Reviewing and Criticizing the Research Approaches of Leadership Verses in Islamic Management Sources

One of the main duties of a manager is to lead the organization’s human resources. The more management knowledge is developed, the more the importance of research and attention to leadership is increased. In Islamic management, many works have been conducted on this topic; but the quantity and quality of these researches have not been investigated, analyzed and leveled. The purpose of this research is to determine the “quantity”, “quality” and “level of analysis” of the Quranic references to leadership in Islamic management sources. This research was conducted with the meta-analysis method and thirty-nine sources that discussed leadership from the perspective of the Holy Quran were examined. The results of the Research indicate that 891 verses were used in terms of quantity in thirty-nine sources, and 178 topics of leadership (with repetition) were paid attention to in total, and the topics were finally categorized into 17 topics and general titles in this article. In terms of the level of analysis, the topics have been analyzed and examined in six levels, which are: “affirmative”, “adaptive”, “comparative”, “critical”, “theorizing” and “model-oriented” citations. Most of the cited verses were in the affirmative and comparative levels, and in the next levels, the amount of research was reduced respectively. At the theorizing and model-oriented levels, no basic, appropriate and comprehensive research has been conducted based on the Quran, while the research should be aimed at theorizing and presenting a model and applying it.