Trade Ethics

I with my college friends have started a small business in university to learn ground truths. I saw the application of Islamic ethics of trade, and why evil is the opposite. Whatever code of ethics has been made by Islam, it is to benefit humans, both as entrepreneurs and consumers. For instance, telling the people right information was not being encouraged by some of us who are running the firm. They're reluctant and fear short-term losses. But, that's only hiding our own shortcomings. What if consumers come to know about the fact that strawberries are not being added to the drink, but some powder form of it! They'll spread bad word about it. But above all, the best way to implement these codes may not be policing firms but inner consciousness in humans.

Case Study Reading

Case method is often tough in management education than mere reading of text. Business cases (pages=4-30, usually, with exhibits attached) try to simulate complexity of real world situation in which a decision-maker, problem solver or let's just call it a "protagonist" finds him/herself.

Yesterday I had to spend atleast 2 hours just trying to understand 6 pages of (non-linear sections of a) 14-page case! 2 hours and just 6 pages! A case refuses to explain itself, says William Ellet, author of The Case Study Handbook. That's why I had to think about it, question every fact given, and hypothesize about the content which is not explained in the case. This was just problem analysis part which apart from such analytical/heuristic reading also requires specialized problem solving tools belonging to the fields of operations management, organizational behaiviour etc., to really decode the problems presented and arrive at evidence-based conclusions - what follows i more tought: discussion and writing about the case.

It was fun. The only thing required was patience, concentration, fearlessness and broad thinking and learning attitude. I hope such reading drills would help me become a case writer for which I read it.

Competitive re-branding

We have this tendency of over-praising our products and services. And the limited extent to which you can do that is absent in books by marketers (originally of West and their copy-cats in east). I's listening to a lecture on Ethics of Trade in Islam, in which Abdal-Hakim Murad was telling that Allah on the day of judgement would look upon a man who took oaths while buying and selling. That's a little bit complex to understand. Applied to bragging we do on our trade, it fits the paradigm. Billions are spent by Coca-Cola on "re-branding", they talk about "brand loyalty" and brand this and brand that . . .  Human and natural resources are slaughtered blindly in this mania of over-advertising. How despicable and ugly the practices of moderns who are cut off from revelation . . .

Courtesies of Trade in Islam

Ah! How ignorant are Muslims of the Gems in Hadith, ready to guide us with utmost comprehension, compactness and simplicity as Golden Rules, in all walks of life that concern us most (of course, Prophet was not sent to tell us how to manufacture products, etc.). As a student of business, business strategy and game, and industrial management, little do we care about implications of/by the teachings of our deen. I realized this after listening to the following by Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad, Cambridge Univ. on the Ethics of Trade: Click here.

You notice one thing throughout the lecture, whether your believe or not - the relevance of principles of Islam in any age, because, as Sheikh says in the khutba, Islam is not only for the Day of Judgement but for this dunya or world as well.