Modern Management Through Ancient Indian Wisdom: Towards a More Sustainable Paradigm
The paper attempts to establish the relevance of the teachings of Ancient Indian scriptures like Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Manu-smriti, Arthashastra, etc in the practice of Modern Management. In this paper, we will see that though Drucker's modern management paradigms like MBO are very ideal theoretically and can be derived from the ethical and spiritual frameworks of ancient Indian ethos however, in practice, companies are struggling to implement these frameworks effectively because they are still not aligned to the teachings of ancient Indian scriptures. Also, through the same body of knowledge derived from ancient Indian scriptures, we will try to understand the reasons behind individual decision-making failures ultimately leading to institutional failures and in the process would look forward towards integrating some elements into the existing frameworks to create a more sustainable management paradigm. In this regard, I have created a model which depicts a 6-fold path of “Jnan” or Knowledge through which we can not only better manage on an individual as well as institutional and global level, but also better able to contribute towards restoring World peace and uniform economic order through spiritual congruence.
Can Ethical Behaviour Really Exist in Business
Our soft survey reveals that the assumption underlying much of the business ethics literature -- that the conduct of business can and ought to support the social good -- is not accepted within the workplace. This paper considers an apparent dichotomy, with companies investing in ethical programs whose worth their employees and managers question. We examine the relationship between work, bureaucracy and "the market" and conclude that employees often question the existence of business ethics because there is no good and bad between which to choose. The choice is between success and failure. A common view of success and the "good life" is one determined by hard work in a well-organised company operating in a free market. Analysing the three aspects of this view (the free market, hard work, bureaucracy) we suggest these are mere fictions. A major problem we identify in business is that organisations are designed as profit making mechanisms and have no interest in the good of society. The challenge is to convince such organisations that a direct benefit accrues to them through their own ethical behaviour. In order to do this organisations must first be shown the importance of long termism. Executives, managers and other employees can be expected to attain high ethical standards only when they feel they are a integral part of an organisation and the organisation itself respects those standards. One of the keys to unravelling the undesirable situation of a perceived absence of ethics in business is in encouraging a greater identity community, company and workforce. We provide some examples of ways companies can meet the challenge of encouraging more ethical, long-sighted behaviour. In addition, we highlight ways in which the expectations of the organisations of the organisation can be communicated more strongly through corporate structures that foster ethical action that benefits the long term interests of the individual and the organisation. Overall implementing a successful ethical program is shown to parallel that of the implementation of a quality program.
Interactive Video and Remote Control via the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW) is the most accepted service in the internet providing a globally distributed hypermedia information system. Despite its tremendous growth the WWW lacks functionality beyond its basic request-response resp. download paradigm especially in the area of stream-oriented real-time media. Thus an important development direction for the WWW is the integration of such media into WWW pages. This paper considers methods to include moving images into WWW pages without changing existing standards or protocols. They are based on the multi-image capabilities of many image encoding standards. In combination with dialog elements the system provides interactive video in the World Wide Web. Video as visual feedback to user commands allows for a highly perceptible user interface compared to explicit confirmations. To demonstrate the concept's feasibility a prototype has been implemented and evaluated in an application scenario featuring remote control accompanied by remote visualization.