Book Presentation

"Spirituality in Business & Management"

by Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar

All is business today. The principle of business has grown beyond all proportion. It engulfs every conceivable human activity. The book emphasises the need to manage business with restraint and with a social objective. Thus business can be a source of social support.

Content: Introduction; Spiritualism vs. Business; Business Management; Bridging Concepts; Conclusion.

The World Teacher Temple / Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India May 2005-2.

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Sample:

Business Management

I wonder, today if man is managing business or business is managing man. Man is today subservient to business thought and business consideration, while it is supposed to be other way round. Business executives think they are managing business. But in fact, they are driven crazy by the business. Who is running whom is the question.

When freshers get into business, what happens? Good human beings trained in terms of value systems while they were in the college, when they enter the business field, they enter a field of conflict. There has to be some kind of a compromise between the values that they have learned and the values that play in the field. The conflict results in some people withdraw from the business activity, because they find themselves to be at loss. There are others who lose themselves (in terms of human values) and gain…? Commercially. They are yet others who are able to work out a good balance between the two and they have neither sacrificed their human values not did they completely embraced the commercial values. They are at great experiment of trial and error. They reach a point where they work out a balance between managing business and at the same time retaining certain human values.

It is very difficult to do that, because as I have said in the very beginning, the present day objectives of spiritualism and business differ with each other. Unless, the business objectives are tuned up to the higher values of life, it is not possible. Spiritualism is a contented way of life. It is a state of contentment, a state of equanimity and equipoise and a state where you are not really worried even if you lack certain things. If you see the business motives, it is result-oriented. What matters to a businessman is the profit or the loss that he makes at the end of the day or at the end of the year. So, even at the prime objectives there is a basic difference. This results in working out a method where you try to seek  some profit and at the same time you are not avaricious and you are not so very jealously competitive. When you are not at all in competition, your business may suffer. If you are jealously in competition you suffer. This kind of situation prevails. But there are about a dozen top insurance agents, the toppers in this town. They were coming to me to seek certain guidance to progress in life and at the same time develop their insurance business. It so happened that after one year, one turned out to be the best policy seller of the region and was invited by the Round Table in America having achieved one billion policy target. In the same team there was another who miserably failed. The one who was invited to the United States attributes all the success to the teaching he received and the other man who failed also attributed his failure to the same teaching. So, what is the difference? The difference is in application and in the ability to understand the balanced approach. It is very difficult to carry spiritual values and function in the objective world; that is why many spiritualists in the past escaped from the objective world and tried to experience their own bliss in their own way and they are oblivion to the real life situation. Sri Aurobindo says that "these are the people who are very easily deceived by their own conceptual misapplication in the sense they withdrew totally from the society, they created an atmosphere of their own which is totally harmonious and lived a life. They are not effective instruments in the society. They are practically out of the society. But our philosophy tells us, that we shall have to keep our heads in the forest and hands in the society." Meaning ... that you have to be detached in your thought and at the same time function here effectively so that you are a positive instrument to help a few who are living in conflict. It is a difficult situation, but now more and more. Business management is recognizing this philosophy.

The conflict in business today slowly tended the business management to evolve methods to help successful managers to be free of tension. Every manager could be either a diabetic, hypertensive patient or a cardiac patient. Any one of these three is a very common disease among the responsible men in business. Management itself means, working out solutions in the field of conflict, reconciling divergent views and accomplishing the targets set, using strategies, tactics and skills. The human being is put to challenges in higher levels of business management and in matter of 20 years a successful manager is a totally squeezed orange, while he gains reputation as business manager. And in the process he may have lost many other valuable facets of life. He may have lost his own health and he is no more useful. A heart-stroke for instance sets him out of the race of progress. Throughout his 20 years of career-making he suffers a kind of a tension, because he has to produce results. This production of results puts man in a kind of a tension. That is why, one of the fundamental concepts of spiritualism is, "Work, but don't crave for the results." But it is very difficult to understand this concept in the modern context. How can you work without being concerned about the results? This is a common question that you come across whenever you meet a young man who is coming up in life. To him it is true, but if you ask a manager who has put in 30 or 40 years of strenuous management "circus," he would say: "Hell with the results, keep working, be concerned about your job and the results will follow." There are also managers who function that way. So, who is right and who is wrong? Just like the two insurance agents, it is your own maturity in comprehension and application that decides what it is.

There are people who say that unless we do, things don't move. There are others who say "things happen". Happening overtakes doing and you can relax while doing transforms into happening. For the first one, :he second one is a big paradox, for he does 'not understand the statement. The Scriptural statements are also not well understood for the same reason. If they are not understood it is because of lack of comprehension and lack of Experience in life. To give an example, when you learn to drive, in the beginning you are so very alert in your driving. Your two feet drive, your two hands drive, your two eyes drive, your two ears are so concerned that you don't want your wife sitting by your side to talk to you while you are driving, because it is a disturbance to you. If she talks, you may be disturbed and then it may lead to something unpleasant - some kind of an accident. So, he is so concerned about his driving, he "feels" much driving that he cannot think of listening to some music, or speaking to his friends or his own family members in the car. But slowly, as he gains experience of driving, say after 10 years, what happens? He keeps driving, he listens to music, he listens to the jokes cut by his companion in the car. What is the difference? Is he not driving or is he driving?

If you see, he is driving and yet he is not driving. He is driving but not driving so very concentratedly in the sense, the ease of driving is gained through a process of continuous application. Until that ease is gained, you are really at tension. When the ease in doing is gained, slowly the tension is released and you see things happening. The feeling of doing is reduced. It is only the feeling that stimulates tension but not the work as such.