A Scoping Review of Research on Islamic Work Ethics

Abstract

Ethics has been a central issue in the study of leadership in general, and particularly Islamic work ethic (IWE). Despite the growing interest in the study of ethics in relation to leadership, only an insignificant number of publications about Islamic work ethics. Moreover, there are virtually low research publications in respect of religious aspects of ethics both Islamic and Christian. The purpose of this paper is scoping review of Islamic work ethic literature to map out (what is known from the existing literature about IWE) its conceptualizations and synthesize the findings. The methodology of this scoping review was conducted by searching the term Islamic work ethic in the largest social sciences database (Scopus), ranging from 1988 to 2018. All studies that have the term Islamic work ethic as one of their variables and only empirical articles and articles in the press were also considered for inclusion. The findings of previous studies and their suggestions for further studies were disseminated as well. The result shows that Islamic work ethics was found to be significant in ethical leadership research, but still, there is a very low research output on it. The peak research output on IWE was recorded in 2018 with 22 documents in the Scopus Database.