jabdakhata

Is Selflessness Practical? The selflessness of the business leader is also driven by another consideration. Any business model is a temporary endeavor. A temporary endeavor cannot result in a permanent or a lasting benefits, it can only cause a temporary outcome for all including the leader whose tenure is also temporary. Therefore for the sake of temporary gains if one puts ethics behind one would be having a long term personal integrity and reputation at stake. As Sri Krishna would have said in Gita -  akirtim chapi bhutani kathayishyanti te avyayam sambhavitasya chakirtir maranatatirichyate "People will say things of disrepute about you for eternity. Those who are of great repute, to them disrepute is worse than death" The leader who is selfless would never try to influence business outcome by following unrighteous means. In this case the leader is detached from the outcome and instead focuses on the means as well as compassionate enough to take into cons

Ethics through the prism of “Selflessness” Project Management Institute (PMI) definition of ethics says that Ethics is the discipline of  “how to do it best.”   In Bhagavad Gita we surprisingly find a similarity  – “Work without attachment and desire is the art of doing things in the most efficient way”. By definition, the three components of ethics are: (a) Disposition - one's, customary manner of emotional response or temperament; (b) Character – moral strength, integrity, and fortitude; and (c) Attitude – a state of mind or feeling with regard to some matter. One or more of them are needed to comply with ethical norms and ensure successful business outcome and character is undoubtedly the most important one. But how are these components, esp. that of character, cultivated and inculcated? As discussed earlier, the key drivers behind unethical behaviors are fear, greed, weak monitoring (environmental) and passion. If we critically analyze we’ll find that all of them

Ethics is the backbone of leadership and forms one of the cornerstone of the philosophy behind good management. Ethics is not something which is rigidly defined. It has got a fairly flexible boundary and different project situations and even different cultural norms permit different ethical behavior. Therefore is there any thumb rule by which we can ensure ethical behavior under all circumstances? One of the key pillars in leadership is ethics and integrity. If we critically examine the term ethics in leadership context we find that it’s a term that is not very rigidly defined. It deals with the ideal behavior under different situations. Codes of ethics vary greatly in terms of the types of the activities and actions they cover and the degree of enforcement.   Wherever there is a conflict of interest there is a question of ethics and integrity. Broadly the key drivers for ethical problems are threefold – Fear, Greed and Passion. The first one is well known, fear is basically pres

It was left to Guru Nanaka and others to work out the philosophy of Vedanta on a practical level, but their work did not get universal acceptance. Instead they became sectarian and hence the broadness of the ideal did not get the necessary visibility. We’re fortunate to get a few selfless souls in the seventeenth and eighteenth century like Rani Bhavani in Bengal, Ahalya Bai Holkar in Maharastra and other exceptional people who took up service of living gods. But they were too few. Masses in general were submerged in great degree of ignorance and the advent of the new age found reaction in the form of social reform movements. Such reform movements wanted to cut the very roots, rather than cleansing the shrubs and growths around them. Uprooting the gigantic social tree was a Herculean tasks and hence these movements could not gain much traction, although they did help in paving the way for what was to come. Opening the gates of free and rational thinking was necessary before peop