An Analysis of the Barriers and the Solutions to Making the Right Decisions in the Light of the Qur’anic Guidelines

The happiness of man and society depends on one’s making the right decisions, therefore every school that wants to contribute to human’s happiness should teach him how to make the right decisions. The Qur’an is the book of guidance; its lessons are comprehensive for human happiness. Thus, the present study identifies the barriers to making the right decisions and the solutions to overcome them through the Qur’anic guidelines.

In this qualitative research, the most important Qur’anic implications concerning the barriers to decision-making were identified through the Thematic Contemplation method in the Qur’an, and the validity was assessed using the expert panel method. In addition, to have a better analysis and understanding of the findings, concerning the social network analysis method, the UCINET and the NetDraw software were used.

In this paper, the barriers can be distinguished in the form of two categories: internal (individual) and external (environmental) barriers. The barriers such as doubt, fear, selfishness, following Nafs (An-Nafs al-Ammārah), ignorance, superficiality, haste, stubbornness and worldliness are considered as internal barriers, and the ones such as the Devil, being blamed and ridiculed, facing force, hypocrisy, and threat from those in power are considered as external barriers. Meanwhile, the need for eliminating the conflict among the statements concerning the right decision-making has been emphasized. Besides, using the social network analysis method, it was found that ignorance is one of the most important barriers to making the right decision.

When the managers correctly understand the internal and external barriers to decision-making, they can increase the credibility of their decisions through strengthening attributes such as faith in God, the belief in the resurrection, divine piety, justice orientation, specialized knowledge, patience and hope for God's mercy as well as reasoning and avoiding selfishness.