A Review of "Guided by Tawhid (Unity): Ethics in the UAE Workplace"

Guided by tawhid (unity): Ethics in the UAE workplace

For centuries there has been an intersection of religion and management within the workplace. Although studies have been taken an evaluated within most Western societies, few studies have actually been done on this subject within Eastern or Arab and Islamic societies. The study that is being evaluated takes a look at these issues from the standpoint of the Arabic word and Islamic principle tawhid, which the researchers translate as “unity”. From this view, they compare how this principle relates to decision making in management within the society in the United Arab Emirates.

This paper examines the parity between management style outcomes between Western and Eastern Islamic society under the influence of religion. It focuses on how expectations as far as religious belief intersect with management style. It hypothesizes that because of the concept of tawhid, there would be a low incident rate among the items surveyed. The researchers employ a qualitative interview design in order to gather data. They interviewed 320 employees from 30 different corporations in order to accomplish this. Also, due to the subject matter, this was mainly a study in the area of religion and spirituality.

Out of the 16 questions asked, several of the questions were subjected to a coefficient of consistency by way of Cronbach’s alpha. A couple of these questions focused on manager and employee accountability. Despite Cronbach’s alpha not being a statistical test, many of the questions derived a mean and standard deviation only after participants who refused to answer had been removed. The researchers found that there was a low incident rate among the employees, which they attributed to the principle of tawhid. Likewise, they attributed tawhid to good ethics.

Among the issues encountered in this paper is the use of the word tawhid which has a different connotation in the Islamic sense than it does as a regularly translated word in Islamic. The researchers use the word to mean “unity”, in which case the word wahidah is more relevant. The reason this is important is because the word tawhid in a religious and general sense refers to Islamic monotheism and more specifically to the oneness of God (al-Qarawi, 1973). The cultural implications of this mistake is huge when read or interpreted to an audience that know and understand the Arabic language. The relationship between religiosity and the workplace has been studied in other research and provides the same conclusion from a different standpoint without mentioning this essential Islamic principle (Akdere, Russ-Eft, & Eft, 2006).

Despite the sample size and the variability of it, the sample was made exclusively of men. The authors cited the small amount of women in the workplace and that the questionnaire items may have been taboo. There was also an issue that the presence of women in the workplace was a violation of tawhidic principles. There is not an issue with women working within the UAE and in fact the number of women working has increased over the years. Women are encouraged to work by the ruler of the country and great strides have been made in order to provide education and jobs for them.

With this in mind, the issue of taking only information from men may be viewed as biased especially on several of the questions that include issues such as sexual harassment. Most sexual harassment is done by men (Street, Gradus, Stafford, & Kelly, 2007). Despite the promise of confidentiality, there could be the prevalent fear that admitting to such a crime or witnessing and not saying anything such as that within that society could lead to punishment. Harassment is not tolerated by Islamic society or UAE in general. In order to get a fair sense of some of the metrics gathered, women should have been included in the study. In one study, it found that 28% women in the workplace in the UAE are recipients of sexual harassment compared to the reported 3% total (Todd, Salim, & Yasmeen, 2014).

One major issue that stood out was the choice of data-collection. The researchers did private interviews, which poses several problems. The first is whether or not the person being interviewed is answering truthfully. The UAE has a very conservative society and the desire to give a socially desirable response is high. Admitting to either a crime or witnessing a crime and not reporting it carries the same punishment. One of these issues includes that of alcohol, which was asked about by the interviewer. In Islamic society, it is impermissible to expose sins of either yourself or another person, and this plays a role in accountability and whether or not people would be forthcoming with information. I believe the study should have been conducted anonymously to eliminate any potential conflict of social beliefs and socially desirable answers. With the inclusion of women, the numbers may have also been different.

Two strikes: Race and the disciplining of young students

For the past couple of years, race has been in the news very frequently. Quite a few researchers have decided to take up the banner to address the issues of equality and justice among marginalize communities. One of these such communities is the African American community. In a recent study, researchers have determined that when it comes to race, black and white students are not punished at the same rate (Okonofua & Eberhardt, 2015). This researcher has led to the conclusion that teachers are harder on black students than they are on whites for the same type of infractions.

The researchers hypothesize that the disparities are lead by racial stereotypes. This can lead teachers to escalate their negative responses to black students. The first study included 57 female kindergarten to 12^(th)-grade teachers who had an average of 14 years experience with an average class size of 26. The average age of the teachers was 42 with teacher makeup being predominantly white. It utilized a 2x2 mixed design that consisted of race (black and white) and infractions (one vs two). The infractions served as the within-subjects factor. All teachers recruited were active teachers who still interact with students.

Teachers were shown a picture of a student and then shown a student record, which showed two infractions of misbehaving. Also, the researchers manipulated the student’s race by racial stereotypes. A Likert scale was utilized to rate how severe a student’s behavior was, from 1 (not at all) to 10 (severe). In order to analyze the data, they used an ANOVA to reveal the main effect of the number of infractions. The researchers also used a paired-samples t test to reveal how the teachers felt.

The issue with the study is that it was not racially diverse. Most of the study focused on white teachers’ interaction with black students and there lacks data for other races and ethnicities and their interactions with students. Due to a few teachers not passing manipulation checks as well as suspicion checks, a few of them were removed, which brought the sample size down to 53.

One strength to the test however was the years of experience of the teachers surveyed. This took in account that there were plenty of years of experience and also could almost guarantee that their behavior was consistent across the board. However, newer teachers may view things differently. There could be a higher or lower rate of discipline of black students with newer teachers. Recent reports have listed millennials as being more racist than their parents which could affect the current research (Taylor & Keeter, 2010). I believe that the younger generation of teachers, or those with less than 10 years of experience should have been included as well. This could have given a more balanced view of the issue.

The research design itself was very straightforward and was able to capture the data that it needed to. By simplifying the questions and giving a scale, the analyzing took a lot of work out of the process. This is opposed to allowing the teachers to write down their feelings or how they felt in their own words and letting the researchers go through and figure it out for themselves. Using an ordinal scale is a great way for measuring beliefs, attitudes, and opinions. It is also the most universal way of collecting data. The down side of it, is that it isn’t multi-dimensional. There is no way the choices can be equidistant. Although it measures attitudes of respondents, it doesn’t measure the true attitudes, which could very well differ from the results. But it is on point with other research findings (Mustard, 2001).

References

Akdere, M., Russ-Eft, D., & Eft, N. (2006). The Islamic worldview of adult learning in the workplace: Surrendering to god. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 8(3), 355–363. http://doi.org/10.1177/1523422306288428 al-Qarawi, M. I. '. A.-A. S. (1973). Al-Jadid fi sharh kitab al-Tauhid. Maktab al-Tayfig. ↩
Mustard, D. B. (2001). Racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in sentencing: Evidence from the U.S. federal courts. Journal of Law and Economics, 44(1), 285–314. http://doi.org/10.1086/320276?ref=no-x-route:ff068c7d37d7017cee4efaebd2dd8ca0 ↩
Okonofua, J. A., & Eberhardt, J. L. (2015). Two strikes: Race and the disciplining of young students. Psychological Science, 0956797615570365. http://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615570365 ↩
Street, A. E., Gradus, J. L., Stafford, J., & Kelly, K. (2007). Gender differences in experiences of sexual harassment: Data from a male-dominated environment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 75(3), 464–474. http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.75.3.464 ↩
Taylor, P., & Keeter, S. (2010). Millennials: A portrait of generation next: Confident, connected, open to change. Pew Research Center. ↩
Todd, P., Salim, S., & Yasmeen, S. (2014). Sexual harassment in the workplace in a Muslim Arabic culture: The United Arab Emirates public sector. Community Work and Family Conference. ↩