India's Contribution to Management [Aug 15, 2000] Malik, Pravir

India’s Contribution to Management portrays a holistic, spiritually-based contribution that India can make to the field of management. It consists of three parts.

The first part examines past and contemporary world movements, primarily historical and geographical, to conclude that world attention is about to focus on India. Further, developments within India herself are examined, to conclude that India too, in a manner of speaking, has been withholding knowledge, until that point when the world will be ready to receive her true light.

Simultaneously, there have been a number of developments along the individual, organizational, and economic fronts that demand a more holistic, spiritually-based approach to management. This is the material of the second part of the book. Several managerial limitations to the running of companies are examined. The emergence of the Digital Economy and the complexities inherent in it, with its simultaneous need for a far more sophisticated individual and organizational perspective and attitude are examined. Trends in management, with the gradual refocusing from external to internal concerns are examined. Each of these separate examinations leads to one conclusion – the need for a more enlightened, holistic, spiritually-based framework for management.

India’s Contribution to Management will extrapolate from these independent observations to conclude that India indeed will provide the framework required for fulfillment of numerous managerial problems the world is facing. This framework is based on the deepest knowledge of reality that India has been privileged to uncover time and time again through the unfolding of history.

One omnipresent Being & Consciousness informs and sustains reality. All are expressions of this underlying reality and if the power, love, knowledge, joy, and harmony of that underlying reality are not felt, or is not apparent in materialistic life, this is because we do not take the trouble to enter into contact with it. In fact, all movements, whether individual, managerial, scientific, or social, will find their fulfillment and more rapid flowering if they orbit around this deeper reality, and turn to it to consciously inform and sustain their own development and seeking.

Fulfillment in all fields will be arrived at on this foundation. India possesses the knowledge of approaching, experiencing, identifying with, and being mobilized by this reality.

Part Three examines what an organization may become if the light of a spiritually-based management framework is indeed followed. A method for predicting which of the many arising management techniques will endure, based on their inherent alignment with the spiritually-based framework, is suggested. Further, contemporary companies are examined for their adoption of futuristic, widening practices, which align them with the spiritually-based framework. Profit is redefined, and a new management paradigm, based on the deeper reality is examined.

Finally, a practical set of questions is presented which help an organization assess to what degree it may already be aligning with the deepest reality as reflected by the new management paradigm.

..evangelises a new approach, a new way to manage organisations. Based on Aurobindo's philosophy... -- Intelligent Investor, March 15, 2001

Book Extract: The fabric of possibility has been going through a definite shift. -- Asian Age, February 15, 2001

Valuable and relevant, the publication will be of interest to any person interested in business and organisational development -- Swagat, January, 2001