| Summary: | Traditionally the role of uplifting economic and social wellbeing of the poor
has always been that of the public sector in most countries. This changed
towards the end of 20th century with the emergence of Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) where the private sectors had also joined force to
assume similar role. While CSR is a western concept that has been globally
recognized today, within the Muslim society there exists similar philanthropic
practice which has been around for more than 1000 years called waqf. Waqf
originated from an Arabic word of ‘waqafa’ and is defined as “detaining
assets that are beneficial and physically lasting, to be given to charity”. In
Malaysia, there is an estimated 11,000 hectares of idle waqf land in Malaysia
and the cost for development is estimated to be around RM80 billion. Source
of funds is a major issue where currently the government is the main source.
Further, studies showed that waqf development in Malaysia was hampered by
colonialism, poor management, legal issues, and restricted view of waqf itself.
This project management thesis will study 10 organizations in Malaysia
comprise of public, private and non-profit organization. The study objectives
will focus on organization’s motivation, waqf creation and waqf assets value
enhancement initiative, and critical success factors. The research methodology
will be based on exploratory qualitative non-empirical research with semistructured
interview questions. The findings show that for the last decade,
there have been an encouraging progress and development with participation
from public, private, and non-profit organizations. The selected organization
has either managed to create waqf assets and/or further enhance the value of
the newly acquired waqf assets or idle waqf land. They have not only
contributed toward the improvement of social wellbeing of the Muslim
community, but also created economic activities that benefit them and the
society. The study also found strong financial support and collaboration are
the common critical success factors shared by most organizations understudy,
and lack of funding, public awareness, poor waqf framework and lack of
expertise as major obstacles and limitations faced by them.
|
|---|