Secularization Definition and Examples

Over the last few centuries, and especially in the last few decades, Western society has become increasingly secularized, meaning that religion plays a less prominent role. The shift represents a dramatic cultural change whose effects are still widely debated. Definition Secularization is a cultural transition in which religious values are gradually replaced with nonreligious values. In the process, religious figureheads such as church leaders lose their authority and influence over society. In the field of sociology, the term is used to describe societies that have become or are becoming modernized—meaning that features of society such as the government, the economy, and schools are more distinct, or less influenced by religion. Individuals within a society may still practice a religion, but it is on an individual basis. Decisions about spiritual matters are personal, family, or culturally based, but religion itself does not have a large impact on society as a whole. In the Western World Secularization in the United States is a hotly debated topic. America has been considered a Christian nation for a long time, with many Christian values guiding existing policies and laws. However, in the last few decades, with the growth of other religions as well as atheism, the nation has become more secularized. In the United States, there have been movements to remove religion from government-funded daily life, such as school prayer and religious events in public schools. Further evidence of secularization can be seen in laws overturning prohibitions on same-sex marriage. While the rest of Europe embraced secularization relatively early, Great Britain was one of the last to adapt. During the 1960s, Britain experienced a cultural revolution that reshaped peoples views on womens issues, civil rights, and religion. Over time, funding for religious activities and churches began to wane, reducing the impact of religion on daily life. As a result, the country became increasingly secularized. Religious Contrast: Saudi Arabia In contrast to the United States, Great Britain and most of Europe, Saudi Arabia is an example of a country that has not experienced secularization. Almost all Saudis identify as Muslims. While there are some Christians, they are mainly foreigners, and they are not allowed to openly practice their faith.  Atheism and agnosticism are forbidden, and such apostasy is punishable by death. Because of strict attitudes toward religion, Saudi Arabias laws, customs, and norms are closely tied to Islamic law and teachings. The country has religious police, known as Mutaween, who roam the streets enforcing religious laws regarding dress codes, prayer, and the separation of men and women. Daily life in Saudi Arabia is structured around religious rituals. Businesses close several times a day for 30 minutes or more at a time to allow for prayer. In schools, approximately half of the school day is dedicated to teaching ​religious material. Almost all books published within the nation are religious books. Future of Secularization Secularization has become a growing topic as more countries modernize and shift away from religious values toward secular ones. While many countries remain that are focused on religion and religious law, there is increasing pressure from around the globe, especially from the United States and its allies, for countries to secularize. Nevertheless, some regions have actually become more religious, including parts of Africa and Asia. Some scholars argue that religious affiliation itself is not the best measure of secularization. They believe that a weakening of religious authority can occur in certain areas of life without a corresponding change in the religious identities of individuals.

The Penang Second Brigde in Malaysia - 3068 Words

The Penang Second Bridge is one of the longest in Malaysia and also in the South East Asia region. It is also known as the Sultan Abdul Halim Muadzam Shah Bridge which is named after the Sultan of Kedah. The bridge connects from Batu Kawan on the mainland to Batu Maung on the Penang Island. It has an overall length of 24km and a length over water (displacement) of 16.9km. It is much longer when compared to the Penang First Bridge which only has an overall length of 13.5km. The building of this bridge has cost the government for RM4.5billion. The planning of building the second bridge to link the mainland to the island has been brought up back in the year of 1995 by the 4th Prime Minister which is Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad and also the 3rd Chief Minister of Penang, Tan Sri Dr. Koh Tsu Koon. Later, Malaysian government unveiled the plan to construct the bridge in August 2006. The project is implemented in the 9th Malaysian Plan. It is the largest civil construction work carried out in Malaysia in the past 2 decades. The construction of the bridge officially started in November 2008 after all the planning and procedure done. The bridge is currently projected completed on February 2014. The bridge is built under the cooperation between China and Malaysia. The project itself was funded by China through the Export-Import Bank of China as Malaysia signed RM2.7bilion loan agreement in July 2007. Besides that, Malaysia also cooperated with the contractor from China that is China

Human Resource Management for Retaining Employees -myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about theHuman Resource Management for Retaining Employees. Answer: Introduction The recruitment and selection process of organisations are used as a method in order to grab pool of candidates through various sources that must suit the organisations' goals. In recent times, organisations are using various technologies in recruitment and selection process and organisations must use ethics and stay relevant in implementing web-based application process. The main objective of HR department in selection and recruitment is to attract the best employees for the organisations and retain maximum talents for the benefits of the organisations. The thesis statement of the study is to highlight the impact of recruitment and selection in attracting and retaining employees for the organisation by HR department. In the first part of the essay, types of recruitments that exist in organisations will be discussed that facilitate in retaining maximum talents. In the later part of the essay, the selection procedures of the modern organisation will be explained. In the final section, the influence of recruitment and selection will be discussed on attracting and retaining employees for the organisation. Types of recruitments in organisations In an organisation, HR department can attract skilled employees through the recruitment process. There are two types of recruitment processes, internal recruitment and external recruitment. Retention strategies can strengthen the ability of the organisation to retain and attract more workforces through recruitment. In external recruitment process of recruitments, an organisation can recruit through advertisements, educational institution, online portal, employment exchange, employee referral, telecasting and labour contracts (Guedes, 2015). In the external recruitment process, it gathers huge applications for the desired posts and it becomes more effective when an organisation does the bulk hiring. In the external recruitment process, organisations get skilled employees from various spheres as it reaches maximum candidates. Various candidates from different backgrounds apply and employers have high chances to get experience as well as qualified candidates. Most importantly, organisation's HR department needs to highlight the benefits that the organisation is going to offer an organisation also gets creative ideas that would be helpful for the organisation in giving a competitive advantage. In recruiting employees who are interested in working with the organisations with high motivation, this wo uld enable the organisation to have retention. In the internal recruitment process, organisations can provide internal advertisement through e-mails and newsletters. Moreover, promotions can fulfil a post with internal employees' referrals. Moreover, the organisation can opt to have retired employees in temporary basis in order to fulfil their vacancies for a short-term basis. Internal recruitment is a perfect example to retain employees, whereas, external recruitment is helpful to attract talents within the organisation (Vickers, McDonalds Grimes, 2014). When experienced employees think to leave the organisation, HR department and higher authority can give the employees with the higher post. Internal recruitment keeps the talent within the organisation that provides benefits of having skilled and experienced workforces. When an employee leaves the organisation, it is quite possible that they may leak business secret to the competitors. Promoting internal staffs is motivating factors that recognise with being rewarded. Existing recruitment process retains the employees with capabilities that the organisation knows as well as it is cost-efficient. Selection procedures in organisations that assist in employee retention When the employees observe the fair selection process leads to the diverse workforce with satisfactory salary, it will automatically lead to the motivation and retention. It is required that selection process must avoid discrimination and recruiters must not pre-judge the candidates on their race, age, gender, creed and religion. In job advertisement, it is required to put the correct language in content and it is related to the attracting the skilled employees. The first step in selection is reviewing the candidates' application in serious notes. Analysing job requirements is important in light of the applications. The next step is to screen for interviews and HR department can conduct telephonic interviews if the employees stay far from the interview place. Screening process helps to narrow the candidate's number as eligible candidates (Taylor, 2014). The next step to take face-to-face interviews and candidates has to meet the interviewing personnel. HR managers and the hiring manager can take the interviews and personnel take the feedbacks for selection. Qualifications, experiences and knowledge are some of the characteristics in employing. Fair selection process does not follow favouritism and only eligible candidates are selected (Bryson, James Keep, 2013). After the selection, HR department tests the employees mental and physical health of the employees. Offer letters are given with telling all the details of employment. A good select ion process and unambiguous offer letters help HR department to retain maximum employees. All the employees are given induction and in this process, management tries to explain the job roles and rules of the organisation. Selecting employees from multiethnic backgrounds help the employers in getting diverse workforce and induce values in workplace culture. Good communication and helpful work culture help an organisation to retain maximum employees. Impact of recruitments and selection on organisations in attracting and retaining employees As stated by Barndao et al. (2017), electronic systems of recruitment and selection process generate the huge quantity of applications and this process enforces that more educated and technology savvy candidates must be recruited. Web-based systems of recruitment also make simply the process of recruitment for the organisations. HR department of the organisation faces a critical issue in determining if the existent employees have skills to meet performance targets. In order to remain economically competitive, HR department must focus on values and skills of the employees. As opined by Ahammad et al. (2016), employers face difficulty in managing their workforce as young employees need more career enhancement. HR department should focus on recruiting skilled employees that must match organisational requirements. Recruiting qualified employees will be helpful for an organisation to meet the goals, however, the organisation needs to attain job fairs, seminars, portal-based recruitments a nd campus recruitment. Among the employees, the intellectual relationship should be increased and employers try to make long-term relationships with the skilled employees. Through the online process of recruitment, employers get a huge advantage to attract more skilled and proficient employees. Employees also get to know about vacancy through the external recruitment process. Higher salary, motivation and career growth attract the employees to work in the organisation. Attracting more employees will be possible if the organisation has less bureaucratic structure and gap between employees and leaders is less. On the other side, in some of the small business, HR department attracts more skilled employees with higher wages as the job roles in these organisations are diverse (Carpenter Charon, 2014). Attracting of employees will be possible if the organisation flexible in work-life balance, shift timing and work-from-home facility. The first step to join in the organisation is the job roles and salary. Retention rates are described as the collective result of the individual decision in the organisation (Fruhen, Weis Fin, 2015). Employees are more likely to stay in the organisation where they feel valued. The selection process of the organisation should be fair and it should provide advantages to all irrespective of race, religion, creed, sex and ethnic background. However, in most of the organisations, the turnover rate is high due to mainly employees workload is higher than the salary; moreover, job roles do not match the employee's expectations. If the employees do not find the opportunity and career development, employees leave the workplace. In addition, stressful workplace and bad leaders are the reasons behind the high turnover. In this scenario, HR department should be transparent in work process and employees' friendly workplace can lead to the more retention. As described in Herzberg's two factory theory, there are certain elements that play as motivators in the workplace like challenging work, responsibility, recognition, involvement in the decision-making process (Shaffer, Bakhshi Kim, 2015). Moreover, HR department must ensure while recruiting that employees are going to get a salary at the proper time as well as job security, fringe benefits, paid insurance, less confinement and good pay are important in retention. In addition, organisations in recent time, trying to tap in-house talent through motivation as these employees are extremely valuable. According to Armstrong Taylor (2014), organisations have started employee referral with ethical practices that will enable to recruit employees from various backgrounds. Through recruitment and selection, it is needed to improve access to information that supports an ability to retain more employees. Conclusions It is observed that most of the organisations use both external and internal types of recruitment in order to generate the maximum pool of skilled employees. Selection process needs to be fair and it should follow ethics that would lead to generate better perception about the organisation among employees. Giving equal chances to all and not being discriminatory would help the organisation to attract and retain maximum skilled employees. HR department has its role to recognise the candidates better and analyse them correctly. Organisations need to provide opportunities to grow and advancement in career growth that would be beneficial for the employees to join the organisation. It can be deduced that the organisations should be opened in exploring the way of retention and attracting the employees aside relying more on selection recruitment as the factors cannot determine the longevity of employees. It is needed that organisations can critically examine the factors of selection and recr uitment with more fair policies that must lead to retain and attract more skilled employees. Reference List Ahammad, M. F., Tarba, S. Y., Liu, Y., Glaister, K. W. (2016). Knowledge transfer and cross-border acquisition performance: The impact of cultural distance and employee retention.International Business Review,25(1), 66-75. Armstrong, M. Taylor, S., (2014).Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Brando, C., Morais, C., Dias, S., Silva, A. R., Mrio, R. (2017). Using Online Recruitment: Implicit Theories and Candidates Profile. InWorld Conference on Information Systems and Technologies, 4(1), 293-301 Bryson, J., James, S., Keep, E. (2013). Recruitment and selection.Managing human resources. Human Resource Management in transition, 125-149. Carpenter, M. J., Charon, L. C. (2014). Mitigating multigenerational conflict and attracting, motivating, and retaining millennial employees by changing the organizational culture: A theoretical model.Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture,5(3), 68-84. Fruhen, L. S., Weis, L. M., Flin, R. (2015). Attracting safe employees: How job adverts can affect applicants choices.Safety science,72, 255-261. Guedes, S., (2015). The Use of Social Media within the Recruitment and Selection Process. International Journal of Human resource management, 2(2), 34-38 Taylor, S. (2014). Recruitment and selection.Strategic Human Resource Management: An International Perspective,10(6), 139-14. Vickers, G., McDonald, M. Grimes, J., 2014. A cross country comparison of best practices in recruitment and selection.Journal of Management and Marketing Research,15, 12-15

Slaves And Latin America Essays - Slavery In The United States

Slaves And Latin America Slavery in the Americas was quite diverse. Mining operations in the tropics experienced different needs and suffered different challenges than did plantations in more temperate areas of Northern Brazil or costal citys serving as ports for the exporting of commodities produced on the backs of the enslaved peoples from the African continent. This essay will look at these different situations and explore the factors that determined the treatment of slaves, the consequences of that treatment, and the conditions that lead to resistance by the slaves working in their various capacities. After the initial conquest of Mexico and South America it was time to develop the economy and export the resources that would benefit the monarchy back home in Spain and Portugal. Silver and Gold were two such commodities. Silver mines in Northern Mexico were supervised by blacks who directed the Indians in the arduous task of extracting the precious metal. Gold in Central Mexico was also mined by blacks. The Gold mining regions were hot, tropical, isolated areas of the jungle. The regions were sparsely populated and it was difficult to keep the locals as a work force. The introduction of disease in the tropics made these areas death zones to the indigenous people as they had no resistance to the virulent plagues. There was a need to get cheap or free labor that would be capable of resisting the disease and who would be easier to dominate than the locals who could run off and establish themselves elsewhere relatively easily. The natural answer was to obtain slaves from the African continent. The slave trade was already in operation on the African continent. Coastal cities there often enslaved inland peoples so it was not difficult to obtain the stock and export them to the Americas. Slaves in the mining regions were subject to harsh, isolated conditions. There were few females and little or no community amongst the slaves. Some of the workers did have access to money and as a result could negotiate there freedom for a price. In 1732 1/3 of the African population of Choco was free as a result. Less fortunate slaves who found the conditions unbearable fled to even more isolated areas of the back country to survive on their own or in small colonies. The Sugar plantations of Northern Brazil were a major client of the slave trade. The more temperate climate made of better environmental conditions for the blacks but the work was hard and after working for the plantation the slaves had to work a spot of land for their own sustenance as well. They could sell what they produced and this gave them money with which to effect manumissions. The plantation life had a hierarchy that separated the slaves into three levels with value attached to each one. The lowest level of the hierarchy was the Bozal. These were slave born on the African continent with little or no acculturation with the Spaniards and Portugese who enslaved them. They were of the least value as the least skilled and plenty there were plenty more where they came from. Though they were not completely disposable they were of the least consequence should they die or run off. Next up the pecking order were the Ladino. These slaves had more time in country and had developed skills useful to the plantation owner. They were often in working positions of a bit higher value as well. The top of the chain were the Criollo. These were slaves that were born in Latin America. They were often times offspring of Spaniards or Portugese and as such had more ties to the community. Mulattos were not looked down upon as they were in the American south. The Criollo held trusted positions in transportation, and were most often manumitted. Also enjoying frequent manumission was the criollo involved in the processing of the crops. Field hands made up the bulk of the population of any given plantation. They were most often women and very nearly always Bozal. They were rarely able to achieve manumission and the conditions in which they worked were the worst of the plantation economy. Thought they were able to have a social life as the whites really did not care what they did with their own time, they were the most likely to resist their conditions. This is done in a variety of ways which will be discussed later. There was a fairly healthy community