THE WORLD OF MANAGEMENT

Living and Life

With enormous leaps of technology and mindless competition in all spheres of life, the
world of management is constantly learning to cope with the shifting paradigms. Today, intense
competition and increasing end-use assertiveness force businesses to drastically cut down their
response time. Prove or perish, that is the call of the day. Meeting and measuring up to the
emerging challenges is the prime function of today’s managers. Pressure on the managers is like
never before and in the stress of earning their living they have forgotten how to live!

In a larger and holistic perspective, Management is not only for living but also for life. Any good
school of management should teach the art and science of managing one’s life and self, along
with the functional and subsidiary subject of management. But, unfortunately the focus has
shifted to career advancement and making of more and more money.

The Western Model

The reason for such competitive living is mainly because we depend heavily on the
western model of management, which is derived from their philosophy of life.

According to the western view, man is an accident in the history of the universe. He is basically a
bundle of energy seemingly encased in a material envelope, in which glimmerings of
consciousness have appeared by chance. It sees the rest of the cosmos as the play of energy,
which is totally devoid of feeling, emotion, thinking and consciousness. Man has emerged
because of the blind working of a law of biological evolution, which bases itself on random
genetic mutation and the survival of the fittest.

Can such a man have any purpose in life except to try to be the fittest so that he can survive? Can
he become anything but a selfish being, trying to find happiness through egocentric gratification?
Concern for fellow humans, the environment, society and the world at large can have very little
importance in comparison to his selfish growth.

The Indian Model

Let us compare this with the Indian model. Here the paradigms are entirely different. The
battle of life gets connected with the divine and sacred play of Consciousness. The basic stuff is
consciousness. Everything in the world is consciousness that has assumed names and forms.
Everything has different levels of feeling, emotion, intelligence, intuition and consciousness.

The entire movement of the cosmos is seen to be a part of a cycle. Nothing is accidental or by
chance. The emergence of man is part of the script. Biological evolution thus ceases to be
random, chance, accidental and is seen as part of the larger cycle of evolution from matter to
consciousness.

What is the consequence of this Indian model?

It is that we all are self-conscious beings, living together in a conscious world. The whole of
creation is the manifestation of divine consciousness, of which we all are children. Thus, we are
brothers and sisters who have to learn to live together in cooperation as we do in a family. Man is
not seen as a conqueror of the world, which he has to exploit for his own advantage, irrespective
of the consequences.

The Indian model believes that the purpose of human life is to understand this play of
consciousness, so that we can live in harmony and in cooperation. Such wisdom can only emerge
in a mind that is calm, compassionate, generous and forgiving, non-violent and peaceful. The
Indian model believes that we are in the process of evolution of consciousness, from the ordinary
mind to the higher mind, from mortal self to our divine self.

It is also increasingly evident that although the world is moving fast towards a Global Society
based on material self-sufficiency, physical growth, emotional balance, intellectual depth and
spiritual understanding, the human brain is still at the primitive level, trying to compete and
survive. The need of the hour is to train the younger generation to have a Meta-Primate brain.

Need for a consciousness based leadership

In the light of this process of evolution, it is important that we do course correction in all
walks of life, including the field of management. In this context, understanding consciousness
and moving towards consciousness based leadership is pertinent to the world of business and
management. If consciousness is understood and practiced in the right perspective, it will bring
about a paradigm shift in the world of management.