Evaluation of the western literature on motivation from Islamic faith-based perspective

Abstract

Needs satisfaction is the common cornerstone of all motivation theories, but the needs and ways to satisfy the needs widely vary among individuals. Motivating employees is not an easy task and requires proper appreciation of the law of individual differences. Islam, according to its multidimensional aspect, has the most influential factor in formation of Muslims’ needs and the ways to address those needs. However, most of the current literature on motivation is basically reflecting to western understanding of human being without paying attention to the religious and spiritual aspects of employees. This paper aimed to investigate, identify, compare, and contrast the nature of man and his needs as it is pictured in western and Islamic perspective. It also aimed to show similarities and variation of roles of work in fulfilling needs of employees in both perspectives in order to see how and to what extent the western motivational literature address the needs of believing employees. To fulfill its purpose, qualitative data collection techniques based on textual analysis adopted to review the secondary sources of western and Islamic Literature. Western literature utilized for this research included recent managerial and psychological articles and text books in the field of motivation published from 20th century onward. Quranic verses, Prophetic Hadiths, and work of both early and recent Muslim scholars using terms familiar to contemporary psychology selected as the source of data of Islamic perspectives. The result found significant difference in the understanding of man and identification of human needs in western and Islamic perspective. In western image, man is mostly limited to his biological and psychological aspects while in Islamic understanding man is recognized as a spiritual being whose biological and psychological properties are accidental in nature. The study also found noteworthy similarities and consistency between biological and psychological needs of man from secular worldview with sawwala and ammara personality types of individuals in Islamic perspective. And finally the study found similarities and consistency between two perspectives regarding instrumental roles of work in fulfilling both lower and higher order needs of employees. On the other hand, the Islamic worldview contradicted and rejected the idea that work itself can become the supreme and ultimate source of motivation.