Internal promotion of Islamic banking offerings at a South African traditional bank: An action research study

Abstract

This master’s thesis report is a record of my action research study conducted at a traditional bank in South Africa. The report follows a narrative writing style. It contains my personal learnings and reflections. In it I record my practices aimed at promoting Islamic banking products of a traditional bank. In undertaking this action research, I employed interventions whereby I improved my own learning and behaviour through practice. This action research took place within the customer facing division of a national traditional bank in the Western Cape. While conducting my situational analysis, I found that front-line employees lacked knowledge and awareness about Islamic banking products, which negatively impacted their attitude and willingness to promote the Islamic banking offering. As the action research progressed, another concern was identified, namely, the lack of awareness of Islamic banking by customers. In order to guide activities that are directed at improving the behaviour of front-line employees and customers, I drew insights from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) by Icek Ajzen (1991) for my theoretical framework. Observations, interviews and interview schedules were used to collect data and continuously analysed using content analysis and univariate analysis for the respective data types. Evidence was generated by measuring the data against a standard of judgments as required for an action research project. This resulted in the identification of key factors that influence front-line employees’ willingness to promote the Islamic banking products.