Fostering individual behavior through quality of life variables: the role of Islamic work ethics

Abstract

Purpose The increasing ethical misconduct at job place demands to understand the role of ethics in a wide variety of disciplines. This paper aims to empirically investigate the mediating mechanism of life satisfaction and subjective happiness between Islamic work ethics – innovative work behavior (IWB) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Design/methodology/approach The sample comprised 296 employees and 58 head of departments (HODs) of top 11 business schools in Pakistan. The data of the study were collected in three waves and from two different sources (faculty members and their HODs) through questionnaire. The statistical technique SEM analysis was applied to inspect the proposed direct and mediating hypotheses. Findings Taken together, the findings revealed that Islamic work ethics (IWE) improves quality of life and by following IWE at workplace, employees feel pleasure and show satisfaction from life. The results supported the mediating role of both life satisfaction and subjective happiness between IWE-IWB and IWE-OCB. Practical implications This study provides practical insight that Islamic business ethics plays an important role at workplace and improves quality of life and individual behavior. Originality/value The current research is unique, as it empirically investigates the mechanism quality of life phenomena which connects IWE and individual behavior (innovative and citizenship). The mechanism quality of life is less studied, and therefore this study fills the gap of scant literature.

Antecedents and Consequences of Innovative Work Behavior in Indonesian Higher Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The results showed that workplace happiness positively affected innovative work behavior. These results support previous studies [16,[57][58][59]. In other words, innovative work behavior would coherently increase when lecturers felt continuously and increasingly happy at work.…”

“…Happy employees can also show positive attitudes and behaviors, which can influence other employees at work, thus providing a broad overview of innovative work behavior [16,57,58]. Furthermore, a study of Zia, Naveed [59] on employees of full-time business universities/HEIs in Pakistan uncovered that workplace happiness affected innovative work behavior. Thus, based on the studies and discussion above, the researchers predicted that:…”

Islamic Organizational Citizenship Behavior among Millennial Workers: The Role of Islamic Leadership, Workplace Spirituality, and Islamic Work Ethic In Central Java, Indonesia

“…There are various studies on the role of Islamic work ethics in multiple things in organizational activities and the environment. Islamic work ethics has an influence on work outcomes (Rokhman, 2010), OCB (Murtaza et al, 2016;Zia et al, 2022), conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, opennessto-experience and emotional instability of employees (Wahab, 2017), leadership (Javed et al, 2020), and knowledge sharing behavior (Javaid et al, 2022;Murtaza et al, 2016).…”

“…Particularly, the characteristic of organizational members with OCB is that they are oriented towards innovative performance, so it can directly impact the survival and improvement of organizational performance in a competitive environment to remain superior. (Dubey et al, 2022;Marinova et al, 2010;Ocampo et al, 2018;Organ, 1994) According to Zia et al (2022), organizational members with Islamic organizational citizenship behavior will exhibit behavior that reflects the values of goodness in Muslims. However, research on organizational members' behavior has been dominated by Western values, and there is still a lack of research considering the Islamic values perspective.…”

“…Javaid et al (2022) conclude in their research that IWE is important for strengthening the influence of personality on the behavior of sharing knowledge and offers insights into how IWE might improve an organization's competitive advantages in turbulent markets. Then, Zia et al (2022) state that Islamic business ethics are essential in the workplace and enhance personal behavior and quality of life.…”