Research in Public Administration: An Islamic Perspective

Abstract

Research means process of systematically acquiring, processing and interpreting data to answer a question or solve a problem. The research that takes place in the discipline of public administration helps us to learn about administrative system and behaviour of public bureaucracy. The traditional concern of public administration is to ensure `efficiency‟ and `economy‟ in policy implementation, and programme management. On the other hand, Islam, which is based on Tawhid, emphasizes the values to be maximized in governmental affairs, are adle(Justice) and Ihsan(Welfare), even it means to sacrifice of `efficiency‟ and `economy‟ if the latters innately conflict with the former values. Therefore, Islamic public administration is an ideal to which all Muslim societies should strive to maximize. Unfortunately, almost all of the contemporary Muslim countries have structured their politico-administrative system based on exogenous models. This blind imitation of extant systems have not given the desired results due to environmental and cultural differences. Moreover, in the absence of Islamic values and ethics, modern organizations in the Muslim countries, which were evolved in response to science and technology and preoccupied with `efficiency‟ and `economy‟, reflect a myriad of problems ranging from inefficiency and corruption to formalism and overlapping, which further inhibit their performance. This failure of the align theories and models of organization, calls upon the Islamic scholars to re-examine their own culture and heritage for a possible alternative model or models that will replace the extant models of administration which do not suit Muslim culture or ideology.