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Religious institutions can affect organizational practices when employees bring their religious commitments and practices into the workplace. But those religious commitments function in the midst of other organizational factors that influence the working out of employees’ religious commitments. This process can generate varying outcomes in organizational contexts, ranging from a heightened effect of religious commitment on employee behavior to a negligible or nonexistent influence of religion on employee behavior. Relying on social identity theory and schematic social cognition as unifying frameworks for the study of religious behavior, we develop a theoretically informed approach to understanding how and why the religious beliefs, commitments and practices employees bring to work have varying behavioral impacts.

We investigated the effect of religion on generosity, interpersonal trust, and cooperation by using games developed by experimental economists (Dictator, Trust, and Public Goods). In these experiments, individuals were paired or grouped with unknown strangers to test the degree to which religion promotes prosocial behavior. We evaluated group- and individual-level effects of religion on prosocial behavior across the three games. Although playing the games in a religious setting showed no overall difference as compared to a secular setting, we did find a weak association between some individual-level dimensions of religiosity and behavior in some of the games. The weak association between religion and behavior is consistent with theory and empirical studies using similar measures – the anonymous pairing and grouping of the economic games may moderate individual-level effects of religion. Our research is a strong complement to the empirical literature because the three studies involved a large and diverse sample and used sensitive instruments that have been found to reliably measure prosocial behavior.

Due to a staggering growth rate in the recent past, halal products have attained a significant attention of marketers across countries. However, marketing practitioners seek to have detailed understanding of what drives consumers of different demographics towards this product category so as to better market and position themselves in the competitive landscape. Correspondingly, this study aims to provide insights into the Muslim women consumers’ halal cosmetics purchase behaviour and examines the variables (and their interplay) when purchasing such products.

The data for the study were collected through a self-administered questionnaire from 371 Muslim respondents from India. The data were analysed through structural equation modelling using AMOS 22.0 SEM software.

The findings of this study reveal that religious knowledge, religious commitment and halal certification(s) affect consumers’ actual purchase behaviour of halal cosmetics, which subsequently drives their repurchase intention. The findings further reveal a non-significant effect of religious orientation with both the actual purchase behaviour and repurchase intention towards halal cosmetics. Additionally, actual purchase behaviour of halal cosmetics is found to positively affect customers’ repurchase intentions.

Despite the recent growth of overall beauty industry, this particular segment of halal cosmetics has a huge potential given the phenomenal preference that Muslim consumers have shown in such niche. Therefore, this paper contributes towards examining the key factors influencing consumers purchase behaviour towards halal cosmetics in India that can be capitalized on.

This study aims to provide insights on the influence of Muslim consumers’ knowledge on products subjected to contemporary fatwa ruling and their subsequent cognitive and behavioural responses.

MANOVA and MANCOVA were used to examine the influence of religious orientation on young Malaysian Muslims’ product knowledge, and the extent of religious orientation and gender on Muslim consumers’ attitude and behaviour towards three contemporary fatwa rulings of products.

Respondents’ religious orientation differentiates their knowledge on fatwa prohibition ruling of selected brand and behaviours. Consumers’ religious orientation and gender explain consumers’ behavioural responses to variables of the Theory of Planned Behaviour for three behaviours. Evidence suggests that ruling types affects (conditional and unconditional) consumers’ responses.

Greater insights are provided on Muslims’ motivation to search information of controversial products, and their subsequent perception and behavioural reactions to controversial products. Findings are limited to the Malaysian Muslim consumers.

The fact that contemporary fatwa reached young Muslim generations indicates that managers have to be wary of fatwa to predict Muslim consumers’ marketplace behaviours.

A significant number of young Malaysian Muslims are keeping abreast with contemporary fatwa. This suggests that they received an early and substantial exposure to Islamic way of life through their socialisation.

This study offer insights into the understandings of the young Muslim generation regarding contemporary fatwa on products, and revealed significant findings in relation to consumer product knowledge and religious influences on consumer behaviour.

This study aims to explore whether religiosity influences ecologically conscious consumption behaviour (ECCB) among Muslim consumers in India.

A structured questionnaire was developed and administered to a sample of 191 young male Muslim respondents. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post hoc tests were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicated a significant positive correlation between religiosity and ECCB. Pro-religious and intrinsically religious consumers reported higher importance to ECCB than non-religious and extrinsically religious consumers. It is, therefore, concluded that religiosity plays an important role in determining ECCB among Muslim consumers in India.

The study sample comprised Indian university students as respondents, whose consumption behaviours may be constrained by limited independent income. Further, only male students have been included because of methodological considerations.

This study suggests that green marketers can use religiosity as a possible segmentation variable to effectively position their products. Religious messages or symbols can be invoked in advertising and other communication campaigns by marketers to gain acceptance for green products and consumption behaviours among consumers.

Few studies have examined the role of religiosity and its impact on consumer behaviour. The present study sought to address this gap in literature and offers preliminary insights about how marketers can effectively use religious symbols for marketing green products to consumers. The study is an initial attempt to provide elementary understanding about the consumption behaviour of Indian Muslims who have been insufficiently investigated by marketing and consumer researchers.

The present study investigates the relationship between servant and authoritarian leadership, and leaders’ third-party conflict behaviors in followers’ conflicts, thereby contributing to integrating knowledge on leadership styles and leaders’ third-party conflict behaviors. This study aims to investigate leadership and conflict management in a context hardly studied: local religious communities or convents within a female religious organization.

The authors collected quantitative survey data from 453 religious sisters, measuring their perception of leaders’ behaviors. These religious sisters live in local religious communities within a Catholic Women Religious Institute based in Nigeria (West Africa) and in other countries across the globe.

Results show that servant leadership relates positively to leaders’ third-party problem-solving behavior and negatively to leaders’ avoiding and forcing. Moreover, authoritarian leadership relates positively to leaders’ third-party avoiding and forcing behaviors.

This study expands theory development and practices on leadership and leaders’ third-party conflict behaviors. The authors associate servant and authoritarian leadership with leaders’ third-party conflict behaviors: avoiding, forcing and problem-solving, in followers’ conflicts. The authors offer practical recommendations for religious leaders on servant leadership and leaders’ third-party conflict behaviors.

Although organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is widely known to have a positive ethical impact in work organizations, the causal antecedents that influence the likelihood of such behaviors among employees is understudied. We addressed this gap by examining the influence of visual images of people on relevant work-related behavior in a work-like setting using the theoretical frame of the social identity perspective. We found that students in a university setting, who were exposed to religious-themed student images, exhibited slower helping behaviors toward the organization than those who were exposed to organizational-themed student images. The results of the current study provide the first-known experimental confirmation of organizational identity as a causal antecedent of OCB.

There is a perception that non-religious consumers are less ethical than religious consumers. Studies found prejudices against atheists around the world and assumed that those who committed unethical behavior were more likely to be atheists. Hence, first, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of consumers’ intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity and atheism on consumers’ ethical beliefs. Second, this study attempts to segment consumers and identify differences between these segments.

Using data from 235 study participants in the USA and 531 in Vietnam. Subsequently, a two-step cluster approach was used to identify segments within these samples.

The study results show consumers’ intrinsic religiosity negatively influences all consumers’ unethical beliefs. Similarly, atheism also negatively influences all consumers’ unethical beliefs. This study also complements other studies exploring consumer ethics in developing countries. In addition, the segmentation analysis produced unique segments. The results from both samples (USA and Vietnam) indicated that non-religious consumers are less likely to accept various unethical behaviors compared to religious consumers. Religious consumers are not necessarily more ethical and atheism consumers are not necessarily less ethical. In the end, are implications for business ethics, religious and non-religious leaders on how to view the impact of beliefs on consumer ethical behaviors.

This is one of the first few studies investigating the impact of atheism on consumer ethics. The results of this study further extend the knowledge of study in consumer ethics by comparing consumers’ religiosity and atheism.

Despite the importance of sustainability, some conservative religious groups do not believe and support climate change. There is a continuous debate on the role of religion on people’s attitudes toward the environment. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to (1) explore the impact of consumers’ religious orientation on motivation and commitment toward recycling; (2) examine the impact of economic motivation, commitment and love for nature toward intention to recycle; (3) investigate the mediating effect of motivation, commitment and love for nature on the relationship between consumer religiosity and their intention to recycle; and (4) examine the impact of consumers’ intention toward its subsequent behavior.

Using convenience sampling methods, participants were recruited through an online survey platform (MTurk). The total completed respondents are 827 participants.

The results show consumers’ religiousness influence their motivation, commitment and love for nature. This study shows that consumers with high intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness are more likely to be motivated by economic motivation. Being religious does not make consumers more environmentally friendly.

This study did not separate religion and between religious and non-religious consumers. Each religion may perceive environments differently. Future research may investigate each religion separately.

This paper has several contributions: (1) it contributes to the debate on the impact of religiousness on consumers’ attitudes toward sustainable-related behavior such as recycling. Does it matter? (2) the results show the most effective way to increase people’s intention to recycle; and (3) the results of this study will have implications for government, religious institutions on how to increase positive attitude toward the environment especially among religious consumers.

This study aims to conduct an experimental investigation into the effectiveness of using Islamic values and environmental knowledge in advertising for plant disposable containers on the level of willingness to purchase such products for religious ceremonies and rituals among Muslim consumers in Iran.

A sample of 270 individuals participating in one of the religious assemblies in the city of Shiraz in Iran was classified into three groups (a control and two experimental groups). A pretest was administered for each group; then both experimental groups received brochures whose contents were associated with environmental and religious messages about environmental protection. After four days, a post-test was similarly conducted for each group. The data were collected through a questionnaire and analyzed using one-way analysis of variance.

The results revealed that the use of religious and environmental messages in advertising for plant disposable containers could boost the willingness to purchase such containers for religious ceremonies and rituals; however, the effectiveness of using religious messages was stronger compared to that of the environmental ones.

Given that the present study was conducted based on an experimental research design in a real context, there was the possibility of the presence of other variables outside the control of the study design and affecting its results.

Increased awareness regarding the harmful environmental impacts of plastic containers and emphasis on religious duties to protect the environment can affect targeting a sector of the Muslim community endowed with strong religious beliefs.

This study confirmed that consumer values and beliefs could have effects on their purchase and consumption behaviors.