Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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 presentation
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 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
Krishna to Arjuna more than 50centuries ago in Kurukshestra,India.
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.
Sri Krishna and Arjuna in the Midst of the Two Armies
Objectives of the Paper
Duty is given great importance in the Bhagavad-Gita. Duty in the organizational context
goes beyond contractual agreement in the employment relationship.
Sri Krishna motivates and encourages Arjuna to do his duty
and not to run away from the battlefield.
Perform your prescribed duty, for doing so is better than not
working. One cannot even maintain one’s physical body without work (B.G 3.8)
Sri Krishna further stressed that duty needs to be done without attachment
& for those who do their duty without attachment will attain the supreme goal (B.G 3.19).
Sri Krishna instructed Arjuna to perform his work (duty)
for the sake of educating the people in general.
DUTY AND ME
The term “motivation” refers to the driving force (internal and external),
which explains behavior.
Motivating employees towards high performance is the task of every manager.
Although the level of motivation varies among individuals,
the manager firstly must understand the employee’s need.
In many verses of the Bhagavad-Gita,
Sri Krishna motivates and energizes Arjuna to do his duty.
Sri Krishna focuses on the internal (intrinsic) motivation more than external (extrinsic).
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND ME