Leaders' Attitudes and Computer Use in Religious Congregations

✍ Scribed by Lisa R. Berlinger; Dov Te'eni

• Book ID: 102550556
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 95 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1048-6682
• DOI: 10.1002/nml.9405

✦ Synopsis

This study explores the attitudes of leaders of religious congregations toward computers. We uncover attitudes toward information (and thus toward computers) that are different from those reported for leaders in other organizational contexts. In short, clergy felt that systematically collecting and storing information and trying to serve as many people as possible could distract them from what is distinctive about their jobs-that the job in a religious congregation is accomplished through personal rather than transactional relationships.

N ONPROFIT organizations are increasingly adopting a manage- rial orientation in response to scarce resources and demands for greater accountability (Adams and Perlmutter, 1995;Kanter and Summers, 1987;Hall, 1990). The simultaneous demands to do the work of the nonprofit more efficiently and more professionally are partially addressed by using computer applications that are more sophisticated and more closely related to the organization' s mission (Cnaan, 1989;Kolleck, 1993;Te'eni and Speltz, 1992). This move toward a managerial orientation, which has spread to religious organizations as well, often precipitates a conflict of values