economic and political instability are some of the problems between them, as the contrasting political ideologies and the great discrimination.
There is also a difference in the religious development, the number of protestant believers has multiplied at an amazing rate at South Korea. Since the Korean War, it has been illegal to be a Christian in North Korea.
As North Koreans migrates, they sometimes have problems finding their place, because they are treated differently by many South Koreans.

Sources:
- http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/cot/t3w30korea.htm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_reunification
- http://econc10.bu.edu/economic_systems/Country_comparisons/Korea_North_South.htm

Wednesday September 8th

Informal Organizations
Informality: Operates in illegality but not with antisocial objectives. It has in mind legal goals.

Characteristics:
- Do not use complex technologies.
- There is not a well stablished work division.
- They are not legally constituted.
- They have many work relationships at the same time.

Social Problems:
- Don´t pay taxes.
- Unfair competition with the formal sector.
- No warranty on products.
- Social Disconfort.
- Threats on health.

Induction Factors:
- Economic needs.
-Traffic and explotaition of human beings.
- Migrations.
- Access to cheaper resources.
- Lack of legal and Financial opportunities.

South Korea
The role of workers and migrant workers
The term "migrant worker" refers to a person who is engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national.

Some things that a worker should consider

• Seeking a variety of assignments.

• tackling tough problems and asking for feedback.

• Opportunities to coach others and finding good coaches for him or herself

• Developmental relationships that provide a variety of learning.

• identify goals for new skills.

Which is my role towards immigrants?

Immigration is the proccess of entering the frontier of a foreign country by people who resides in a different place. The main reasons of why people migrates are:
- political, social, religious and racial percecution.
- lack of resources.
- increasing life expectancy.
- environment conditions.
- armed conflict.

It is true that immigrants are looking for new opportunities of job, for better conditions of life, they want to begging a new life in other place were they consider they can progress. I think that we have to give them support and give them our help, we don´t need more discrimination in our country, we have to provide immigrants better opportunities of life. But it is also true that they bring negative consequences to the country:

- Increase racist attitudes toward people.
- Growing competition for jobs.
- Leads to growing poverty and inequality, social fragmentation, marginalisation and unrest.
- Policies on social cohesion that promote assimilation over multiculturalism.
- Negative stereotypes about immigrants.
- Conflicting values.
- Different ways of thinking and different ways of thought.
- Changes in culture.

Sources:

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/2/0/1/1/p20113_index.html

http://www.3s4.org.uk/drivers/attitudes-towards-immigrants