Muhammad Zeeshan Shaukat

Personality Does Affect Conflict Handling Style: Study of Future Managers

Conflicts are one of the indispensible parts of organizations life. Managing conflicts is issue that is to be considered to solve the said problem and to overcome the negative impacts of conflicts at work place. This paper is aimed to examine relationship between personality traits and preferred conflict handling style. Big five traits model are selected for personality assessment. Big five personality factors are extroversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, emotional stability and agreeableness. Conflict handling styles are compromising, competing, avoiding, accommodating and collaborating. This paper covers two personality traits Extraversion and Openness to experience and only two conflict handling styles i.e. avoiding and competing. A total of 300 students are randomly selected for data collection. Description and correlation is used for analysis. Findings suggest that there is significant relationship between personality type and conflict handling style adopted by individuals. Implications of the study for future researchers as well as practical implications are discussed in the paper.

Mission statements readability: an insight into Islamic banks

– A mission statement is an important tool for organizational communication, as it speaks to all stakeholders. It should be readable and comprehensible. The main objective of this article is to determine the readability of mission statements from selected Islamic banks. , – This study was conducted using simple counting techniques (total words, total sentences and number of words per sentence) and readability analyses. The mission statements from 169 Islamic banks were taken from their respective web sites between March and April 2012. , – The findings reveal that the mission statements of Islamic banks are difficult to read and comprehend and require 17 years of formal education before they can be fully understood. , – Future studies should consider a comparative analysis that looks at how the origins of a bank can affect mission statements as well as examining different division of the financial sector such as insurance companies and other financial institutions. , – The findings of this study revealed that banks have a great deal of work to do on their mission statements in order to make them readable and understandable to a wide range of stakeholders. , – This article is first of its kind as it focuses on an area that has not been investigated by earlier researchers.

Objectives of Islamic banks: a missive from mission statements and stakeholders’ perceptions

Purpose It is believed that the core aim of Islamic institution is idiosyncratic from conventional business entities. Considering this presumption, this study aims to reveal the understandings of various stakeholders about objectives of Islamic banks. Design/methodology/approach The research endeavor is based on the findings of two distinctive studies, where Study 1 was aimed at investigating the communication of objectives through mission statements of Islamic banks and conventional banks with window operations. Here, mission statements were analyzed using content analysis and readability and understandability tests. Study 2, on the other hand, was aimed at investigating the understandings of various stakeholders, both internal (employees) and external (Muslim and non-Muslim customers of both Islamic and conventional banks, employees and management of conventional banks and business students). In total, 370 responses were received and analyzed in this study. Findings The findings (Study 1) unveil, the fact, that the mission statements of Islamic banks working in Pakistan are not good at communicating the corporate goals clearly. Out of ten banks investigated for Study 1, it is evident that only one bank (HBL, with window operations) was at par with readability threshold standards. Thus, it was imperative to share that mission statements of Islamic banks are difficult to read and comprehend. Study 2 adds further by revealing that most of the stakeholders are not clear about the objectives of these banks, while customers of conventional banks do not value the distinctive objectives of Islamic banks. Research limitations/implications This study leaves a valuable message for the policy makers and top management of Islamic banks by focusing on the unattended part on their end, i.e. quality of mission statements and stakeholders’ perception about the objectives of their organization, thus highlighting the needs of greater emphasis on the communication flow to stakeholders, as the clarity of business purpose may change the way customers react toward the business and opt for banking – customer relation in future. Originality/value This study covers a multi-dimensional investigation of the understanding and communication of objectives of Islamic banks. There is dearth of literature focusing on the aspects of content analysis, mission statement readability and understandability and investigation of stakeholders’ perception in tandem.