Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2017

Publication Title

Religions

Volume

8

Publisher

MDPI

Abstract

Weber’s association of a work ethic with Protestantism has been extended to religions, including Islam, more generally. Managers and staff in a bank and department store in Tehran responded to Muslim religiousness measures along with the multidimensional work ethics profile (MWEP). The MWEP is a 7-factor instrument that records Weber’s interpretation of work ethics. Intrinsic, extrinsic personal, and extrinsic cultural religious orientations predicted a higher work ethic. Two extrinsic cultural religious orientation factors exhibited especially strong connections with MWEP factors. The morality/ethics MWEP factor most consistently predicted Muslim commitments. Integrative self-knowledge and self-control served as empirical markers of an Iranian Muslim spiritual ideal called ensan-e kamel or the “perfect man.” Both correlated positively with morality/ethics and with three of the four extrinsic cultural religious orientations. Managers scored higher than staff on morality/ethics, on the two characteristics of the “perfect man”, and on the three of four extrinsic cultural religious orientation factors. These data supported the existence of a Muslim work ethic.

Comments

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).

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