THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE CAREER CHOICES OF ACCOUNTING STUDENTS
ABSTRACT
There are 7.2 billion people in the world today, and 1.7 billion of them are Muslims. For this large group of people united in faith, Islam is not merely a personal religion made up of some rites and rituals, it is a complete way of life. What this means is that every aspect of a Muslim's life must be guided by God's commands as contained in the verses of the Noble Quran and the Sunnah of the Noble Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him, PBUH); This study sought to understand the actual role that religion plays in the job selection choices of final-year Muslim accounting students enrolled at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). An ethical scenario developed through a collaboration with Islamic accounting scholars was utilized to achieve this objective. The results revealed that, as is often the case, reality failed to live up to the ideal, with only 20 out of the 72 students surveyed considering Allah's commands when making a decision on where to work in the future. Most of the students were seduced by wealth, personal desires or prestige. Allah, the Most Wise, warns us of the consequence of choosing these worldly things over His commands in the following verse: "Have you seen he who has taken as his god his [own] desire, and Allah has sent him astray due to knowledge and has set a seal upon his hearing and his heart and put over his vision a veil? So who will guide him after Allah ? Then will you not be reminded?" (Al-Jathiyah: 23).
Keywords: Religion, Career choice, Accounting students, Islam, Malaysia
INTRODUCTION
There are 7.2 billion people in the world today, and 1.7 billion of them are Muslims (United States Census Bureau, 2015). For this large group of people united in faith, Islam is not merely a personal religion made up of some rites and rituals, it is a complete way of life. What this means is that every aspect of a Muslim's life must be guided by God's commands as contained in the verses of the Noble Quran and the Sunnah of the Noble Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him, PBUH); the Sunnah refers to the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) recorded by his companions in narrations referred to as Ahadith (plural of hadith). The following verse of the Noble Quran makes this notion perfectly clear: Say, "Indeed, my prayer, my rites of sacrifice, my living and my dying are for Allah , Lord of the worlds" (Al-Anam: 162).
As with all people, Muslims have to choose a career path in order to earn a living and to lead productive lives. It is crucial that the Muslim ensures that whatever career path he or she chooses conforms to Allah's commands. This is because choosing a career, or working in an organization, that is disapproved by Allah makes a Muslim's earnings haram (prohibited) and this has many negative consequences for the Muslim. Ibn Mas’ud narrated that the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said: “A slave (of Allah) who acquires haram wealth and gives charity from it, it is not accepted from him. If he spends from it, he does not have any blessing (barakah) in it. If he leaves it behind him (i.e. he dies) it will be a means of taking Him to the fire (of Hell). Verily, Allah does not wipe out evil deeds with evil deeds; instead, He wipes out evil deeds with good deeds. Indeed, the repulsive does not wipe out the repulsive.” (Musnad Ahmad, Hadith 3672).
The fact is that what is ideal does not always reflect the actual reality. Although, Islamic principles are supposed to inform the choice of where a Muslim chooses to work, this is not always the case, with other motives such as financial considerations and personal interests coming into play. This study sought to understand the actual role that religion plays in the job selection choices of final-year Muslim accounting students enrolled at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). An ethical scenario developed through a collaboration with Islamic accounting scholars was utilized to achieve this objective.
The rest of the paper proceeds as follows: Firstly, a review of the scholarship on the role of religion in career choices is presented. This is followed by a description of the research methodology of this study. The study's findings are then presented and their implications discussed, and the paper ends with a conclusion.
LITERATURE REVIEW: THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN CAREER CHOICES
The review of scholarship seeking to understand the role of religion in the career decisions of people revealed two broad streams of research based on religion of the participants in the various studies: A Christian perspective (Greeley, 1967; Mol, 1971; Constantine et al., 2006; Agboka, 2008; Arbogast, 2008; Duffy et al., 2010; Hernandez et al., 2011; Hirsbrunner et al., 2012; Sigalow, et al., 2012) and an Islamic perspective (Flanigan, 2010; Adachi, 2014). A brief overview of these two streams of research is presented in the subsequent sections.
Christian Perspective
Greeley (1967) explained that an assumption existed amongst scholars that membership to a Roman Catholic church was a barrier to serious intellectual endeavours. This assumption was based on the belief that Catholicism valued obedience over ambition, and this led Roman Catholics to seek more physical jobs as opposed to jobs that required post-graduate level academic qualifications. The author sort to test this assumption by using panel data on graduate school enrolment levels by religion in New England. The results revealed that Roman Catholics had similar graduate school enrolment levels as Protestants. The author concluded that these results showed that contrary to popular belief, Roman Catholicism did not prevent its members from pursuing jobs that required Masters or PhD academic qualifications.
Mol's (1971) Australian study stated that the 1901 and 1947 censuses revealed a pattern of various Christian denominations gravitating towards certain occupations: Anglicans and Presbyterians towards banking and engineering, Catholics towards manual labour, and Methodists towards mining. He examined the 1966 census to determine if this pattern repeated itself. His analysis revealed that the same pattern of denominations gravitating towards certain occupations repeated itself. Although he did not mention what characteristics of each denomination made them choose these occupations, he made a subtle reference to the popular belief that Greeley (1967) mentioned regarding Roman Catholicism as a barrier to intellectual pursuits in favour of obedience.
Duffy et al. (2010) presented a conceptual argument supporting the notion that religious people look for jobs that are in line with their religious values. Three American studies (Constantine et al., 2006; Arbogast, 2008; Hirsbrunner et al., 2012) sought to empirically test this notion amongst undergraduate students. Constantine et al. (2006) adopted a qualitative approach by conducting in-depth interviews of selected university students, whilst Arbogast (2008) and Hirsbrunner et al. (2012) adopted quantitative approaches by surveying selected college students. All three studies found that religion played a strong role in the career plans of the students surveyed. This was particularly true for students with high intrinsic religiosity as they tended to evaluate their career choices based on Christian values (Arbogast, 2008). A majority of these students viewed their career choices as a "calling" by God. The chosen career represented a fulfilment of their mission on earth (Hirsbrunner et al., 2012).
Agboka (2008), Hernandez et al (2011) and Sigalow et al. (2012) sought to understand the role of religion in the career choices of adults. Agboka (2008) interviewed Canadian Christian women who were firmly established in their chosen careers. The women all agreed that faith provided them a strong sense of purpose and direction in many aspects of their lives. However, regarding their initial career choices, other factors such as academic ability and personal interest played a more crucial role than religion. Hernandez et al. (2011) also adopted a qualitative approach by interviewing Roman Catholic adults. Unlike Agboka's (2008) findings, religion was the most important factor in choosing a career. In their quest to choose a career, the participants prayed, listened to God, consulted with spiritual mentors, and finally chose a career which they felt was a calling from God. This mirrored Hirsbrunner's (2012) findings amongst Christian students. Sigalow et al. (2012) obtained data from a longitudinal study called the "Potraits of American Life Study". The study's findings mirrored those of Arbogast (2008) in that participants that claimed a high level of religious commitment reported that religious values were the most crucial consideration in selecting a career.
Islamic Perspective
Flanigan (2010) interviewed workers at various Islamic Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Bosnia. She sought to discover whether faith played a crucial role in their decision to work in an NGO, as it does for workers in Christian NGOs. The interviews revealed that Islam's call to social action and service to humanity was a major reason why the participants chose to work in Islamic NGOs.
Adachi (2014) explored the attitudes of young British Muslim women regarding choosing careers. In-depth interviews of selecting participants revealed these women used the principles of Islam to justify their career choices.
Observations from the review of literature
Three key observations were made from the review of the scholarship concerned with understanding the role of religion in the career choices of people. The first observation is that a majority of the studies reviewed revealed that religion plays a crucial role in shaping the career choices of Christians and Muslims surveyed. This provides a reasonable expectation that a similar finding will be found in this study.
A second observation is that the majority of studies reviewed are from a Christian perspective. In fact, only two studies were conducted from an Islamic perspective (Flanigan, 2010; Adachi, 2014). The study seeks to reduce this imbalance by examining the role of religion in the job choices of Muslim accounting students.
A third observation is that all the studies reviewed took place in Australia, Europe or the United States of America. This is true even for the two studies that were from an Islamic perspective; Bosnia (Flanigan, 2010) and the United Kingdom (Adachi, 2014). This study contributes to this body of knowledge by providing an Asian perspective generally, and a Malaysian perspective specifically.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This section of the paper presents the study's methodology. Firstly, an overview of IIUM is provided, with particular emphasis on the accounting department from which the students that participated in the study belong to. Secondly, a detailed explanation of what the "right" job is from an Islamic perspective is presented. Thirdly, the steps followed to develop an ethical scenario to explore the role of religion in the job selection choices of Muslim accounting students is presented. Finally, the actual procedure adopted for administering the instrument is explained.
An overview of the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM):
IIUM was established on 23rd May, 1983 based on the philosophy that all fields of knowledge should lead toward the recognition of, and submission to, the fact that Almighty Allah is the only one worthy of worship and is the Absolute Creator and Master of the universe. IIUM has a four-pronged mission of Integration, Islamization, Internationalization and Comprehensive Excellence (International Islamic University, 2014). The university provides bachelors’ degrees, masters’ degrees and doctorate degrees in its 13 faculties called “kulliyyahs”. Of particular interest to this study was IIUM’s undergraduate accounting program which is accredited by the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA). MIA accreditation of an accounting programme is very important as only students that graduate from such programmes can legally call themselves “accountants” in Malaysia (Malaysian Institute of Accountants, 2014). IIUM's accounting programme claims to integrate Islamic principles with contemporary accounting knowledge. In order to graduate, students are required to complete a minimum of 134 hours of a combination of university-required, kulliyyah-required and departmental courses which includes practical training; 3 of the university-required courses have Islamic ethical content (a. Islamic Worldview, b. Islam, Knowledge and Civilization and c. Ethics and Fiqh for Everyday Life); 4 of the kulliyyah-required courses have Islamic ethical content. In addition, a recent Islamization initiative has mandated that ethical and Islamic content be integrated in all courses (International Islamic University, 2014). At the time this study, IIUM department of accounting had 28 academic staff and 552 undergraduate students enrolled.
Choosing the "right" job
Nu'man b. Bashir (Allah be pleased with him) reported: I heard Allah's Messenger (PBUH) as having said this (and Nu'man) pointed towards his ears with his fingers): What is lawful is evident and what is unlawful is evident, and in between them are the things doubtful which many people do not know. So he who guards against doubtful things keeps his religion and honour blameless, and he who indulges in doubtful things indulges in fact in unlawful things, just as a shepherd who pastures his animals round a preserve will soon pasture them in it. Beware, every king has a preserve, and the things God has declared unlawful are His preserves. Beware, in the body there is a piece of flesh; if it is sound, the whole body is sound and if it is corrupt the whole body is corrupt, and hearken it is the heart (Sahih Muslim 1599a, Book 22, Hadith 133).
For the Muslim accounting graduate, the first challenge that faces him or her is finding the “right” job. The “right” job is one where all activities are in line with the Qur’an and Sunnah. As the hadith above teaches us, the permissible jobs are clear and the prohibited jobs are clear, and the morally competent Muslim accountant must be able to make this distinction. The permissible activities are numerous in number, and thus the Muslim accountant has many options. Say, "My Lord has only forbidden immoralities - what is apparent of them and what is concealed - and sin, and oppression without right, and that you associate with Allah that for which He has not sent down authority, and that you say about Allah that which you do not know"(Al-Araf: 33). However, there are certain kinds of jobs the Muslim accountant has to avoid because the activities that they engage in are incompatible with the commands of Almighty Allah. …And cooperate in righteousness and piety, but do not cooperate in sin and aggression. And fear Allah; indeed, Allah is severe in penalty (Al-Maeda: 2). Some of the most commonly known haram activities include i) dealing in interest, ii) gambling, and iii) dealing with intoxicants.
Developing an appropriate ethical scenario
A collaborative effort with five Islamic accounting and Fiqh Mu’amalat scholars resulted in the development of an ethical scenario designed to capture the motivation behind the job choices of final-year accounting students. The instrument was titled "Understanding the Career Aspirations of Future Accountants". In order to minimize social desirability bias amongst the respondents, the study's objective was disguised by giving the instrument this neutral heading without any obvious moral overtones. The first section was a demographic section, while the second section was titled "Choosing your dream job". Here, the respondents were given a choice of five job offers from companies in different industries (Banking, Gambling, Music, Tobacco and Insurance). Each job offer had a company description, a job description and an annual salary (The instrument is attached as an appendix at the end of this paper). At the end of the scenario, the students were asked the following open-ended questions: "Would you select any of these jobs?", "If no, why not?", "If yes, which job would you select?", and "Why did you select this job?".
The scenario sought to determine if the Muslim accounting students knew what the right job was from an Islamic perspective. To assess how important a role religion played in the job choices of the students, all the jobs offered were unacceptable from an Islamic perspective; It was expected that the student who truly considered Islamic principles when making decisions, would recognize this, and consequently reject all job offers on the basis of their Islam unacceptability.
A pilot study was carried out using the newly developed instrument to assess whether respondents would understand the instructions, terminology and content of the questionnaire. 1st-year Muslim students from the Economics and Management Faculty at IIUM were used to conduct the pilot study. These students were enrolled in four different sections of a Financial Accounting Fundamentals class, and were selected because they closely resembled the students selected for the actual study, final-year Muslim accounting students. 100 questionnaires were distributed, and the students were asked to carefully go through the questionnaire and ask any questions they might have as to its content. All the students stated that they clearly understood how to fill the questionnaires. The students were then told to take the questionnaires home, complete them, and bring them to the next class session. They were also told to write down how long it took them to complete the questionnaire. 33 out of the 100 distributed questionnaires were returned.