Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- 1 Introduction: ethics and cross-cultural management
- Part I Understanding values and management ethics across cultural space
- Part II Understanding values and ethics within and among cultural spaces
- 5 Geopolitics and cultural invisibility: the United States
- 6 Institutions as culture, and the invisibility of ethics: a New Europe
- 7 The visibility of religion in ethical management: Islam and the Middle East
- 8 Reconstructing indigenous values and ethics: the South speaks back
- 9 The resurgence of ancient civilizations: a taste of the exotic
- Part III Managing ethically across cultures
- References
- Index
7 - The visibility of religion in ethical management: Islam and the Middle East
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- 1 Introduction: ethics and cross-cultural management
- Part I Understanding values and management ethics across cultural space
- Part II Understanding values and ethics within and among cultural spaces
- 5 Geopolitics and cultural invisibility: the United States
- 6 Institutions as culture, and the invisibility of ethics: a New Europe
- 7 The visibility of religion in ethical management: Islam and the Middle East
- 8 Reconstructing indigenous values and ethics: the South speaks back
- 9 The resurgence of ancient civilizations: a taste of the exotic
- Part III Managing ethically across cultures
- References
- Index
Summary
It is not possible to explore management ethics in the modern Arab world without focusing on Islam. This is the first chapter in the current book that overtly looks at ethics through a religious lens. As Nanji (1993: 117) says:
Since the modern conception of religion familiar to most people in the West assumes a theoretical separation between specifically religious and perceived secular activity, some aspects of contemporary Muslim discourse, which does not accept such a separation, appear strange and often retrogressive. Where such discourse, expressed in what appears to be traditional religious language, has become linked to radical change or violence, it has unfortunately deepened stereotypical perceptions about Muslim fanaticism, violence, and cultural and moral difference.
These words were penned almost a decade before 9/11 after which so much, but also so little, changed. Issues, such as ‘veiling’ have for many years provoked ethical reactions in the West. Yet antagonisms between the West's perception of Islam and Muslims' reactions to Western-led globalization have been exacerbated by the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, and subsequent US-led military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Arab world and Islamic philosophers and scientists have achieved much alongside the growth of civilization in the Middle East together with trade and economic development at a time when Europe was still groping around in the Dark Ages. Islam developed initially in the Arabian peninsular doing much to unify diverse Arab communities, and as a progressive religion did much to overthrow the old tribal ways.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- International Management EthicsA Critical, Cross-cultural Perspective, pp. 172 - 202Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011