EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Islamic Family Business: The Constitutive Role of Religion in Business

Mustafa Kavas (), Paula Jarzabkowski () and Amit Nigam ()
Additional contact information
Mustafa Kavas: City, University of London
Paula Jarzabkowski: City, University of London
Amit Nigam: City, University of London

Journal of Business Ethics, 2020, vol. 163, issue 4, No 5, 689-700

Abstract: Abstract Religion has significantly influenced societies throughout history and across the globe. Family firms—particularly those operating in strongly religious regions—are more likely to be subject to the influence of religion. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which religion affects business activities in family firms. We study how religion impacts business activities through a qualitative study of two Anatolian-based family firms in Turkey. We find that religion provides a dominant meaning system that plays a key role in constituting business activities through three mechanisms: (1) family imports religious practices as business practices; (2) family adheres to religious values as a rationale for business actions; and (3) family religious values define business taboos by avoiding the evil eye. These mechanisms highlight how religion becomes a source of well-understood business practices, how religion defines the nature of rationality that guides business activities, and how religious taboos can delimit the range of potential business activities, respectively.

Keywords: Religion; Islamic practices; Family businesses; Integration of religion and business (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-019-04384-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:163:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-019-04384-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-019-04384-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:163:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-019-04384-5