Corporate governance and leadership from an Islamic perspective

The focus on the study of management so far has been mainly on two elements- work (production) and workers’ welfare. Hence the management as well as leadership grid has evolved over years based on these two. Experts did not spare a thought that human is also a spiritual being. Western institutions very recently realized a missing element of spirituality from literature on management. Thus in today’s governance, a good corporate leadership seems to be in short supply due to the lack of spirited executives. The leadership development faces two ways of tackling today’s corporate governance problem. First, one can do more of the same. Second, one can try something different. The Islamic perspective to governance and leadership is interesting not because it is new, but because it worked in the past. This paper intends to rediscover this missing spiritual heritage while presenting it within the framework of up to date knowledge on management, leadership and corporate governance. In this paper I conclude therefore to try to demonstrate that Islamic leadership is possible for all. This is equally good, especially Muslims academic and management practitioners including for non-Muslims alike

Contrast on leadership approaches: an empirical study of majority and minority Muslims

Islamic leadership is a psychological contract between a leader and his followers where he will try his best to guide them, to protect them, and to treat them fairly and with justice. The objective of Islamic leadership principles is to encourage Muslim followers to practice and develop human qualities for a better place in a society and a better life for the Muslim Ummah. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the application of transformational, transactional and servant leadership styles in Muslim majority and a minority countries in Southeast Asia. This study shows differences or conformance between two: one Muslim majority and minority countries on Islamic leadership practices by adopting Islamic leadership principles. This study conducted an empirical survey in two different but neighboring nations in Southeast Asia, namely Malaysia and Thailand. The research data was analyzed through non-parametric analysis such as one independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA. The findings of the empirical study indicated some significant differences in the Muslim minority country as compared to that of the Muslim majority. Possible reasons and policy prescriptions are offered in the conclusion

Visual Place Recognition under Severe Viewpoint and Appearance Changes

Over the last decade, the eagerness of the robotic and computer vision research communities unfolded extensive advancements in long-term robotic vision. Visual localization is the constituent of this active research domain; an ability of an object to correctly localize itself while mapping the environment simultaneously, technically termed as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Visual Place Recognition (VPR), a core component of SLAM is a well-known paradigm. In layman terms, at a certain place/location within an environment, a robot needs to decide whether it’s the same place experienced before? Visual Place Recognition utilizing Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) has made a major contribution in the last few years. However, the image retrieval-based VPR becomes more challenging when the same places experience strong viewpoint and seasonal transitions. This thesis concentrates on improving the retrieval performance of VPR system, generally targeting the place correspondence. Despite the remarkable performances of state-of-the-art deep CNNs for VPR, the significant computation- and memory-overhead limit their practical deployment for resource constrained mobile robots. This thesis investigates the utility of shallow CNNs for power-efficient VPR applications. The proposed VPR frameworks focus on novel image regions that can contribute in recognizing places under dubious environment and viewpoint variations. Employing challenging place recognition benchmark datasets, this thesis further illustrates and evaluates the robustness of shallow CNN-based regional features against viewpoint and appearance changes coupled with dynamic instances, such as pedestrians, vehicles etc. Finally, the presented computation-efficient and light-weight VPR methodologies have shown boostup in matching performance in terms of Area under Precision-Recall curves (AUC-PR curves) over state-of-the-art deep neural network based place recognition and SLAM algorithms

An empirical assessment of Islamic leadership principles

The main purpose of the present paper is to document some Islamic leadership principles of management. The paper equally examines the leadership function as adopted by academic administrators within the International Islamic University, Malaysia vis-a-vis Islamic principles of management. The whole process is an attempt to conduct an empirical study of the important role of excellent leadership from an Islamic perspective. A combination of revealed sources of knowledge (the Quran and Sunnah) and literature reviews were used to document Islamic leadership principles. Then, a questionnaire-based survey was used to examine the Islamic leadership principles, approaches, and sources of leadership principles adopted in the university. Use of the scale of statistical measurement was done to test the significance and reliability level. It was found that academic administrators were imbued with Islamic leadership principles. The research also showed that servant-leadership approach is preferably used in conjunction with alternative transactional and transformational styles, while the revealed sources of knowledge (Quran and Sunnah) were given the highest priority as sources of developing leadership principles. Islamic management is a diverse field. This study is, however, limited to Islamic leadership principles in an organization. Perhaps, this study will be little known to adherents of the conventional management principles, which may stimulate further thinking and debate on the crossing point between Islam and the management of an organization. It is aimed at providing some knowledge of Islamic philosophy and practice in order to help today’s employers and employees carry on everyday activities imbued with Islamic values and cultures

Managing from Islamic perspectives: some preliminary findings from Malaysian Muslim managed organisations

The idea for this work originally goes to back a few years to a critical comment made by an acquaintance with we were conversing on the developments in the area of management from Islamic perspectives. He asked, rather raised, a pointed question: do we have an example of an organization in reality that is run according to Islamic principles? we did not have an answer to that question then; I believe that we do not have a satisfactory answer to that question even now. This research work is an outcome of the frustration of not being able to find a satisfactory answer to that wellmeaning meaning question. Over the years, that frustration has been channeled into investigating and researching into whatever little material is available in the area of management from Islamic perspectives

Bank Rakyat Malaysia: vision remains while mission is revisited

The slogan, “of the people, for the people, by the people” comes home. Bank Rakyat Malaysia (BRM) offers a different kind of retail banking. Bank Rakyat underwent a drastic evolution from a cooperative system of management to a highly creative market entity ready to face the very aggressive competitive market forces of the Islamic banking and finance industry. The BRM was a cooperative bank before it entered the Islamic banking and finance industry. It needed to create a culture of change and flexibility to adapt to the changing external environments. The challenge was to remain consistent in its vision but revisit its mission. The consistency had to be maintained as it was in line with the founding fathers’ idea of serving its members. Thus the vision of serving its members was maintained while a new structure was created to aid efficient decision making and communication with stakeholders. This change subsequently facilitated the implementation of its growth strategies and planning activities, an imperative for its survival. All of this change was being effected while sustaining its image as a responsive, transparent and honest corporate citizen despite a host of issues and challenges that lie ahead

Corporate governance for Islamic banking sustainability and caux round table principles

Corporate Governance for Islamic Banking Sustainability and Caux Round Table Principles is an attempt to give a balanced view of both Western and Islamic perspectives. The review of the literature, explanations of the verses of the Qur’an that relate to corporate governance (CG) theories and Islamic perspective to it will enrich the field. This paper takes those traditional theories in literature and interprets them from an Islamic perspective, using more international perspectives especially for the Muslim world. Since failure to make profit alone is not enough reason of defaulting corporate entities rather non-compliance of shari’ah and Islamic ethical guidelines and lack of CSR concern is equally important in defining failur

Editorial Notes of Vol.7 issue 1

This is the editorial notes written as a editor in chief of the Journal of Islamic management Studies vol.7 issue 1

Leadership and work motivation from the cross cultural perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast conventional management thought, its main features of leadership, and work motivation with those from an Islamic perspective. The paper fills in the literature gap that exists, despite the growing importance of a need for knowledge on management from an Islamic perspective. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is conceptual in nature. Therefore, the method adopted is descriptive and approached using revealed knowledge sources, as well as knowledge from conventional management literature from the cultural school of management thought. Findings – Leadership and motivational concepts in Islamic management are more comprehensive than the conventional theories. Islamic motivation frameworks also provide fundamentals for developing a strong Islamic leadership. Implications of these Islamic management concepts are not only confined to this materialistic world but also have connotation for subscribers of the belief of attaining eternal success in the hereafter. Originality/value – The paper gives a better understanding and guidelines for managers of multinational corporations, especially those working in Muslim countries, in order to achieve their corporate objectives successfully

Customer decision making vis-à-vis halal branding

Understanding the preference of Muslim youth for halal (religiously permissible)certified products in their search for branded items was the underlying motive behind this research. Since sportswear brand owners usually target youth market segments, Muslim youth in the Malaysian market were selected as the main respondents for this study. The collective perceptions of quality, brand awareness, brand association and consumer loyalty constitute brand equity and this study focused on brand equity research in the Malaysian marketing environment. Empirical research was conducted to determine the “on the ground” reality of the market, with a view to suggesting marketing policy directions to brand managers in the Malaysian sportswear industry. In the Malaysian context, the findings of the research do not completely support all the dimensions of Aaker’s (1991) brand equity model. This paper recommends that brand managers use halal certification of sportswear products to penetrate the Malay youth sub-segment of the Malaysian sportswear market. Halal certification will not have a negative effect on penetration of the other market sub-segments consisting of youth from other races in Malaysia