title: The influence of adherence to Islamic financial values and entrepreneurial orientation on strategic decision-making effectiveness: the case of Saudi Arabian companies
Creators: name: Hakeem, Anas Osama M.
Publisher: name: University of Glasgow
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Adherence to Islamic financial values, entrepreneurial orientation, innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, strategic decision-making, politicisation in strategic decision- making, strategic decision-making effectiveness, strategic decision-specific factors, decision importance, decision motive, decision uncertainty, top management team.

description: Aim and background: This thesis aims to explore and understand the interesting practices that are found within organisations, in their adherence to Islamic financial values and entrepreneurial orientation. These are both viewed as intangible resources for organisations, which could positively influence an organisation’s strategic decision-making effectiveness. In addition, this thesis seeks to explore how these resources could affect the behavioural approach, which is captured by the politicisation within an organisation, and then, apply the results of such impact on strategic decision-making effectiveness. Finally, this study investigates the influential role that strategic decision-specific factors play as moderators between politicisation in strategic decision-making and strategic decision-making effectiveness. Method: The context for the research project are a number of companies located in Saudi Arabia, as identified in the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority and Saudi Arabia Ministry of Commerce and Investment. These include all companies that come under the umbrella of Saudi Arabia’s financial sector; namely, banks, finance companies, insurance companies, investments companies, real estate development companies and Awqaf (endowments) companies. Within these companies, this study focused on members at the top management teams, who are closely involved in making strategic decisions. As for the collection of data, an electronic survey was chosen as the appropriate data collection method. 1500 questionnaires were distributed to 375 companies. 379 questionnaires were collected from 177 companies. At least two response questionnaires were collected from each company to significantly ensure the validity of the research results. From the data that was received, 364 questionnaires were used from 162 companies. The data analysis was based on these 364 responses. This study used a Structural Equation Modelling technique to analyse the data. Due to this, the study relied on testing causal relationships hypothesised in the research framework of multiple independent and intervening variables. The data analysis was conducted using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) (Version 24), and the SmartPLS 3.0 (Partial Least Squares Path Modelling) software package. Findings and conclusion: The findings of this study provide support for the proposed model. The study findings and their related discussions on adherence to Islamic financial values and an entrepreneurial orientation in organisations, highlight the importance of their role in the process of strategic decision-making. This study therefore makes the case for the introduction of adherence to Islamic financial values and an entrepreneurial orientation as a primary influence in strategic decision-making effectiveness. Furthermore, the study findings argue that adherence to Islamic financial values and entrepreneurial orientation reduce the role of politicisation in strategic decision-making. However, this study did not find any positive impact on the low level of politicisation on strategic decision-making effectiveness. Likewise, this study did not find any influence of strategic decision-specific factors (i.e. decision importance, decision motive and decision uncertainty) on the relationship between politicisation and strategic decision-making effectiveness. Implications: The role of organisations in making effective strategic decisions requires them to pay more attention to their intangible resources such as adherence to Islamic financial values and an entrepreneurial orientation when they embark on this process. Thus, organisations have to educate their decision-makers and raise awareness with regards to the benefits and advantages of using innovation, proactiveness, risk-taking, as well as an adherence to Islamic financial values during the process of making strategic decisions. This could be achieved by conducting workshops or informal meetings with senior decision-makers who have vast experience in making strategic decisions - either in their organisations or outside their organisations. The research on adhering to Islamic financial values and entrepreneurial orientation and strategic decision-making provides a good starting point in this field of study; however, thinking about the next step is important and necessary. Thus, strategic decision-makers need to adopt new styles to implementing entrepreneurial orientation wisely, as well as the need to find creative styles to observe Islamic financial values when making strategic decisions. This in turn, will enable organisations to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage and thus, overcome continuous challenges in the markets and achieve superior performance for their organisations. Moreover, the role of organisations in making effective strategic decisions requires them to pay more attention to their behavioural approach within their strategic decision-making such as politicisation in strategic decision-making. Hence, organisations have to educate their decision- makers about a negative effect uses of politicisation in strategic decision-making and how these can lead to management making strategic decisions that are distorted and incorrect, which in turn, results in ineffective strategic decisions. Therefore, studying this resource-based perspective and the behavioural approaches in this study enrich and complement one another.