IN LINE with the Islamic Hadhari approach to develop our society, it is very timely to highlight how Islam can contribute to an organisation’s performance.
One of the areas is in strengthening an organisation’s set-up.
The organisational set-up arranges the activities of the organisation to realise its goals and objectives.
It co-ordinates and streamlines all functions being carried out by its various divisions.
There is no hard and fast rule that an organisation must adopt the set-up of another successful organisation.
There is a lot of flexibility in this area and it requires creativity on the part of the leadership to come up with a good, relevant, and dynamic set-up.
The set-up can be refined as the organisation expands or diversifies its activities. It also needs continuous assessment by the leadership.
From the Islamic perspective, it is always advisable to adhere to religious principles, which are in line with the societal nature of man in organising his activities.
Indeed an organisation means individuals coming together to perform certain functions in order to achieve targeted goals.
The best structural set-up must accommodate elements which can create a conducive atmosphere to enable the workforce to perform its duty effectively.
Man can reach his best capacity when the structure of the organisation provides some opportunities and room for him to manoeuvre while performing his tasks.
In short, the organisation recognises that its workers can reach a high level of achievement if they are given the opportunities to be creative and innovative.
Without these opportunities, an individual’s creativity will not be able to develop.
In today’s challenging environment, in order to survive, an organisation must be able to compete through quality products.
Quality is regarded by both producers and customers as an important aspect in manufacturing, servicing and purchasing.
In fact, the process of continuous improvement is all about customer orientation.
And many organisational missions are based entirely on satisfying the customers’ perception.
Besides providing room for individuals to excel, the second consideration is to nurture teamwork.
Team spirit is a natural approach to productivity and quality.
It can be developed in several ways.
One way is through adopting a participative management style.
Islam insists that the organisation must provide a platform where every worker can take part in the discussion and can channel his personal view, when necessary.
Every worker must be made to feel he or she contributes to the success of the organisation.
The spirit must be accommodated in the organisational set-up.
To strike a balance between the need to provide an individual opportunity and to build-up team spirit among the work force, the structure of an organisation must be guided by several principles. These include:
- creating an organisational set-up that gives great emphasis to a decentralised organisational structure. The top manager must have the confidence of his subordinates. Failure to develop a team of good subordinates is a sign of poor leadership. An effective leadership will give great priority to this area. Neglecting this responsibility will retard the performance of the organisation. High performance can be achieved by giving more liberty to the workers. The organisational structure must also incorporate a method which enables divisional activities to be coordinated and easily monitored by the top management;
- structuring the divisional set-up in an organisation to effectively serve the mission statement of the organisation. As a productive unit, an organisation must be output-oriented. To serve this objective, any creation of a division must create a conducive system for the function to be carried out effectively and successfully. The leadership must adopt a proactive attitude;
- minimising duplication of roles and responsibilities among different divisions. Each division is being created to serve a special function. The functions of the different divisions should be co-ordinated by top management;
- clarifying the role and authority of each position and division without any confusion.
In order for organisations to function effectively, the structural set-up must be drawn up and must provide the line of command, and the importance of each division must be defined clearly. An unclear line of authority and placement in terms of divisional importance can create a lot of unfavourable consequences to the organisation’s performance.A proper and dynamic set-up is a prerequisite and can be a big contribution to the success of the organisation.The ability to harmonise between creating individual opportunities and developing team spirit among workers and divisions is the ultimate determinant for success.
