Impact of Arab Islamic Culture on Employees’ Effectiveness from the Employees’ Perspective in Commercial Banks Case of The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Abstract

This paper presents part of theoretical and practical analysis of the influence of Arab Islamic culture on employees’ effectiveness in Jordanian commercial banks. It considers two of the Islamic values: Intention (Neyyah) and Justice Trust (Amana) from the employees’ perspective. The influence of religion on both: practices of management and its role in human behaviour within work organizations has been ignored (Ababneh & Avramenko, 2016). This paper tries to fill part of this gap by considering its influence on organizational performance in general and employee’s effectiveness in particular. In a country such as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, religion plays an important role in everyday life, being supported by Government. Interest is in the prevalent behaviour at work and beyond. The question is ‘what’ is the degree of influence of commitment to religious practices? This paper explores the relationship between the dominant religion and management practices in paying particular attention to Arab Islamic culture and employees’ effectiveness. This is an important sector to study, as it plays a key role in supporting societies and is arguably the most important service sector affecting the Jordanian economy. Data was analysed from managers, assistant managers, divisional heads, branch heads and other employees from five commercial banks in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan with a sample size of 174. Therefore, descriptive statistics, multiple regression analysis and other statistical tests were utilised to test research hypotheses. The empirical results of the research show there is no statistically significant effect to Intention (Neyyah) and Justice Trust (Amana) on HR performance in the commercial banks in Jordan.