Ancient Indian Wisdom for Sustainable Management Practices
KEY WORDS
Leader, dharma, dhanda, Inner Sage, Indian Wisdom, Management
Introduction The world is once again at the “eye of a storm”. In the recent years we have already witnessed a series of failures of some of the most successful corporations across the globe and exposure of revered leaders in corporate scandals. There is revelation of financial malpractices, mass uprisings in Greece for the debt-crisis or “Occupy Wall-street” campaigns being held in various parts of the developed world simultaneously.
Corporate senior management, management consultants, renowned economists, educators, etc one after the other are still not able to find a concrete solution for coping up with this increasing uncertainty in the global business scenario. They are still trying the old way of “control, control, control” and “justify, justify, justify” which is of no use. It is only leading this world to more “selfishness” in the international relations where disparity, both in economic and social terms, between the nations is increasing.
All this leads us to ask one central question: “Are the existing models of modern management capable enough to cope up with this current global management crisis? Are the existing modern management practices enough to bring back sustainability in the global economy?”
The answer to the above questions lies in integrating ancient wisdom in the existing modern management frameworks. We argue that ancient Indian wisdom which has a heritage of being more than 3500 years old and which teaches something more “eternal” and timeless could be a guiding light for bringing more certainty and sustainability in our business practices. In this pursuit, we would cope up with uncertainty at the various levels of management by following the “Jnan path” or the “path of Knowledge” which consists of a series of “knowledge-processes” for linking up the individual consciousness (Self or Atman) to the Universal Self (Brahman or universal consciousness) as depicted in the figure below.
Swami Parthasarathy FIMA, Ph.D.
The author is a writer of global repute and international acclaimed management exponent and philosopher having 27 publications of books to his credit. He is also the author of ‘Transforming Personality’, one of the best sellers in Europe and America.