THE ABC OF MANAGING ORGANIZATIONS BY ETHICS & VALUES

Paper Presented National Seminar, University of Delhi

The central purpose of this presentation is to highlight and stimulate the discussion on isolated aspect of Indian corporate values.  There is no use of dogmatising the very premises of my discussion.  But at the same time I have borrowed heavily to nurture my analysis from Indian mythological sources to understand ethics and values.  It is possible for us to interpret and speculate conception of corporate values.  Breaking up values into corporate, social, cultural and so on to my mind is something like if we drop the subject, the object vanishes.  But the subject does not vanish even though the object disappears.

            Every system of thought embodies and reflects the tendencies of the time, and cannot be understood unless we realise the point of view from which it looked at the world, and the habit of thought which made it possible.  The exuberant fancy of management theorists propagating a congeries of conflicting theories, accepted by some and denied by others.  There is no admitted fact or principle that is recognized by Indian corporate only dissolving views and intuitions become the success saga of Indian corporate.  In India there is so much of diversification that gods and ghosts with powers to injure and annoy, as well as to bless and glorify, govern the life of the peoples.  Many good men do devils work in the belief that it has divine sanction.  It is difficult to overestimate the amount of evil which has resulted from a confusion of morality and religion.  Our tendency is to generalize small empirical contingency to a large set of people and this results in creation of a reality which is partly or completely unreal.  Every time we try to maintain that the preceding thing is the cause of succeeding thing or that the latter is the effect of the former.  In order to understand the dynamics of corporate ethics it would be apt to highlight some of the profound views by various thinkers.  Aristotle takes the view that virtues are means to an end, namely happiness.  Friendship is only possible between the good and it is impossible to be friends with many people.  Does our ethical propositions are consonant to our existing socio-cultural reality.  Like Bentham, Locke, was a man filled with kindly feelings, who yet held that everybody (including) himself must always be moved, in action, solely by desire for his own happiness or pleasure.  If pleasure is our sole motive and if we avoid rationality it is bound to create dissatisfaction if not in present them in distant future.

            Turning to the ethics of Rgveda, we find the conception of Rta is of great significance.  Rta denotes the order of the world.  It is anticipation of the law of karma, one of the distinguishing characteristics of Indian thought.  The good are those who follow the path of Rta, the true and the ordered.  Kindness to all is enjoined, hospitality is reckoned a great virtue.  The riches of one who gives do not diminish.  According to the principles of karma there is nothing uncertain or capricious in the moral world.  We reap that we sow.  The good seed brings a harvest of good, the evil of evil.  The attempt to overlap the law of karma, is as futile as attempt to leap over one’s shadow.  Upanisads hold that we can be free from karma only by social service.  So long as we perform selfish work we are subject to the law of bondage.  When we perform disinterested work we reach freedom.  What binds us to the chain of birth and death is not action as such but selfish action.  What looms over us is no dark fate but our own past.  If law is all, then there is no real freedom possible.  Man’s life is not the working of merely mechanical relations.  There are different levels, the mechanical, vital, the sentient, the intellectual and the spiritual – these currents cross and recross and interpenetrate each opener.  The infinite in man helps him to transcend the limitations of finite.  Life is something bigger than mere succession of mechanically determined states.  This distinction of spirit and karma oscillates us between freedom and necessity but the danger lies in falling trap to greeds.  We have a tendency to forget large part of our sincere efforts to attain meagre goals of success.  Snobbery, exclusiveness have replaced humility and inclusiveness still we hope to innovate for better.  The sexual acts create the conditions in which a new life is defined by the development of a cell but it is not true for the birth of consciousness.  If our realization grows strong we should feel that joy and suffering are there for the progressive education of character.  As long as we identify ourselves with definite centre generated by the accidents of time and space we can’t acquire a centre as well as circumference that is within and that is without.

            According to Jainism ethics the apparatus of morality is necessary to bring about reformation in man’s conduct and an attitude of neutrality without aversion to other realities in the world is right conduct.

            Innocence, charity, honourable conduct, chastity and renunciation has been emphasized as virtues in the fivefold conduct of a person.  Nowadays progress is considered as dissociational development that comes into bits and pieces.  But Lord Krsna when asked about particular method to be adopted says that different pathways are distinct but not ultimately distinct but in the end they are all converging and correlating to the same road and same goal.  In Bhagvadgita three methods have been suggested jnanamarg or wisdom, Bhaktimarg or the path of devotion and karma marg through divine service or karma we can reach the highest level.  Antagonisms of isolated wisdom and the passion of selfishness hinders the real truth.  We are moving towards incompleteness as long as we are not assimilating the viewpoints emanating from various academic as well as social and cultural disciplines.  In order to progress intellectually we are trying create distinctions of narrow standpoints that has led to distorted understanding of comprehensive truth.  We have also indulged into the habit of adoration, praise and periodical reinforcements from external sources that has led to erosion of originality and innovativeness in each one of us.  In the process we are loosing the fire and experience of self-certifying in character or swayam pramanam.  The moment we bring here and there variations in right conduct we start getting drawn in an attitude of false claim and justify our wrong view with that of others.  Withdrawal tendencies restricts us from engaging ourselves trying best.  Doing work in a spirit of detachment has became significantly low as passion imprisons our spiritual nature.

            Egoism and preference for special forms of work-culture are loaded with subtle shades of selfishness which may bring temporary applause but may not survive in the long-run.  Corporate values can’t be conceived in isolation with existing reality and the moment we start dissecting such imaginary values-problems, emerges.  The constitution of the social order is said to be divine.  The emergence of a corporate group with massive displacement of tribals can’t go together.  Water is the common substance of ice and steam.  The phases are momentary, but the substratum is permanent.  The social realities have an existence independent of our perception although they may cease to exist for a brief duration.  Similarly corporate culture can’t be isolated from core social-cultural values and it may be termed as hyposatiated imaginary phenomenal manifestation of the underlying reality.  There seems to me and I may be wrong a larger inconsistency emanating from advocates of corporate culture and values that is somehow and in some ways not addressing to the core realities.  Had it not been the case why number of central universities, number of business schools, number of media channels, activists from various walks have not been able to advance our overall moral well-being.  If this not be the case why our corporates have not moved to villages of India.  Although they are manifesting a duality of profit and corporate social responsibility but still they are far from the real welfare which contained differential practices.  Corporates are trying to project a picture of dual reality but reality can be only one.  This dual reality is based upon differential treatment of its citizens.  Huge population of unorganized sector who work very hard far construction of roads and buildings do not have any medical cover.  Their children do not have any place for education.  Contractual labourers daily wages appointments are on the rise so as to avoid any responsibility of compensation in case of any mishappening with the workers.  Thousands of labourers become victims of working under hazardous situations which largely goes unreported.  Corporate of India have brought of luxurious five-star hotels, luxury cars and owner’s of such car’s don’t hesitate to kill people on the pavement’s who do not have any shelter to sleep.  Why is it the case that a number of corporates joining politics.  If you minutely care for the people being nominated in the Rajya-Sabha you will be surprised that distinguished categories people are mostly corporate people.  What social good or values they are serving can be best answered by them.  If we need to get a true picture of corporate Indian values we will have to try straight instead of approaching it in hypocrite manner.  How many people have become millionaire in last one or two decades.  What is the contribution of such people in larger welfare of the society.  Best of our talents in the IIT’s and IIM’s are compelled to go abroad in search of a good job.  The most important sporting extravaganza of common wealth is in the hands of people whose credibility is being questioned not by me but by whole of media fraternity and the government itself and last but not least it was criticized by one of the corporate wizard Azim Premji in his interview with TOI 26^th Aug. 2010.  Personally I am also in support of organizing such events provided it gives a boost to our image as brand India not to denigrate it.  Why is that common man tax payment is misused in the name of IPL matches any such event which has hardly anything to do with welfare.

            Malignant spirit playing the predominant role among the corporates and instead of awaking our masses it is further isolating them from reality.  There is no necessity and urgency to dispose the good that may have accrued due to corporate world contribution in the Indian context but the larger good is yet to be realized.  As long as we consciously break-up values in corporate, rural, urban, feminine, masculine we can only confuse the matter from better to worse.  Endless variety of ideas, feelings, creativity can be found among the inhabitants of Uttranchal, Jharkhand and Northeast.  The moment we keep discussing all lofty ideals in the seminar rooms and FICCI auditoriums the social reality will continue to be deprived of independence and reduced to a mere dance of ideas or thought relations.  The seeming and telling reality of a common man where even an ordinary life is a struggle and reality of a world in which thousands of crore are vanished without much murmur amounts to talk of a naive realism that can’t coexist for a long.  The empirical accounts produce a rosy picture of corporate India marching in terms of GDP rate but the distinction between the imaginary and real growth is also widening at an alarmist pace.  It is open to us to debate as to why who are real builders of new India are still fighting for their bread and it will be a Himalayan blunder to mistake rope for a snake instead of recognizing rope as a rope.

            Necessity of corporate values demands thought for reality not to further betray and weaken its integral masses by its frequent denial of rights which they deserve to receive. 

            It is difficult to imagine to provide a complete liberation from all fetters to our dwelling masses but giving a thought in this direction may also give rise to a virtue of relationship that the two co-exist.

            Management by values can overcome obstacles and minimise the deficiencies our organizations are facing.  The impediments yet to be overcome are material pleasures and ignorance of true nature of inter-connectedness among different socio-cultural systems.  Conquest over narrow path of knowledge, wealth, power and craving for individual success needs to be replaced by sublimated selfishness and compassion for the suffering of others.  To say and prescribe a thinking of organization citizen behavior and values is preaching of a half truth.  The conditions of virtue makes little difference whether you are CEO or peasant and sincere efforts be made to achieve uniting consciousness that may lead to development of attainment of unity across all sections.  Corporate culture and values have added to the darkening influence of passion and impulse as a prime possession of merit.  But the corporate value is not something to be packed away as exclusive property of the corporate giants instead it should have over-mastering power of freedom of expansion into the common-mass.  Corporate values are truths at second-hand on the authority of some people but do not become part of the lives of many others.  Desire builds the house of existence.  I don’t wish to suggest corporate rights to flee endlessly and restlessly from all that it has.  I don’t intend to prescribe the suppression of emotion and desire but at the same time this glowing emotion of corporate must take into account good or bad effects on the well-being of our masses.  Simply singing the tune of glory of the corporate would amount to mystic contemplation without practical goodness.  There is a good deal of misconception that is intentionally or unintentionally spread to glorify corporate values that can lead to well-being.  We have corporate life-style not only in academics, business but also its adherents are growing significantly among spiritual preachers.  Corporate values should give voice to the inarticulate forces which are neglected.  Corporate of India is gradually maturing in accumulation of wealth but its social implications aspect is being neglected.  That is the reason that corporates like Satyam Computers become giants within very short span of time and looses its very existence.

            The idea of freedom to engage in business and profit maximization is governing the corporates independent of strong preference for values.  But rationality of ethics demands that diversity of social context must be sensible enough to motivate choice among different sections of the people.  It is important here to distinguish between culmination outcome and comprehensive outcome.  It is not only important to gain success and maximize profit but it is more important this process is not antithetical to the progress of our common mass.  What we are observing today is mostly self-centred welfare without any sympathy or antipathy towards others.  Although in many cases sympathy is shown by our corporates but what is lacking is the commitment.  Commitment involves violation of self-centred welfare which involve recognition of other people’s goals.  Therefore there is enough room to scrutinise goals of the corporate exclusively reduced to one’s own welfare and ignoring the goals of others living in the society can’t lead to a sustainable future.  Alleged grounds are propagated that government of the day is not doing enough amounts to gloss the reality.  I don’t intend to be biased in appreciating some of the good efforts and high standard of values shown by some of the corporates.  But a closer look at the mushrooming growth of corporates in health sector, banking, education, entertainment, infrastructure poses more questions of a credo of welfare of the masses.  If we observe consumers and customers in various walks of the corporates one can easily notice these institutions distancing itself from the common mass.  Examples are many and naming them will amount to reflecting my bias and it is for all of us to introspect and throw light on this subject.

            The ABC of corporate values is nothing but common sense which aims at interconnectedness. The question whether corporate Indian values succeeds in gathering up different sections of society in a truly Indian outlook remains to be answered in future course of time.