ETHICS IN BUSINESS: Ananda Das Gupta

We are almost bound to welcome the New Paradigm in Business because it opens the path for a decisive step forward in evolution from an authoritarian, mechanistic, Taylorian era to a freer and a more humanistic ethos in business. But even while the New Paradigm values are spreading fast and getting established in business, we have to think ahead and visualize the next stage in the evolution of business. The crucial question we have to ask is what the highest potentiality of humanism is, or in other words, what is the highest potential in man and how to manifest it in the individual and corporate life, especially in business? Some ideas can be put forward, we believe, as a New Paradigm for Management with Positivism (NPMP):

A Holistic Approach to Management

·           Managing others

·           Need to play one’s role well

·           Need to understand the importance and place of one’s role

·           Need to understand and function within a proper hierarchy

·           Need for common and individual goals

·           Need to ‘give’ and ‘take’

Value Based Administration: To add value to administration an administrator should:

·           Possess strategic thinking to integrate one’s region with the nation

·           Recognise the world beyond one’s office and  face its challenge

·           Understand society’s goals

·           See people as potential and strategic resources and mentor them  accordingly

·           Nurture belief in value adding

The Real Need

·           Hierarchy should be replaced by self managing structures such as (a) Networks; (b) multidisciplinary teams (c) Small action dyads

·           Information dissemination should be a routine work

·           Delivering service should be effective in terms of its cost, quality and quantity.

Working with Others

                    

·           Empathy

·           Team Work

Modern business philosophy has a certain viewpoint or perspective on human potential based on the secular humanistic values of the west and the scientific theories on the nature of man and his evolution. We are presenting a complementing perspective based on the values of spiritual humanism and the spiritual vision of the Vedantic sciences of the East. In general most of the conceptions on spirituality emerging in business and management denote some form of moral, religious, social and psychological fulfilment, like creativity, self-expression, sharing, charity or community service.

Business cannot be abstracted from the society in which it exists and functions; it is an integral part of the human society. This ‘holistic’ view of business is another perception emerging in modern business philosophy. And business happens to be the most dominant and representative organ of the modern society. So in an organic vision of business it has to be viewed as an integral part of the economic, technological, social, political and cultural environment in which it functions. And this environment, and the forces of the environment, at once influences and is influenced by the social organs which constitute it. But our focus will be not on the environment that belongs to the past, but of the new world of the future which is struggling to emerge from the ashes of the past and the facts of the present.

There are three major factors or forces, which, we believe, will shape the new world of the future. First is the urge for a new synthesis in thought and action; second, in the external world, the development of Science and Technology; third in the inner-world, mapping a new horizon for the development of consciousness.