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Posts Tagged ‘Corporate Dharma’

Of Death and the Allure of Getting a Brand-New Vehicle!

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , , , on September 14, 2026| Leave a Comment »

In his epic poem Savitri, Sri Aurobindo, the renowned Indian seer, presents the end of a person’s life as a transformative event, a passage, or a door through which one passes towards a greater life. Essentially, the poem recounts the saga of human victory over ignorance and death.

Thus, on the racing tracks of life, death is but a pit stop. One gives up one’s creaking old jalopy. In exchange, one gets a shimmering new vehicle. One then zooms off to a newer horizon, the engine firing on all six cylinders. With each pit stop, one evolves further.

The principle of reincarnation mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita indirectly captures the way death, a certainty in life—just like the taxes which one must grudgingly bear—can be faced with a smile on one’s lips.

Eventually, it also leads us to the theory of Karma.  

(The text is an edited excerpt from my latest book ‘Bhagavad Gita and Corporate Dharma’.)

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A comment on the Corporate Dharma book: Mr R Gopalakrishnan

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , , , on September 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »

That the Bhagavad Gita is a universal lesson for all about life is no secret. However, people involved with enterprise too often do not associate with philosophy as being relevant to business. The reality is exactly the opposite. Enterprise without philosophy is crass. Philosophy without enterprise is intellectual. How do you combine a practical philosophy with enterprise?

Ashok Bhatia tells you how—in a relevant and practical manner.

R. Gopalakrishnan

Former Director, Tata Sons | Ex-Unilever VC | Corporate Advisor | Leadership Coach | Best-selling Author & Speaker

(His insightful thoughts can be found on LinkedIn and also on his website: https://themindworks.me)

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Praise for the book on the Bhagavad Gita and Corporate Dharma
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Of Reincarnation, Mushrooming, and Job Hopping  

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , on September 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Bhagavad Gita’s concept of reincarnation finds a corporate parallel in two common phenomena. One is the mushrooming of business entities where the same owners repeatedly create new companies, often to evade taxes and hide behind a ‘corporate veil’. This game of hide-and-seek between businesses and tax authorities thrives especially in emerging or stagnant economies with incomplete digitisation of records. While governments generally distrust businesses on compliance, some economies see a close, often problematic, relationship between the two, known as crony capitalism. Business owners often view taxes and legal restrictions sceptically, leading to complicated paperwork and higher job security for the accounting and clerical staff.

The second phenomenon is job hopping, which contrasts sharply with past values where long tenure at one company— over five years—was respected. Today, those who stay put too long may be seen as stagnant or unambitious, as frequent moves between jobs have become more common and accepted in the evolving corporate landscape.

वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय
नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि ।
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णा
न्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही ॥ 2.22॥

As a person sheds worn-out garments and wears new ones, likewise, at the time of death, the soul casts off its worn-out body and enters a new one.

Lord Krishna goes on to explain to Arjuna that just as an individual changes her worn-out clothes, so too the soul changes its physical sheath, eventually acquiring a new one by the process of rebirth.

(The text is an edited excerpt from my latest book ‘Bhagavad Gita and Corporate Dharma’.)

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Is Following Values a Corporate Luxury?

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , , , on August 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »

There is a widespread perception that the larger the business, the broader and deeper its adherence to values and ethics. In other words, enterprises which happen to be either in the small scale or in the tiny sector could ill afford a luxury of this kind!

Many CEOs believe values and ethics can wait until a business is financially strong. In other words, the weaker ones, which are in a struggling phase, can’t afford the luxury. This approach risks embedding bad habits deeply into the company’s culture, making change difficult. Like a tiger’s stripes, these habits are hard to shake off.

True values stem from the inner conviction of leaders, not from a company’s size or profits—and often, strong values lead to better success.

Let us relook at the case of Infosys. Since its inception, the founders are known to have resisted the temptation of paying ‘speed money’ to get things moving faster on the bureaucratic front. Its annual revenue reached US$100 million in 1999, US$1 billion in 2004, US$10 billion in 2017 and US$ 19.3 billion in 2024. The company was formed in 1981, but even as late as 2011, T.V. Mohandas Pai had alleged that his company was asked to pay bribes by government officials to clear projects, which it refused to do.

(The text is an edited excerpt from my latest book ‘Bhagavad Gita and Corporate Dharma’.)

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Values: The Real ‘Soul’ of Organisations

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , , , on August 24, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Vision and mission statements of corporates adorn their walls and can be readily copied. However, the value system of an organisation is not something which can be copied very easily. It permeates the entire organisation—its hierarchy and its various divisions or departments. It rubs off on most of its employees. Even service providers and supporting manufacturers get tuned to the same frequency. It would perhaps not be wrong to say that values are to an organisation what the soul is to a physical body. Businesses which thrive over a long period of time and achieve sustainable commercial success would invariably be found to have sound values at the core of their operations.

Manifestation of Values

Small things reflect the values being followed—whether nephews and nieces of the top person are getting freely hired to do jobs they are not competent at, whether spaces in the car parking lot are allotted hierarchy-wise or are based on a first-come first-served basis, whether the corner office has high sound proof walls all around or is open to all to signify transparency, whether the boss is entitled to charge the company for her spouse accompanying her on a business trip, whether office stationery items get whisked off to executives’ households for use by their kids, or whether the use of cell phones or social media platforms is viewed with a sense of benign resignation by a hapless human resources honcho.  

It is the leader who sets the tone. Those down the ladder fall in line.

Values Defy Death

Products and organisations have life cycles of their own, just like the human body is prone to many changes—birth, existence, growth, decay, disease, and death. But values outlive these perils of life; somewhat akin to the Self, our inner core, which the Gita holds to be eternal and deathless.

अविनाशि तु तद्विद्धि येन सर्वमिदं ततम् ।
विनाशमव्ययस्यास्य न कश्चित्कर्तुमर्हति ॥ 2.17॥

That which pervades the entire body, know it to be indestructible. No one can cause the destruction of the imperishable soul.

(The text is an edited excerpt from my latest book ‘Bhagavad Gita and Corporate Dharma’.)

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Of Things with a Longer Shelf Life: Values, Character, Faith

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , , , , on August 19, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Which are the things that have a longer shelf life, one may well ask. One’s value system. One’s character. What one places one’s faith in. One’s attitude towards life in general. One’s capacity to be able to handle the rough and tumble of a management career. One’s ability to make decisions based not only on big data analytics but also on intuition.

These are the kinds of things that build the resilience of individual managers and organisations to face macroeconomic shocks and market uncertainties with aplomb. Over time, the harsh slings and arrows of a career find it difficult to chip away at one’s innate qualities. Once this core is managed well, external things fall in place most of the time. One’s responses to people and circumstances become more refined, thereby improving one’s managerial effectiveness. One’s personal brand equity acquires a better sheen.

The Bhagavad Gita highlights the importance of faith in our lives and the latent way it provides a compass that determines the direction of our efforts.

सत्त्वानुरूपा सर्वस्य श्रद्धा भवति भारत ।
श्रद्धामयोऽयं पुरुषो यो यच्छ्रद्ध: स एव स: ॥ 17.3॥

The faith of all humans conforms to the nature of their mind. All people possess faith, and whatever the nature of their faith, that is verily what they are.

This explains why many businesses end up merely being ‘businesses’, whereas some make the cut as ‘industrialists’, trying to give back to society in whichever way they can.

(I believe that businesses whose collective faith is sattvic in nature end up being industrialists!)   

The Tata Group: Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds

Consider the case of the house of Tatas. The group can rightfully boast of a value system which goes back more than 158 years.

(Detailed examples follow in the book.)

(The text is an edited excerpt from my latest book ‘Bhagavad Gita and Corporate Dharma’.)

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The Short Half-life of All Things Material: A lesson from the Bhagavad Gita

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , , , , on August 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »

If Marie Curie had decided to become a human-resource professional at some point of time in her illustrious career, she would surely have had something to say about the half-life of so many things: interpersonal relationships, joys and sorrows, promotions, increments, awards and other recognitions which come one’s way all the time. Even insults, abuses, and rebukes hurled at managers by their bosses, whether in private or in public, would have been held to be things which have a rather short half-life.

This is what the Gita has to say on the nature of material things:

मात्रास्पर्शास्तु कौन्तेय शीतोष्णसुखदु:खदा: ।
आगमापायिनोऽनित्यास्तांस्तितिक्षस्व भारत ॥ 2.14॥

O son of Kunti, contacts (of the senses) with (their)  objects, giving rise to (the experience of) cold and heat, pleasure, and pain, are transient and they come and go. Bear them, O Bharata (without being disturbed).

If everything in the material world is of a transient nature, one might as well ask as to what is eternal, or at the least, longer-lasting, when compared to the kind of small stuff we touched upon here.

In the book, we go on to discuss the importance of values followed by organisations and the very purpose of business. If one looks at business entities that have been alive and kicking for a very long time, and have a shimmering brand equity to boot, one realises that these are indeed the considerations which are not of a transient nature.

(The text is an edited excerpt from my latest book ‘Bhagavad Gita and Corporate Dharma’. Visual courtesy the World Wide Web.)

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Bhagavad Gita and Corporate Dilemmas

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , , , on August 3, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The dilemma facing Arjuna on a battlefield some 5,500 years back was whether to go ahead with a war against his own cousins and senior family members. The corporate world is no different. Here are two of the multiple cases which arose due to in-family disputes and misunderstandings.

Of Puma and Adidas

When brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler founded a shoe company in their mother’s laundry room in the town of Herzogenaurach, Germany in 1924, little did they imagine that their relations would turn sour during World War II. A split followed in 1948, leading to the emergence of two brands—Puma and Adidas. The two still have rival factories on opposite sides of a river. Rudolf passed away in 1974 at the age of 76, Adolf in 1977 at 78. Never did they reconcile. Both are reportedly buried at opposite ends of the same cemetery. Both established great brands in their lifetime. But were they inwardly happy and at peace with themselves when they left this world? One can only speculate.

The Human Pain behind Raymond

Back in India, retired tycoon Vijaypat Singhania, entangled in a property dispute with his son Gautam Singhania, concluded thus:

‘Love your children and care for them, but don’t love them so much that you are blinded.’

At the core of the dispute between the father and son were their rights over JK House, a family-owned 36-storey redeveloped property in the posh Malabar Hill area of south Mumbai. The father was compelled by the son to move to a rented accommodation, causing him discomfort and mental anguish. (He passed away in March 2026, aged 88 years).

If one considers the mental state of the businessmen who acted in the manner they did in a given situation, one’s mind invariably goes back to the kind of despondency and fatalism experienced by Arjuna, upon surveying the armies facing one another—friends and families at each other’s throats.  

(The text is an excerpt from my latest book ‘Bhagavad Gita and Corporate Dharma’. Visuals courtesy the World Wide Web.)

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Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga for CEOs: Raj Yoga

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 20, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Raj Yoga is not a term that the scripture uses explicitly. But throughout the narrative, one finds this to be the underlying current of thought. It elaborates upon the way business leaders and CEOs need to conduct themselves. It nudges them towards the overall goal of doing the right things the right way, keeping the overall good in mind. It highlights the need for a person to strive for spiritual progress and indulge in such practices as meditation and the study of scriptures to realise the ultimate reality of the self within each one of us. It helps one attain a state of perfect harmony where all distinctions and contradictions disappear.

In Chapter 9, Gita cautions us to abhor blind faith, thereby telling us to avoid sycophancy at all costs. Moreover, in real life, we see that religion, particularly the ritualistic version of it, often tends to divide humanity and leads to conflicts. Spirituality, on the other hand, has the potential to unite us.

CEOs who take this path and evolve to ‘a state of self-actualisation’, to borrow a term from Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, would tend to take a holistic view of the operations and people under their control, thereby working for the good of all stakeholders. We may call them ‘leaders steeped in a higher state of consciousness,’ worried as much about the results of the next quarter as about the ESG impact of their businesses.

Gita presents the concept of Raj Yoga as an approach to self-perfection and extolls it as a royal secret!

राजविद्या राजगुह्यं पवित्रमिदमुत्तमम् ।
प्रत्यक्षावगमं धर्म्यं सुसुखं कर्तुमव्ययम् ॥ 9.2॥

This is the king of knowledge, the king of secrets, supremely holy, the best, directly experienced, righteous, easy to practise and imperishable.

(An excerpt from my latest book, ‘Bhagavad Gita’s Guide to Corporate Dharma’)

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The Concept of a Soul: The Bhagavad Gita, Stephen R.  Covey and Peter Drucker    

Posted in Management Lessons, tagged , , , , on July 13, 2026| 2 Comments »

One of the basic concepts enunciated by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is that of the everlasting nature of the soul.

The concept of a soul now finds a resonance even in modern management literature. In his book The 8th Habit, Stephen R. Covey urges professionals to pay heed to their ‘inner voice’. While proposing the whole person paradigm, he speaks of the four dimensions of a person—spirit, body, heart and mind.

Peter Drucker, the renowned management expert, says that:

The individual needs the return to spiritual values, for he can survive in the present human situation only by reaffirming that man is not just a biological and psychological being but also a spiritual being, that is creature, and existing for the purposes of his Creator and subject to Him.

This stream of knowledge is said to be close to 5,500 years old. However, time has not robbed it of its relevance as it gives us clear tips on controlling our minds and thoughts, reining in our senses, transcending our queen-size egos, striving to achieve perfection in whatever we do, practising equanimity, and cultivating a habit of introspection and meditation. Ultimately, it is about living a happier and healthier life.

PS: In the Bhagavad Gita, the concept of a soul leads us to the idea of reincarnation, which, in turn, prompts us to the Karma Theory.

(Most of this note is an excerpt from my latest book, ‘Bhagavad Gita’s Guide to Corporate Dharma’)

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