Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sarawak, MALAYSIA.
Abstract
Managerial effectiveness is predominately culture specific (Sharma, 2001). This means each country and community need to develop their own system of developing managerial effectiveness. Recognizing the important of culture in management practice, this paper attempts to explore managerial effectiveness from the perspectives of the Bhagavad-Gita. The Bhagavad-Gita is an ancient Indian spiritual and philosophical text and is more than 5000 years old. Chinmayananda (2003) asserted that from time to time an ancient philosophy needs intelligent re-interpretation to apply effectively in the context of modern times. Based on text and content analysis of selected verses from the Bhagavad-Gita, some relevance of the Bhagavad-Gita in the development of managerial effectiveness is explored in this paper.
Introduction (1)
People, today is exploring philosophy, transpersonal psychology, meditation, Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, Taoism, and many other spiritual schools of thought. There has also been an increasing interest in integrating spirituality and management as the numbers of articles on spirituality in management journals are increasing (Kale and Shrivastava, 2003). One of the ancient Indian spiritual text is the Bhagavad-Gita or the Song of the Lord , which provides the essence of the Vedas, which was delivered by Sri Krishna to Arjuna more than 50 centuries ago in Kurukshestra, India.
Introduction (2)
The background for the Bhagavad-Gita is the epic Mahabharata. The Mahabharata was composed by Sri Vyasa Muni (son of Parasara Muni) and was written by Sri Ganesa more than 5000 years ago and it has 110,000 verses. The Bhagavad-Gita appears in 700 verses (of which 575 are uttered by Sri Krishna) in Bhisma Parva of the Mahabharata and consists of 18 chapters. The Mahabharata narrates the war between two cousins; the 5 Pandavas and 100 Kauravas to claim the kingdom of Hastinapura. The Bhagavad-Gita was given on the battlefield before the commencement of the war. The battlefield represent our body where an unending battle is raging between the forces of good and evil.
Methodology
This paper is based on the qualitative research methodology called hermeneutics, which is the interpretation of ancient or classical literatures. Hermeneutics is also concerned with the usage of language and the process of using language. The Mahabharata was written in the Sanskrit language, one of the oldest languages in the world. The translation of the Bhagavad-Gita requires a good mastery of Sanskrit. As a result the main English translation of the Bhagavad-Gita verses quoted in this paper is based on the authoritative translation of AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
Limitations
The Bhagavad-Gita is perceived as a spiritual and philosophical text, as such it is not directly related to managerial effectiveness. The Bhagavad-Gita is also perceived only as an Hindu scripture, as such foreigners and other Indians who are not Hindu will find it difficult to accept the Bhagavad-Gita However, there is no doubt that the principles propounded in the Bhagavad-Gita are have universal application and useful for managers to mould their character and strengthen their self to develop their managerial effectiveness
Bhagavad-Gita and ME
The Bhagavad-Gita was delivered by Sri Krishna to boost Arjunas declining morale, motivation, confidence to his (Arjuna) intra-personal conflict, which was to fight or not to fight the war at Kurukshestra Sri Krishna gave not only spiritual enlightenment to Arjuna ( and to all of us) but also the art of self management, conflict management, stress &, anger management, transformational leadership, motivation, goal setting and many others aspects of management which can be used as a guide to increase our managerial effectiveness. Unlike the western approach to managerial effectiveness, which focuses in exploring the external world of matter and energy, the Bhagavad-Gita recommends a managerial effectiveness approach, which focuses on exploring the inner world of the self.
Sri Krishna, played the role of teacher (management trainer, developer), to revive Arjunas motivation
Managers should use their intelligence to control the mind (the driving instrument), they should not let the mind to be controlled by the senses.
Conclusion
Modern managers, can benefit from the philosophy of Bhagavad-Gita, which serves as a guide in developing managerial effectiveness. Mere imitation of western ME approaches may not be appropriate in the Indian (Asian) context due to differences in the cultural environment. The philosophy of Bhagavad-Gita has remained and will remain as a guide for developing managerial effectiveness, not only in this 21st century but also for many centuries more to come.
Arjuna's illusion has now gone. He is motivated to win the war for the Pandavas. This is due to Sri Krishna, who became the adviser for Arjuna and transformed him (Arjuna) and the Pandavas to victory.
Thank You
Balakrishnan Muniapan
mbalakrsna@yahoo.com