Islamic Values and Management Practices

Quality and Transformation in the Arab World

Maqbouleh M. Hammoudeh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317112143
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Corporate Governance
• Index: Business

The author of this thought provoking addition to Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series has worked as a management consultant in the Arab Middle East for 25 years. In Islamic Values and Management Practices she acknowledges that businesses and other organizations in the region face urgent concerns in relation to quality and transformation, but argues that these issues might be more appropriately addressed by the application of an Islamic Management Model, rather than the 'Western' one hitherto applied. Over time, a set of management systems based on Islamic values has been developed by the author. These systems recognise the need to build human organizations, socially and politically as well as commercially, and also the recognition that for Muslims, justice is the ultimate value, bringing balance between the individual's soul and spirit on the one hand, and the organization's soul and spirit on the other. This Islamic management model stresses that effectiveness is an outcome of operating efficiently and at the same time unifying the organization's objectives with those of its employees and wider society, and ensuring that at the strategic level the long view is always maintained. Recounting her own personal and business journey, Maqbouleh Hammoudeh presents the outcomes of research that has tested the application of the Islamic Management Model and its ability to deliver the desired quality and transformation outcomes in a major civic or profit making organization. At a time when many practitioners and business educators are seeking new management approaches, this revealing case study sheds light on the evolution of a contemporary theory of management for the Muslim World.

PART I Context

CHAPTER 1 Orientation

This introductory chapter presents a detailed summary of the 12 chapters of the book.

Part 1: Context

BURNING QUESTIONS

At a time when the world in general, and the Arab world in particular, is awakening, if not still in despair, this book introduces ‘management by values’, using ‘I. (Islamic and International) Theory’, specifically in relation to quality and transformation. I shall be focusing on this as a means to improving the quality of life and work in the Arab world of the basis of Islamic values. The aim of this approach, which I am exploring in both my personal life and in my professional work, is to search for new means of unification between individuals and organisations in Jordan and the Middle East. Through this new perspective I hope to serve both business and society, and to make of use my own personal and business journey in order to implement total quality in Jordanian and Arab organisations and a better quality of life in a turbulent environment. My aim is to review ‘I.Theory’ and its implementation in management based on culture, including values and, most importantly, the alignment between employees and senior management.

In this regard, I shall address two burning questions:

1. How can we develop a management theory based on Islamic values that will lead to greater quality and transformation in Arab organisations?

2. What is the specific role of I.Theory in supporting the development of a local identity towards global integrity?

My chief objective is thus to apply a management theory to Jordanian and Arab organisations that is based on Islamic values and culture rather than on Western management theories, with a view to achieving an authentic transformation, starting on a local level, but with a view to the global.

I.Theory stands for an Islamic management model. Using case studies of the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN) (a civil society organisation) and Al-Quds Paints Co. (a business), it will be demonstrated how individual culture and organisational culture can be aligned and the security of societal culture can be achieved.

Enterprises in the Middle East currently face urgent concerns and challenges in matters of organisational sustainability, quality of life and total quality management (TQM). Therefore, they may need to reconsider their ways of thinking in order to become more attuned with our genuine values and culture, particularly at this time of so-called ‘Arab Awakening’.

THE STORY SO FAR

In Chapter 2, I will set this book in the context of the emerging – or indeed awakening – self, organisation and society, beginning with my own story.

My own story

I was born into a Palestinian family in a small Palestinian town in 1947. This was a catastrophic year for the Palestinian people, which led to our becoming refugees in neighbouring Arab countries, in Jordan in particular, where my family ended up during that earliest period of my life.

I graduated in 1969 with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Statistics, and hoped that one day I would become a minister of planning and implement development strategies for the lagging Jordanian economy. I was also encouraged by my father’s immortal saying: ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’. He would quote from the holy Qur’an, and always urged us to avoid waste in every possible way. During my university studies, the second Arab–Israeli war erupted, in June 1967, and more Palestinian refugees flooded into Jordan. This had severe repercussions for both the economy and our people, and I wondered how we could build societies and achieve any progress while wars were erupting every 10 or 20 years. Against the odds, I struggled to create a position for myself and embarked on my career.

From 1970 until now, I have worked in education and in management consultancy in the whole of the Arab region, most specifically in Jordan. I worked first as a teacher of girls in Yemen and Libya, and in mixed schools in Algeria. I faced many challenges in all of these countries, especially in Algeria, where I found the language to be a problem.

After eight years as an expatriate, I decided that it was time to return home and start drawing more purposefully on my beliefs and principles in order to build upon the economic and management disciplines that I had previously taught in community colleges in Amman. These principles of mine are strongly based on mastery (Itqan) in Islam, which not only emphasises the quality of performance but also displays its ethical and spiritual context, as stated by Prophet Mohammad: ‘Allah loves to see one’s job done at the level of Itqan’ (Saheeh Muslim).

The organisation in which I work

In 1984 I joined TEAM (Transport, Engineering and Management) International consultants, a Cairo-based pan-Arab management and engineering consultancy. I discovered, at least initially, that TEAM and I shared the same objectives and philosophy. It was a great opportunity for me to implement my own beliefs and thinking with regard to sustainable organisations and organisational development in general, to elevate the level of professional services and to introduce socio-political navigation into our Arab organisations. However, what I had not thought through at that time was that such navigation was more Western than Islamic or Arab in orientation.

In 1995, TEAM (Jordan) began to offer its customers the ISO 9000 quality management system as the first step towards implementing TQM in their organisations. We were relating a global quality approach (ISO 9000) to a local culture, rather than evolving a local approach with a view to making it more global. This was to come later, through I.Theory, which I was to co-evolve in my doctoral work.

Nevertheless, we were pioneers in Jordan and managed to export this service to the majority of TEAM branches around the Arab world. The ISO 9001 and ISO 9002 quality management systems were very necessary for organisations, helping them to document their procedures and providing them with clear guidelines to follow.

In a further development, we signed an agreement with the University of Buckingham to run its master’s programme in Transformation Management. This was ostensibly to promote organisational learning and knowledge creation in organisations in the Middle East. Participants and organisations, myself and TEAM (Jordan) included, underwent a process of transformation in which they grounded themselves in Arab and Islamic culture, with a view to transforming themselves from a local–global perspective.

As we shall see, the co-operative inquiry teams at RSCN (where the management director was a graduate of the Transformation Management programme) and Al Quds Paints Co. are living examples of the transformation that we are promoting. Today TEAM (Jordan), my consultancy company, is eager to promote and see the results of I.Theory, that is, management by (Islamic) values. We believe that ours is the only consultancy company in the Arab world today that is doing this.

My society

Jordan is a small county. The population is of mixed origins, due to past and present wars (including Arab–Israeli wars and US–Iraqi wars). This turbulent environment has led to instability and insecurity throughout the Middle East region, and Jordan has been significantly affected by it. Because it is a country of limited natural resources, it has been essential, over the past decades, for Jordan to transform itself from a so-called ‘underdeveloped’ desert kingdom. It therefore became a priority for entrepreneurs and people in general to start building more fully functional, values-oriented organisations, with a special emphasis on their long-term sustainability.

Yet, people observe double standards on a daily basis. They believe in management by values, but at the same time they feel that these values do not matter so much when they see successful organisations behaving unethically – or worse, when powerful and influential people create havoc in the world while preaching the good news.

During the past decade the government of Jordan has joined up with the World Bank to come up with reform strategies so as to create improvements in different sectors. However, the focus of these strategies is chiefly technological and economic, and there is scant regard for cultural, ethical and spiritual matters. Modernisation, as currently portrayed in Jordan, is somehow modest and shallow – to a great extent lacking in important features such as delegation, proper systems and even professional relations between managers (Al-Rasheed, 2001).

FROM MANAGEMENT CONSULTING TO AL SHURA

In Chapter 3, I pose the following critical questions: How can we, as management consultants, help organisations to achieve organisational transformation and a better quality of life? How can we facilitate the transformation process inside the organisation? What values should top management espouse in order to achieve quality and transformation? Here, the value on which I draw in particular is Al Shura (consultation) in Islam. One definition of Al Shura is negotiation and dialogue to reveal what is right. The aim is to know what is correct, after first becoming acquainted with all the elements of a particular issue and considering numerous points of view.

Al Shura is to submit difficult problems in worldly and religious affairs to people who are known for their wide practical experience and wise advice. It is to listen to different opinions and deduce suitable solutions (Al-Tamimi, 2003).

As a management consultant, I believe that our role not only entails corporate diagnosis, but can actually extend to include social aspects as well. Therefore, we can address certain social problems that may have significant effects on the corporate life cycle, since we are both targeting organisational sustainability and, most importantly, aiming to achieve a better quality of life.

Part 2: Methodology

METHODOLOGY

In Chapter 4, I explain why I use the co-operative inquiry methodology developed by John Heron and how it helps in achieving the main objectives described in this book – self-, organisational and societal renewal, within a framework of epistemology and knowledge.

Method

I also draw on case-study methods to review the application of I.Theory in the RSCN, a non-profit organisation, and Al-Quds Paints Co., a small factory aiming to achieve the required transformation. This method is compatible with the co-operative inquiry methodology: it covers the contextual conditions and answers the main questions in this book.

CO-OPERATIVE INQUIRY METHODOLOGY

Co-operative inquiry as a methodology was developed by John Heron (Heron, 1996). His approach is based on the democratic participation of the individual within a group. It involves two or more people researching and developing a topic or area of concern and using a series of cycles in which they move between action and reflection. The methodology is distinctive in its co-operative approach. It includes four ways of knowing: Experiential, Imaginal or Presentational, Propositional and Practical. These were applied in both the RSCN and the Al-Quds Paints Co.

The knowledge modes conceived by Heron are quite distinct, and take us on to a particular and transformative mode of thought, and ultimately to action.

The epistemic perspective

The epistemic side of this paradigm is about participative knowing. This experiential knowing involves the following, as per John Heron’s Co-operative Inquiry:

• Participation through empathetic communion and imagining, whereby knowing is mutual and awakening.

• Participation in anything explicitly is to participate in everything tacitly.

• The distinction between participative and non-participative knowing, in which the knower splits subject from object.

• Integration of the three stages which reflect the human stages from childhood to ego development, then to mature integration.

• Holism of inquiry, grounded in participative knowing.

The political perspective

This perspective holds that the subjects participate as researchers in the inquiry process, including the generation of knowledge, decision making and so on. This is based on the idea that people have the right to participate in decisions that affect their lives, in accordance with the principles of democratisation and empowerment.

As we shall see in the case studies, RSCN and Al-Quds Paints Co. began to adopt the participatory approach in every decision in order to germinate the democracy indicated in John Heron’s Co-operative Inquiry, thus building confidence and quality in order to transform their respective organisations and create organisations ‘managed by values’ derived from local roots and a culture based on Islamic values and ethics.

Part 3: Content

FROM TOTALITY QUALITY MANAGEMENT TO I.THEORY

The backbone of this book is the theory (Part 3), which consists of six chapters related to quality of life from an Islamic perspective. It covers subjects such as TQM as a lifestyle based on Itqan (perfection) in Islam and transformation. It also includes a comparison between Islamic theory in management (I.Theory) and Western and Japanese theories, as well as Islamic values and my role in evolving the I.Theory in terms of its implementation on both cultural and systems levels in Jordanian organisations.

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN AMERICA AND JAPAN

In Chapter 5, I focus on TQM and its features. The chapter covers the history of Total Quality (TQ), which commenced in the Muslim world in the days of Prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon him) and is related to his sayings about Itqan (perfection). I also include other philosophers, such as the American W.E. Deming, and discuss Deming’s principles and how we can improve quality according to his chain reaction and the 14 points that he drew up to help people transform their businesses (Deming, 1986).

Deming believed that in order to achieve TQM, management should base systems on statistical quality controls, on the one hand, and that there should be continuous improvement and progressive product development efforts, on the other hand, in manufacturing processes. He also stressed that top management needs to be firm and consistent in terms of commitment and compliance and that, most importantly, it should assume total responsibility for quality improvement.

J.M. Juran, on the other hand, focused on customer satisfaction and the importance of having deficiency-free products in order to avoid customer dissatisfaction (Rampersad, 2005).

But philosophers have different approaches to the implementation organisational change by targeting development and sustainability.

As for Japanese TQ philosophers, Ishikawa and Taguchi introduced principles such as quality planning, quality control, the Ishikawa diagram (fishbone diagram) and quality improvement.

Ishikawa built and promoted greater involvement of top management than of frontline staff and reduced the reliance on quality professionals and quality departments. And while Taguchi explained the economic value of reducing variation, he maintained and measured quality as a variation from the target value of design specification and translated it in economic terms (loss function) that express the cost of variation in monetary terms.

Despite the implementation of TQM in the West or the East, we need an Islamic theory that reflects our culture and value system. I.Theory has features that have evolved from our history, ideology and religion that could enhance the chances of successful TQM practice. These features include Tawheed (unification of individuals with the group), Itqan (perfection) and justice, as will be explained later. This could provide a satisfying answer to my first question: How can we develop a management theory that is based on our culture rather than on Western theories and that can be implemented within our organisations?

QUALITY IN ISLAM

In Chapter 6, I discuss the origins of quality practices in Islam, such as Shura (consultation), and the meaning of Itqan (perfection) as quality of work as well as quality of life. I also cover the work of some Muslim scholars who talk about quality and ethics. For example, the Hisba system, which is a quality and control system, and the features of Almuhtasib (inspector) are presented as elements of the quality system in Islam. Further, the documentation system in the Islamic state, called Dawaween, is similar to information management and control systems. I also make a comparison between Islamic quality and the modern approach in quality (ISO 9000) and TQM.

At the end of Chapter 6, I point out that, despite the many successful cases associated with the implementation of ISO 9000, there is still substantial criticism of it. For example, John Seddon (1997) has built a critique based on the erroneous philosophy of ISO 9000, which, according to him, focuses on commands and control rather than improvement and development. However, I believe that we should study all management theories and, at the same time, develop our own, based on our culture and religion, to promote the quality and transformation we yearn for.

MANAGERIAL PHILOSOPHY: COMPARATIVE APPROACH

In Chapters 7 and 8, I review management philosophy from a comparative perspective. In Chapter 7, I compare and contrast the development of management philosophies prior to the Industrial Revolution. The first management approach was that of ‘management by sufficiency’ (which means following rules and regulations), which then evolved into management by efficiency, which is sufficiency plus an initiative to innovate and crea...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgment
• Dedication
• PART I CONTEXT
• PART II METHODOLOGY
• PART III CONTENT
• PART IV APPLICATION
• PART V CONCLUSIONS
• Bibliography
• Appendix 1: Checklist Questionnaire
• Appendix 2: Values Indicators According to RSCN Appraisal System
• Index