Many Muslim leaders, entrepreneurs, and managers in Malaysia successfully apply the Al-Quran and Sunnah to their business organizations. In an organization, Islam stresses the cooperation and sense of collectiveness among the employees, as in fact, the religion cannot be practiced in separation. The collective efforts of people in a work situation should be aimed at achieving a certain goal since organizations are composed of very distinct people who are each of unique character and contribute in a particular way based on cultural diversity. In order to create an ethical organization culture that provides a fair treatment to all employees, Islamic leadership principles would become the best method for realizing it. Many verses in the Al-Quran explains justice and honesty in trade as well as courtesy and fairness in employment. In succession, managers should follow many values and norms in Islam as regards the practice in the organization.
Top1. Introduction
This chapter is proposed to bring awareness to organization about the importance of workplace culture and leadership in accordance with Islam. It is crucial for organizations and leaders to practice a healthy workplace culture to overcome gender discrimination in the workplace.
Today, regardless of gender, both women and men work side by side, sitting through the same meetings, often undertaking the same business issues, and walking the same hallways but the common ground might just end there. The reality is women and men are being treated differently in the workplace. According to the United Nation, women work longer hours than men, which are an average of 30 minutes a day longer in developed countries and 50 minutes in developing countries. Based on the statistics reported by the United Nations, compared to 77 per cent of men, only 50 per cent of women of working age in the labor force. Across all sectors and occupations, women on average earn less than men. In most countries, women in full-time jobs earn between 70 and 90 percent of what men earn (United Nations, 2016). Due to this circumstance, it has become necessary to practice fair treatment and equal employment opportunity.
In a workplace environment, gender discrimination can be especially damaging. Women are sometimes considered to have less career interest and talent. It is believed that these characteristics cause some of the unequal treatment to women. Gender discrimination is defined as all decisions that are made within an organization that are based on gender instead of individual’s productivity or qualification (Valentine, Godkin, & Turner, 2002; Brady, 1998). Gender discrimination encourage gender bias by creating normative standards of behavior that induce social penalties and disapproval when a violation is inferred because a woman is successful or when they are directly dishonored (Heilman, 2012). Women should be empowered by providing them with equal opportunities that could fulfil their necessary potential to achieve career and business progress (Zaiton & Nooraini, 2015).
Research has investigated and demonstrated gender discrimination in employee selection processes. When the job is male sex-typed, women with identical credentials are judged to be less qualified and are less likely to be hired. Gender discrimination is well demonstrated in the labour market hiring practices and the victims are mostly women. Lack of technical capability is certainly not one the causes; after all, women have been attending the same schools as men and account for over half of the college graduates. The discrimination faced by women applicants in the hiring practices is contributed by psychological factors such as stereotypes, lack of fit, and social identity improvement (Heilman, 1997; Chien & Kleiner, 1999).
In the workplace, women remain subject to a series of unfavorable biases in important workplace outcomes: selection for a given job on the onset, performance evaluations, stress (particularly the impact of extra work responsibilities), discipline and dispute resolution, promotion, leadership, assessment, mentoring, displacement and layoffs and also compensation (Dalton and Kesner, 1993; Sean, Lynn & James, 2002).
Workplace culture has given a significant impact on the employees to offering equal employment opportunities. Workplace culture easily can be recognized as “the way things are done around here”. This term refers to the independent system of beliefs, values, and ways of behaving that are common to a workplace. On whether the company offers equal employment opportunities to such “different” workers, employers are not at all homogenous. Some companies are distinctly better places to work than others for women, minorities, or similar groups as widely-circulated reputations suggest (Bendick & Egan, 2000).
Discrimination is more likely happening in the workplace where human resource management decisions are made informally, subjectively and without documentation, explicit and validated criteria, open advertising of opportunities or training for supervisor and other personnel decision-makers.