Leadership in the Arab Middle East: Does the Islamic Tradition Provide a Basis for ‘Worldly Leadership’?

The premise of this chapter is that an effective model of ‘worldly leadership’ will not necessarily come from the uni-linear expansion of the Western model but may depend on the successful harmonizing of these practices with other cultural traditions (see Mangaliso, 1991). But if one model of ‘worldly leadership’ is to prevail, arguably the Muslim traditions offer alternative models to the largely Western paradigms of organization and enterprise that have dominated research in leadership studies hitherto. Undoubtedly the world economy is becoming more globalized, but because markets do not entail cultures, for markets can inhabit and co-exist with a diversity of cultures, there are increasing intimations that the Western approach may be time-expired. Moreover there are strong grounds for doubting that globalization must necessarily imply the homogenization of leadership cultures in some postmodern melting-pot mélange. So it may make more sense now to look forward to competing versions of what is implied in adjectives like ‘worldly’.