Abstract
In the preceding chapter we have focused on the Arab executive as a target of social influence and control. We delineated the extent to which social pressures act as constraints on his behaviour, energy and time. Our attention in the present chapter will be on the executive as an organizational leader, viewing him as the prime agent of influence and control within his own organization. The ability as well as the capacity to exert influence and maintain control over the actions of others is one of the more common definitions of the power concept,1 and it is this definition which is used here. In this chapter, we shall be looking at the Arab executive’s use of that power in a very important reality of organizational life: decision making.
Consult them in affairs of the moment, then, when thou hast taken a decision, put thy trust in God.
The Holy Quran, III, 159.
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Notes
Weber (1947), The Theory of Social and Economic Organization;
Dahl (1957), ‘The concept of Power’;
French and Raven (1959), ‘The Bases of Social Power’; and
Cartwright (1965), ‘Influence, Leadership, and Control’.
Barnard (1938), The Functions of the Executive;
Simon (1957), Administrative Behaviour.
For a recent review, see Vroom (1976), ‘Leadership’, pp. 1527–51.
For a leading exponent of the leadership contingency approach see Fiedler (1967), A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness.
Vroom and Jago showed that managers are more ‘participative’ on problems requiring subordinate acceptance than on problems that did not, see Vroom and Jago (1974), ‘Decision Making as a Social Process’, p. 760.
It is widely recognized that the Egyptian bureaucracy and its methods of managing the public sector have been among the serious obstacles to Egyptian industrial efficiency and progress. See Mabro and Radwan (1976), The Industrialization of Egypt, 1939–1973, p. 96.
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© 1980 Farid A. Muna
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Muna, F.A. (1980). The Arab Approach to Decision Making. In: The Arab Executive. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16410-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16410-3_4
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