Shariah Compliance Business Institutions (SCBI): A Research Agenda for the Real Sector

Abdullah A. Afifi (Graduate School of Business, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia)

Journal of Regional Development and Technology Initiatives
Vol. 3 No. 1 (2025)

Shariah compliance has become a central theme in Islamic economic research, particularly through the development of Islamic financial institutions. Over the past four decades, extensive scholarly attention has been devoted to shariah governance, auditing, regulatory frameworks, and compliance mechanisms in Islamic banking, takaful, sukuk, and other financial services. While these contributions have significantly advanced the institutionalisation of shariah within the financial sector, they have also narrowed the conceptual scope of shariah compliance by predominantly associating it with financial institutions and procedural conformity. This contrasts with the rapid expansion of the Islamic economy into the real sector, including manufacturing, healthcare, education, logistics, agriculture, retail, digital enterprises, and small and medium-sized enterprises, where the concept of institution-wide shariah compliance remains theoretically underdeveloped. This conceptual paper argues that the next frontier of shariah compliance research lies beyond Islamic finance and requires the establishment of Shariah Compliance Business Institutions (SCBI) as a distinct research domain. Rather than viewing shariah compliance merely as certification, regulatory conformity, or periodic audit outcomes, the paper reconceptualises it as an organisational phenomenon through which shariah principles become institutionalised within governance, strategic decision-making, operations, organisational behaviour, and stakeholder relationships. This perspective shifts the unit of analysis from financial transactions and financial institutions to business organisations operating across the real sector. Drawing upon a narrative review and conceptual synthesis of the literature, the paper identifies the limitations of existing research, defines the concept of SCBI, and proposes a research agenda encompassing conceptualisation, theoretical development, institutionalisation, measurement, implementation, and organisational outcomes. Rather than presenting a completed theory, this paper establishes the intellectual foundation for SCBI as an emerging field of inquiry and provides a platform for future theoretical and empirical research within Islamic business, management, and organisational studies.