Integral Management

India’s Contribution to Management (By Pravir Malik; Published by Sri Aurobindo Society; Price: Rs.100.00, pp.162) Dr Sachidanada Mohanty SABDA Newsletter

This is an important contribution to understandingthe hard discipline of man-agement in the light of SriAurobindonean spirituality. The author of this book PravirMalik, himself a distin-guished management consultant, now offers new ap-proaches to study the ethics of business practices.Supported by the statement of some of the leaders inthe field such as Ratan Tata and Dharani Sinha, thevolume carries a valuable foreword by Dr. Karan Singh. Divided into three sections: “the possibility”, “the imperative” and “the future”, the book attempts to mapout imaginative ways spiritual insights regarding thehuman personality can be used in order to optimisecorporate returns and goals.

The first part provides the necessary background. It brings in approaches such as the Asian resurgence, therole of the corporation, the role of India and finally, east-west synthesis.Similarly, the next section deals with issues such as the new management framework, micro trends inmanagement, the digital economy and leadership development for the digital economy.Section three attempts a futuristic study of management, focussing attention on the following:business for the new millennium, making quantum based prediction, towards quantum based reality, rede-fining profit and the new management paradigm. The significance of this book lies in the fact thatmuch of its contents are based on the experiments the author carried out on scientific lines in the corporate field. Malik’s results are notably inconsonance with some of the new developments in the field, exemplified in the writings of management Gurus including its popular variants such as Deepak Chopra in America.

Malik contends that “ten core groups and a total oftwenty core skills form the basis for all effectivebehaviour.” He suggests that “a broad based effectiveand repeatable leadership model which adequatelyequips individuals and organizations with the meansto develop the higher caliber of leadership is required.” Similarly, he argues convincingly that although business exists to make money, making money is theresult of business and not its goal or purpose. In other words, he says, “a company which has helped to develop the possibilities in man will have a higherchance of success.” This is indeed the meaning, onemight say, behind the present day emphasis on cus-tomer satisfaction and employees’ empowerment.

Malik then goes on to underline a series of crippling limitations that business often imposes upon itself. Success for the company, he argues, depends onthe extent to which it can “explicitly address theselimitations in a systematic manner”. I believe it is chapter four, “redefining profit” thatdeserves a closer look by all of us, and especially managers. Simply defined, profit is the differencebetween “the revenue a corporation generates and itscosts.” It is in this chapter that the author shows that in today’s mad scramble for profit, companieseverywhere take recourse to superficial means that rely on quantitative approaches such as the number of man-hours spent on a given project rather than the quality of the work rendered.

As he rightly concludes,“the pressure to perform, to out-do, to conquer and to devour...must inevitably result in dissatisfaction” and negativities such as anger, resentment, envy and politicking.The answer clearly is for the manager to place his/her loyalty to the inner principle that can have an integrating effect upon all our management practices. Thereby business will serve a higher goal than just the plunder of valuable earthly resourcesfor personal and corporate greed. It will not generate mutually conflicting decisions but optimise harmony with productivity so that in a win-win situation,“combined strengths, perceptions and forces of being can join to create a more organic and embodying solution.”

I believe, Malik’s account could have acquired alarger dimension if he had brought in some of the achievements of the western managerial practices. Although the dichotomies between the east and the west may be a useful conceptual tool, it could also be fruitful to see the way the so-called adversarial positions could complement each other. For instance, even in the capitalistic west, secularphilanthropy in the form of foundations such as theFord, the Rockefeller or Carnegie Mellon are commitments to larger communitarian goals. Practicesunfortunately and abysmally absent in the Indian business world, barring of course a few units such as the isolated Tata Trust. To what extent does such acommitment bring in Malik’s own prescription fortaking business management beyond the pale of private profiteering? I believe, this is one area where Indian business can learn from the western model.

Secondly, Malik seems to assume in his book an audience already familiar with the Sri Aurobindonean framework and vocabulary. It seems to me that for carrying his thesis to a larger constituency, he could fine-tune and suitably integrate the Sri Aurobindonean vision into a cross-disciplinary framework beyond the field of management alone. That way his project will have a greater intellectual rigour and academic appeal. On the whole however, India’s Contribution to Management is a highly readable and timely publication. Itis a valuable addition to the emerging discipline of new approaches to management studies. The Sri Aurobindo Society deserves thanks for undertaking this publication. The book should reach the hands of all managers, corporate or otherwise.