Organizational excellence based approach to manage the interactions between religion and organizations

Abstract

The increasing interest in the relationship between religion and organizations is attributed to the significance of religion to human life and to the vital role of organizations in modern societies as a structural social relationship of social actors. The influence of religion on organizations and management, with some exceptions, is insufficiently discussed by the researchers of organization and management theory (OMT). Scarce of studying the religion as a powerful contextual factor that influences organizations will be at organizations’ expense. The aim of this research is to fill the knowledge gap of holistic recognition and understanding of religion-organizations relationship aspects and how to effectively manage these aspects. This research proposes the organizational excellence model of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) as a means to conceptualize this phenomenon and help organizations in managing the religious interactions effectively. This research focuses on the context of Islam and large Saudi private organizations where the phenomenon of religious interactions with organizations is profound. This research takes pragmatism stance as a research paradigm to investigate the research problem. And employed a qualitative method to obtain an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of religion-organizations relationship and to develop the religion interactions management framework. The empirical data was collected from 42 interviews, 29 documents analysis, and three Delphi rounds with a panel of 23 experts. As a pragmatist, the researcher assumes three epistemological roles during this research: firstly, act as developer of the research conceptual framework based on the identification of existing theoretical aspects of the religion-organizations relationship and the theoretical proposal of EFQM capability to facilitate the management of this relation. Secondly, the researcher acts as an explorer for the empirically emergent aspects of religion-organizations relationship within the research setting, and as an explorer for a systematic approach to managing this relationship. Thirdly, the researcher acts as a contributor to theory and practice through the expansion of existing theoretical work on religion-organizations relationship studies and the proposal of religion interactions’ management (RIM) model and assessment tool. The main findings of this research are that: first, the theoretically identified aspects of the religion-organizations relationship are empirically supported and expanded. Second, identification of 23 emergent aspects and propositions for the religion-organizations relationship that did not get enough attention in literature or not reported to date. Third, confirmation of the significance of recognizing, understanding, and addressing religion as one of the critical contextual factors for any organization particularly in societies with Intense religiosity such as Saudi Arabia. Fourth, confirmation of the assumption of capability and appropriateness of EFQM as a basis to conceptualize the management of religious interactions. The main contribution of this research is the identification of an overarching scheme of the phenomenon of the relationship between religion and organizations and the proposal of a comprehensive conceptualization on how to manage this relationship as well as pave the path for further theoretical and empirical researches on the identified relationship’s aspects and the proposed management model.