Islamic Management in the Leading Islamic University; An Introduction to Organizational Leadership of Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani

After establishing ISU in 1982, Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani , the founder, set out on leading and managing it at different strategic, operational, decision-making and executive levels, next to teaching and educating. As the president of the first private, but non-profit, Islamic university, with the aim of achieving a leading authority in the field, he had to deal closely with different academic challenges in education, research, student affairs, logistics, and campus development. This research has tried to explain some of his thoughts in the field of organizational leadership based on his experiments through 32 years of managing in ISU. The research approach is "qualitative", and its strategy is "case study". The data has been gathered through participating observation, hence absolutely original because of the writer's close responsibilities in ISU. The outcome introduces some of the distinguished behavioral characteristics of the late Ayatollah in organizational managing and leadership, namely a deep faith in the value of experience at decision- making and supervision levels, training young graduates and paving the way for their involvement in executive work, setting a model example of interacting through compassion, seriousness and accountability side by side with a sense of humor, considering the specifically academic environment, programming with anticipatory outlook, mobilizing human resources, creating motivation, guiding through formal, group-based and interpersonal ways , and finally, evaluation and supervision.