Modernism and Postmodernism

This study elaborates the difference and connection between modernism and postmodernism eras while highlighting their backgrounds. The research highlights the teachings of Islam in terms of modernism and postmodernism. The research brings to light the influence of modernism and postmodernism on Muslim societies. What are the far reaching impacts of the modernism and postmodernism eras of Muslim societies and how well a common Muslim is equipped to address the issues related to postmodernism. The study primarily focuses on the related issues in Pakistani society and explains the role and the influence of religious scholars of their understanding of the terms modernism and postmodernism. The study focuses on the awareness of the ’Ulamā in addressing these global challenges and subsequently the future of Pakistani society. The study has an element of quantitative research and it indicates towards the on ground realities on the issue with the help of a latest survey on modernism and postmodernism.

The Anatomy of Workplace Advice Network in Relationship With Employees Personal Characteristrics, Psychological Profile and the Perceived Leadership Styles

Advice networks are integral part of an organization as they channel a highly valuable resource, advice, across the workplace in the form of information, ideas, knowledge, guidance and instructions among employees in an informal social network augmenting the formal communication channels. This thesis attempted to explore some commonly observed morphological structures of workplace advice networks including tie forming tendency, reciprocity, gender-based homophily, popularity and activity spreads and transitivity in the real-world context of personal (gender, education, experience and expertise), psychological (personality, emotional intelligence and positive psychological capital) attributes of employees and the perceived leadership styles- thus the term anatomy. Using purposive sampling, 20 service-sector organizations were surveyed as WANs and 100% response rate was achieved. Network data were collected using a sociometric matrix employing the roster method. On the other hand, the conventional data for the personal characteristics were collected using a section for the demographic variables. The questionnaire for personality, emotional intelligence and positive psychological capital were borrowed from Donnellan, Oswald, Braid and Lucas (2006), Wong and Law (2002) and Luthans Avolio, Avey and Norman (2007) respectively. The scales were tested for their validity and reliability employing exploratory and then confirmatory factor analyses for validity and Cronbach’s alphas for reliability of the scales. Finally, to map the real-world effects of actors personal characteristics, psychological profiles, and perceived leadership styles upon the selected structural paradigms of the workplace advice networks, this thesis resorted to Exponential Random Graph (or p*) Models. The results showed that actors in the advice networks followed a meticulous approach in seeking advice from given colleagues in the networks. The advice seekers also tended to form reciprocal ties besides the general tendency to form advice seeking ties with a common advice giver. As far as the nodal attributes were concerned, employees with higher scores on the personality scales tended to seek advice rather than give; whereas employees with higher scores on emotional intelligence were more inclined towards advice giving. Nonetheless, employees with higher positive psychological capitals were less inclined towards advice giving. All other structural elements and attributes were insignificant. Anatomy of workplace advice network xi The study mainly focused on the total effects of the psychological constructs including personality, emotional intelligence and positive psychological capital, there still is a need to measure the effects of the individual components of each of these constructs separately. Similarly, the effect to different types of leadership styles perception can also be independently studied with reference to the anatomy of workplace advice networks. Finally, structures like transitivity can be studied independently in a study for its various triangular forms.