Values :
Can Wealth Satisfy a Man :
In an age of consumerism where success is getting measured by comparisons, man is sacrificing his happiness. Over ambitious and keen ness to earn fast is leading to a stage. of excessive burnout where the person is forced to think how much is his need for money. Even when we are giving is it really for giving or for the sake of recognition. There are who have a little but give it all and they are never empty.
Much of management education unfortunately is converting human being into a money making machine.
“People who work only for money making, gets slowly enslaved by the desire for getting more money by exploiting others which becomes a conditioned refex with these people, resulting restlessness, tension, secret, fear and total loss of peace.”
BHAGWAT GITA
NEITHER MAXIMUM NOR MINIMUM BUT OPTIMUM
In our day to day functioning we are faced with many contradictory values over a time and have to face which one to follow. We can seek an optimum mix in such values that can function satisfactorily in real life. Some of these values are.
1. Controlled greed: This is the most crucial value needing discussion in business ethics because most people would agree that business entity can not operate unless an element of greed is inbuilt into its operations. How much of it is the debatable issue. Indian thinkers mostly depend on internal controls,
genetic cultivation and family culture to curtail greed. There is nothing wrong in materialism if it is secondary i.e. secondary to honestly, love, equality,justice, and compassion. If it comes first it can lead to exploitation, misery and loss of peace.
2. Pursuit of Pleasure: (Anand) Happiness and Pleasure are not just Pleasure offlesh but also of mind. Pleasure must be distinguished from greed .Absence of greed can indeed be a cause of giving pleasure, like in the case of Alacrity Foundation of Tamil Nadu whose shareholders accepted with pleasure a lower
return on investment in favour of high ethical values of honesty. Excell Industry of Gujrat is also a similar example where Mr. Narayanan CEO, called Guru by his staff draws a greater pleasure in social welfare programme of the firm. This company even goes to jails to recruit the reformed inmates as an
investment and great pleasure. If you are keen to know the impact on business, this company has done wonderful in results too.
You get pleasure only when you are detached by the out come which has been beautifully described as “management by detached involvement” by Dr. Jagdish Pareekh. Phd. (Harvard) in his best selling book managing yourself.
3. Efficiency and Action: Action only leads to improvements and productivity’ of resources: “They only live by right who ’till the soil and raise their food. The rest are parasites”. Kural Virse – 1033.
4. Truthfulness: Truth is ethically valued because of its Universalisability and in business or organizations it is the first step to build trust.
5. Transparency and honesty: It requires total openness and nothing to be hidden from those who would be affected by the information.
6. Compassion and Charity: All religions have laid a strong emphasis on these values and Jains have extended it even to all living beings, Charity should never be combined with arrogance.(a) “Do something good for those who can not reciprocate it and your self esteem will go up”. – Mahatma Gandhi.
(b) Mr. P. Rajgopal, 47 years old MD. of Sarvanana Bhavan chain of hotels in Tamil Nadu who started merely as cleaner in a restaurant in a small town is now a successful person with 41 crores turnover. He spends 2.5 lakhs (Rs. 2001- each) per month on monetary support to the old parents of his employees with Karuna Bhava (Compassion) like a True Kamayogi. The pay off is more automatic than expected, as he concentrated in Karma
(Responsibility) and not on pay off.
7. Self-Sacrifice: Where individuals undertake intensive effort of great deprivation to themselves but yielding immense social benefits had greater impact in terms of contribution and is strongly advocated by Jains, Buddhists.
Vedanta and other scholars.
What Swami Vivekananad said is truly relevant. “Unselfishness pays a lot only the people have not the patience to practice it.”
Indian tradition had always searched for ideal heroes as models for living an ideal life of work. The Mahabharata offers us two powerful models, one in Arjun and the other in Duryodhana.
Both are equally brilliant, powerful, having intensive organizing capabilities. In fact, Duryodhana, as a statesman, was more sagacious than Arjuna. Yet why did Duryodhana fail and Arjuna succeed? The simple answer is that with all his extra-ordinary valour, Arjuna accepted the message of Krishna: “Those who accept all works as a sacrifice for the welfare of all, they are freed from all sins (and attain success). But those who work only for their own benefit and profit, eat only sins (and they get defeated in their
purpose). Gandhari the symbol of righteous knowledge advised her son, before the war, just as Krishna advised Arjuna; but Duryodhana refused to listen to his mother. In Mahabharata Gandhari said (Udyoga Parva) (128:2:21) “O my extremely brilliant and mighty-powerful son, no one can get Kingdom if
he fights only for his personal benefits; even if he gets it, he can neither keep nor enjoy it”. Again Gandhari says to Duryadhana “Unless the leader is selfcontrolled, the assistant ministers will never listen to him, nor can he give punishment to evil-doers if he takes rash decisions with an unsteady-mind. The Goddess of Wealth never comes to such a person”. (128:2:30) She predicted to Duryodhana that, the Pandavas were going to win over him because they had excelled him in dharna (righteous action) – Dharmastu Abhyadhikoh tatah
(128:2:51-52).
P. C Roy lived an aster life but. developed the basic pharmaceutical and chemical industry in India.
He Who Sacrifices is a True Leader:-
On his way to India, young Alexander and his huge army were gripped by severe drought and thirst. Some soldiers dug the soil and with great difficulty brought a little drinking water for their leader. Alexander smiled and spread the water on the burning sands. He was one with the army. It is with such a spirit
of sacrifice that Columbus had succeeded to steer to the new continent, even when his convict-sailors turned against him.
“Kill self first if you want to succeed”, says Vivekananda. And again, he said, “We are the servants of all”. ‘The brutal mania of egotistical leadership has brought death to many institutions. Aurangzeb with his pious geocentricism brought ruin on the Mughal Empire. “He who will offer his own head, will lead other heads too”, says the Sikh Slogan – Sardar Sirdar.
8. Evenness of mind – The Secret of successful management:
Should one always expect success? No, All movements in the world are nonlinear, with regular ups and downs like sound wave, light wave, and the waves of joy and sorrow. in one’s life.
If with all the efficiency and struggle success does not come, what should the Manager do? He should be calm and accept the situation with equanimity. This equanimity is the secret of facing all situation in work – Yogah Karmasu
Kausalam (Yoga is skill in action) – says the Gita.
That skill, according to Shankara, consists in maintaining the evenness of mind in success and failure, in the performance of work as one’s duty. The calm mind in failure will lead him to deeper introspection and see clearly where the process went wrong and eventually lead the person to lasting
success.
9. Face Adverse Situation with Strength and Calmness:
Once an executive asked, “How to face the situation when things fall apart and workers go wild? Vivekananda’s answer was. “Face the brute Face it with all the infinite strength and courage of the Self within.
`Abhayam’ (Fearlessness) is the first requisite of a man of action, according to Gita. And this strength and fearlessness which comes from the. infinite strength within, must be combined with the calmness, evenness, tranquility of mind and spiritual approach for solution. “Religion is the manifestation of the natural
strength that is in man”, said Vivekananda. Krishna’s immortal exhortation to Arjuna “Yield not to unmanliness O Partha, it does not befit you”, has become the classic Indian invocation for fearlessness. It is tragic that Arjuna, the scorcher of foes, got suddenly frightened by the specter of the colossal
army of the enemy and lost all faith in his own world-conquering power. Krishna, by sheer power of words, the celestial song (Gita), removed his delusion and restored the faith. “Faith is not belief, it is a grasp on the ultimate, an illumination”, said Vivekananda: A man of faith is invincible. He can turn
the tides of history. And this faith comes out of the knowledge that there always is the Self, the ever-present divinity which is the repository of all strength, and bliss. All executives in. troubled times will derive immense strength and benefit if they remember the few lines Vivekananda had written to
his young enterprising Madras disciples: “Try to manifest the divinity within and everything will be harmoniously arranged around it”.
10. Trust, Cooperation and Working together:
Without trust business transactions can become tortuous, chimsy and expensive After globalization it has became all the more important. Without working together as a team, organizations can work at low efficiency.
The Brass industry of Moradabad and Hosiery units at Tripur provides an excellent example of collaborative working where excess order is passed on to the neighbour which has enabled these cities to be the leader of industry and many benefits in terms of lower cost of production, ‘good quality, export incentives gets automatically passed to all manufactures with industry growing as a whole because an importer knows that he can always be assured of getting his order fulfilled from these cities in view of the norm and values followed by manufacturers.
Nature knows that fighting is foolish, it wastes time, it wastes energy, it risks unnecessary injury and it makes no sense. Peaceful co-existence mutuality and cooperation shall achieve the highest welfare” writes K Matsushita in his book `Thought on Man’ ! “If Japan forty years ago had been firmly resolved to seek mutual prosperity instead of dominance in Asia, the country would. have been spared the devastation of war and the horrible suffering that came with being the world’s first victim of a nuclear attack.
11. Gratitude and Respectfulness:
The importance of these values in business is obvious and it is to be seers in conjunction with other values. It helps the person in avoiding jealosy leakage of efforts, ego trap and will bring the support of others. The famous Japanese Company Matsushita uses these in its value education and Japan’s success is
also attributed a lot by this value in their society: In the book “The Art of Japanese Management” by Richard Tanner Pascale and Anthony G. Athos, the authors give a whole chapter entitled “Spiritual values” where `Matsushita philosophy’ and `Matsushita values’ are described as the most powerful trend-setter in today’s Japanese management. The authors wrote: “The Matsushita philosophy provides a basis of meaning
beyond the products it produces. Matsushita was the first company in Japan to have a song and a code of values. It seems silly to Westerners, but every morning at 8 a.m. all . across Japan, there are 87,000 people reciting the code of values. It is like we are all a community”.
The Matsushita “Spiritual Values” are:
• National Service through industry
• Fairness .
• Harmony and Co-operation
• Struggle for Betterment
• Courtesy and Humility
• Adjustment and Assimilation
• Gratitude
12. Harmony with Self, Society and nature: With the resurgence of environmental ethics these trends are now fending universal acceptance all over the world.
