SPIRITUALITY AND SELF-DEVELOPMENT FOR
GLOBAL MANAGERS
Instructor: Ramnath Narayanswamy
Nature: Elective
Term: III
PGSEM
3 credits
Introduction
Our point of departure is the real world of global management as
it is currently organized and the compartmentalized, structured and
the closed thinking that characterizes much of business education
today most notably in the areas of business, ethics and economics.
This is easily demonstrated by the fact that managers rarely
describe their actions in moral terms even when they act for moral
reasons. It is simply taken for granted for example that business
and spirituality have little to do with each other. On the other hand,
recent studies have shown that while moral issues do occupy
managers as individuals, these tend to disappear in the context of
groups. For decades the notion of value neutrality tended to
overcome, if not obfuscate the dialectic.
In real time however, there is a strong link between managing
business or economics on the one hand and ethical, spiritual and
personal issues on the other. Why? This is because there are
religious or ethical values embodied in business or economic
models and because they are ignored by mainstream economics, it
is all the more important that their links are uncovered and their
implications for managers spelt out.
An excellent collection of readings published in 1995 (On
Moral Business : Classical and Contemporary Resources for Ethics
in Economic Life,) makes the useful point that despite the fact that
Max Weber`s celebrated work on the Prostestant ethic and the
development of modern capitalism had opened an alternative
integrative path to ethical and religious reflection, Weber`s work
had virtually no impact on how neoclassical economics analysed
the actual working of the capitalist system, how various disciplines
of management approached and understood business corporations
and how business ethics defined the moral challenges involved in
working in these and other corporations.
This course proposes to investigate some of the links that bind
the various disciplines of management to the ethical and spiritual
values embedded in them. By uncovering these relationships, we
hope to establish the central importance of the connection between
spirituality and self-development in the lives of global managers.
Objectives
There is an invisible order that governs the universe we live in
even if we are not always aware of its existence. Sensing that sense
of order is the beginning of spirituality. As we grow and evolve in
our later lives, we learn to appreciate its critical importance to our
existence as human beings. This course is intended to help
managers connect with that ‘unseen order’ or make the invisible,
visible to their roles as managers.
Heightening the manager`s sense of awareness vis-a-vis
himself, his firm and his environment through ethics and
spirituality and cementing that awareness with a self-development
agenda for action is the key objective of the course. The course is
anchored upon the assumption that an increasing multilateralised
global context calls for a set of core values that respects diversity,
tolerance, solidarity and a strong desire or commitment to embed
such values in individual and corporate life are essential
prerequisites to recreating the world in the new millenium.
Purpose
The purpose of the course is to help articulate to the learner, the
challenges of a global manager vis-a-vis self, organisation and
context (the environment) through a discussion on ethics,
sprituality and self-development. At the end of the course, the
learner can reasonably expect to be cognisant of the manner in
which business has evolved under different spiritual traditions and
the dominant set of ethics they embody and spelling the challenges
of developing a global mindset – within the context of ethics,
spirituality and self development - that can meaningfully engage its
implications today.
Themes
Some of the key themes that will be covered by the course
include issues and questions as what is the meaning of spirituality
in the modern world? Why should managers be sensitive to the
temporal dimension when in fact the deal with the material? It is
expected that the responses to these questions will help set the tone
to understanding the importance of ethics and spirituality under
different traditions, (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist
and Hindu), trace their evolution, track their insights and their
future prospects. Why is spirituality important? What is the nature
of self-development? Can a manager be in consonance with his
purpose of being? The course will also focus upon the manager`s
own role and responsibility at multiple levels in becoming a
powerful agent of change and transformation. It is of course a
different matter that managers rarely see themselves in quite those
terms, whence the need for a course that addresses these issues.
Methodology
This will consist of a combination of the conventional and
the unorthodox. It will therefore include interactive lectures, case
studies and exercises that challenge and stretch the reflective and
analytical abilities of the learner. The course will also incorporate a
process exercise that will help co-learners to identify their core
barriers before learning to disable them.
Evaluation
This will consist of two parts including (a) a set of practical
exercises designed to engage a manager’s ability to handle the
moral, ethical and spiritual dimensions of business issues and a
final exam. Group activity is encouraged though its grading is not.
The notion of an end-term exam can be replaced by a practical or
learning exercise on condition that the the terms of reference of the
latter are clearly spelt out and discussed with the course instructor.
Suggestions from the class are welcome.
The mid term evaluation will comprise a creative exercise that
will stretch the spiritual and analytical abilities of the learner. The
final exam will likewise take a form other than the conventional
but this will be in consultation with the class, the level they have
been able to collectively appropriate the course and their own
subjective inclinations. Being a new course, I am treating the
attempt – on the basis of past experience, I have learnt to view the
first three years of a new course as « product development » - as
one where openness of mind will be the key. It goes without saying
that this will not act as a substitute for either rigour or quality.
A list of sessions and a list of readings is appended.
LIST OF SESSIONS AND READINGS
Session 1
Why Religion, Spirituality and Ethics?
Reading : Loehr & Schwarz, The Making of a Corporate Athlete,
Harvard Business Review, January 2001
Session 2
Managers, Ethics and Business
Reading : Marc Gunther : God and Business
Fortune, No. 15, July 16, 2001
Session 3
Case Study : Ananda and the Buddha
Reading : Ramnath Narayanswamy, Ananda and the Buddha
Case No : 46, IIMB Center for Development of Cases and
Teaching Aids.
Session 4
Case Discussion : Insights
Session 5, 6, 7
Wisdom Traditions : Hinduism
Reading : Bansi Pandit, The Hindu Mind, New Age Books, New
Delhi, 2001, pp. 54-65.
Session 8 & 9
Contemporising the Gita
Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagawad Gita,
Penguin Books, 1996, pp. 1-43.
Session 10 & 11
The Upanashads and their Significance
Reading : Eknath Easwaran, The Upanashads,
Penguin Books, 1996, pp. 1-29.
Session 12
Reading: Swami Vivekananda, Vedanta in Practice from Vedanta:
The Voice of Freedom, Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta, 2000, pp. 221242.
Session 13
The Essential Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharishi
Reading: The Maharishi and his Message, Sri Ramanasramam,
Tiruvannamalai, 2000, pp. 41-77.
Session 14 & 15
Wisdom Traditions: Judaism
Reading: Huston Smith, The World’s Religions, Harper San
Francisco, 1991, pp. 271-315.
Session 15, 16, 17
Wisdom Traditions: Christianity
Reading: Thomas Kemps, The Imitation of Christ,
Penguin Books, 1952.
Session 18
Wisdom Traditions: Islam
Reading: The Koran, Penguin Books, 1999.
Session 19 & 20
Sufism
Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Sound and Music,
Shambala, Boston and London, 1996, pp. 198-203.
Session 21
Wisdom Traditions: Buddhism
Reading: Eknath Easwaran, The Dhammapada,
Penguin Books, 1996, pp. 1-72.
Session 22
The Message of the Buddha
Sri Dhammananda, What Buddhists Believe,
The Corporate Body of the Buddhist Educational Foundation,
Taiwan, 1993, pp. 62-120.
Session 23
Kriya Yoga
The Story of Yogananda Parahamsa
Reading : Autobiography of a Yogi, The Philosophical Library,
1946, New York
Session 24
Why is Hinduism Misunderstood?
Reading : Swami Kriyananda, The Hindu Way of Awakening,
Jaico Books, Mumbai, 2001, pp. 129-150.
Session 25
Commonalities across the Traditions
What are the Insights do they Inhere?
Lessons for the Global Manager
Session 26-28
The Nature of Self Development
From Self Consciousness to Consciousness of the Self
Reading : Swami Vishnu-Devananda, Meditation and Mantras,
Motilal Banarasidas, New Delhi, 2001.
Session 29
Building Core Values
Articulating Oneself to Oneself
Exercise on Personal Mapping
Session 30
Understanding Myths, Legends and Epics
The Significance of the Mahabharata
How/Why does/should a Manager internalise Roles?
Session 31
Becoming a Global Manager
The Inside/Outside Tension
The Space for Spirituality
Session 32
Untapping Latent Potential
Reading : Ramnath Narayanswamy, Creative Destruction and
Renewal
Session 33
Learning to Fly
Reading: Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers, Paulus Press, New
York, 1972.