To the Future Leaders

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As the economic environment continue to evolve into more global context of trade, market and resource flows, the issues with governance emerging out of it are rapidly increasing. The Satyam scandal and those of global firms like Enron, Tyco and WorldCom are a few to name. Recently in an article, I read about corporate governance being revamped in India after the Satyam fiasco. SEBI has taken steps to review clause of 49. It is more important to understand that revamping of the clause would not make a great difference until and unless we concentrate on ethical decision making. In order to remove the opportunity for an employee to make an unethical decision, industries set up a framework called Corporate Governance.CG is more about accountability, following legal requirements and being transparent to the stake holders.

Now, do we notice that most of the CEO’s who get involved in such scandals are from best B-schools? For example: The once-considered-to-be business icon of India, Mr.Ramalinga Raju is from one of the world’s best B-schools. In a competitive business environment, for sustainability, every B-school does not fail to include Business ethics as a compulsory subject. Different varieties of subjects have emerged out of ethics such as ethics in journalism, ethics in marketing, work ethics, ethics in management etc. More the number of scandals and fraudulent cases arise, more subjects in ethics arise. Business ethics as a subject teaches the students about what is right and wrong regarding decisions and actions in and around organizational activities only. So far it has tried to address only the surface of problem and not the crux of it.

Leaders are the reflection of an organization and its culture. A CEO or board of director’s decision can affect not only the employees of the organization, stake holders, suppliers and traders but also the society as whole. One study of 148 secretaries who worked for the Fortune 100’s chief executives found that 47% had been asked at some time by their bosses to lie. Unless there is a transformational change in present business leaders and future leaders like us, scandal free and ethical corporations cannot be formed.

Swami Vivekananda rightly said,”If we take care of the cause; the effect will take care of itself”. There should be an inner purification within oneself before trying to clean the outer environment. In my opinion Ethics, morality or ethico-morality are indigenous to Indians. We should feel proud about what our ancestors have left for us. Our great grand fathers have thought about their posterity. Hence we have Vedas and Upanishads. Modern business economics says that business should be built in a way such that it is socially responsible. Every business should have interest in the wellbeing of mankind. Modern writer and journalist Thomas L Friedman quotes that,” There is only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud”.

All the “new” western philosophy and thoughts have already been emphasized in our Vedanta. In Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna encouraged Arjuna “to think for himself, make his own decision, be self controlled, detached in reasoning and with an eye not only on his personal narrow selfish interest but also on the goodness of mankind”. Being moral and ethical to ourselves is the lesson we learn from this. Therefore Indian ethos has in itself the whole philosophy of ethics and morality in management. Ethics has to be a part of our life. We should learn to live the way of living ethical life.

Harvard Business School started to include decision making and ethical values in first year as compulsory input in 1990.The following statements have been made when they started the course, “Ethical values or norms are learned from one’s parents and are fully formed in early life, so that later efforts at ‘teaching’ ethics are really pointless”. We believe that this view is a gross oversimplification.

Vedanta says that ‘Sadhana’ (devoted spiritual practice) may lessen conflicts and clashes, dirt and poison since by practising Sadhana, one moves to subtle state. All kind of fraudulent practices and scandals, deception arises out of greed. In case of Satyam, Raju’s low order personal values have weakened the organization. For him and people like him, personal greed is greater than organization. Decision making went wrong due to his low personal ethics.

As a leader or manager, one has to make decisions. Decision making is not done by intellect. Emotions and feelings are the first to make choice. Mind purification has the preference over intellect sharpening. Our Indian philosophical traditional says that Dharma or Righteousness is the basic ethical ideal for the human development. In my opinion, we can follow the ideal in our daily life. We value our ‘time’ more than others. Isn’t it? A typical example would be someone who acts “smartly” while standing in a queue by bypassing others to go directly to the counter. We save time, our time is valuable! But why do we assume that the others in the queue do not value their time? Management students who are the future leaders have to transform themselves from low and complex thinking to high and simple thinking. A change of perception from self-egoistic to Self-all embracing is necessary for us to become great leaders.

Sarasvathi.T.A