Strategic Management from an Islamic Perspective: Text and Cases

Part II

Case Studies

Cases in This Textbook

We now would like to explain how we went about putting together the cases in Part II. First, many practitioners were reluctant to help out because the whole idea of using cases in strategic management from an Islamic perspective scared many Muslims. They often feel that they are not “Islamic” enough. On top of that, most companies do not like outsiders looking at their operations in any meaningful way. Furthermore, it is difficult to know which companies operate with Islamic management principles. Often, we hear rumors1 that a company is committed to Islamic management but there is no official record in the company’s vision and mission statement. When we meet with top management, they say, “We have stakeholders from various ethnic and religious backgrounds, so we do not want any publicity. As much as possible, though, we try to adhere to our religious beliefs by trying to implement Islamic management principles.” Eventually, we found a way around these problems, and we present several case studies in this part of the book. Some of these cases are based on secondary data (i.e., on public information), including case studies on IBM and three Islamic banks.

The purpose of the IBM case is to show what a really complex organization looks like and the associated problems of defensive routines, conflicts, or interests, and so forth. We also present the IBM case because we believe that strategic management should not be only about strategy but ...