Finding 'the good' in making money

Updated on: Monday, January 04, 2010

THE concept of profit has to be understood in broad contours. Profit emanates from actions and all actions need to be grounded in righteousness. Therefore any profit that arises out of actions that are not right can never be real profit. This is the underlying message that Gurcharan Das tries to bring to the corporate world through his book 'The Difficulty of Being Good,' wherein he explores if it is possible to recover a meaningful idea of personal and corporate virtue from India's foundational text - the Mahabharata.

Explaining how the philosophy of the Mahabharata resonates with the modern day corporate world, Das says, "The Mahabharata extensively explores dharma. Dharma is a complex word that encompasses virtue, duty and law. Above all dharma is chiefly concerned with doing the right thing. The epic believes that human flaws are ultimately responsible for all destruction and calamity and that exercise of dharma or righteousness is the only way to salvage this destruction. The epic also expounds that only righteousness has the ability to restore balance and equilibrium in an otherwise chaotic world. In the corporate world, there is a perennial quest to achieve balance in terms of one's ambition levels. This is simply because over ambition can translate to greed. A person who demonstrates ambition for company goals and is not driven solely by a personal agenda is one who has achieved this balance which invariably at one level is rooted in righteousness."

Das says that management education, today, is falling short of teaching one to do the right thing. "Management students should be taught that there are moral consequences attending every management and business decision. Most importantly, they should be taught that every function within an organisation is directly or indirectly related to the larger organisational objective that at one level is inextricable with social good. This will instill a sense of just pride and responsibility among all corporate executives . In other words, management students have to be trained to understand that their actions for profit are good as long as they have a positive outcome on society."

Das points out that corporate social responsibility (CSR), a pivotal responsibility of corporate managers, is also not understood in the right context. "This is another responsibility that our management education has to undertake," he opines.

Elaborating further he says, "Today, CSR is undertaken to allay one's guilty conscience for having made profit. This is a wrong way of approaching it. Employees must first take pride in making a profit. Second, they must remember that the company's money belongs to shareholders. So, the only CSR activities that are justified are those that increase its profit. Only then will shareholders approve of those activities."

An aftermath of the financial meltdown is that people are speculating whether making money and social good can go together. "Yes, they can and, in fact, are inseparable," informs Das. He reiterates that management education has to impart this understanding as well. Explaining the connection he says, "Making money is not against social good. An organisation that makes money adds value to society and achieves enormous social good in multiple spheres. It is important to understand that sustained profits come only from sustained customer commitment . Hence, logically, all profit making organisations are those that satisfy people's needs through products and services on a sustained basis. These organisations also generate employment and pay taxes. So, we must never under-estimate the value of making money."

Timesofindia

Finding 'the good' in making money

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