Background: Agro-industry plays a strategic role in local economic development through value addition, employment creation, and income distribution. However, managerial capacity at the enterprise level remains a critical yet underexplored factor in sustaining these contributions, particularly in rural Muslim-majority regions. Research Gap: While the POAC (Planning, Organizing, Actuating, Controlling) framework is widely applied in management studies, limited empirical research examines its implementation within rural agro-industrial enterprises. Moreover, existing Islamic business ethics scholarship has largely focused on individual entrepreneurial values rather than how those values shape or substitute for managerial systems at the organizational level. Novelty: This study offers a novel contribution by integrating the POAC framework with Islamic managerial ethics (amanah, adl, tawazun, hisbah, israf) to examine how managerial functions operate in a rural rice milling enterprise, advancing the concept of "ethically embedded POAC" where Islamic values substitute for formal systems at micro-scale. Method: Using a single-case qualitative design, data were collected through in-depth interviews with the owner-manager and workers, direct observation, and document review. Analysis proceeded in two coding cycles: thematic coding aligned with POAC functions, followed by interpretive coding against Islamic ethical constructs derived from maqashid al-shariah. Results: All POAC components are present but operate informally and centrally. Planning is seasonal and intuitive; organizing relies on relational coordination; actuating is participatory; controlling remains reactive. Islamic values are enacted personally: amanah legitimizes authority without contract, adl secures fairness without written entitlement, while hisbah operates only as self-accounting and israf remains unmeasured. Conclusion: Managerial integration is embedded in the owner's tacit knowledge rather than institutionalized procedures. The study reframes formalization as an ethical requirement for organizational durability, proposing a graduated institutionalization pathway beginning with loss measurement.