A Dharma called CSR

One of the employees with Fairtrade Foundation recalls his decision of opting out of Barclays and instead choosing to work with Fair Trade. On being selected to work for the Barclays, he asked and so what are we supposed to do. To this, the Recruitment Manager replied, well, you have to sell credit cards to prospects who you would never be able to pay back. Cool! Said everyone in the room. But the protaganist of our story differed!! Rejecting the tempting offer, he murmured I definitely did not pursue an MBA from a top School to do this. Well how many of us have that protaganist in us? And for those few amongst us who have it, fewer still have the guts to do it. Fairtrade, Ethical Business, Social Responsiveness, Corporate Governance and the icing on the cake Sustainability! Interesting buzz words.... or an endemic necessity. It is essentially for our own good we need to question the way things are done, the manner in which the Corporations run, the Corporate Governance or the absence of it, is too big a question to ignored. The question essentially boils down to our survival and the survival of generations to come. Briefly put, the issue is one of Sustainability. It is not just about present, profit and progress... it is about a sustainable progress making progressive headway into the future.
Let the question begin with us. How we as individuals can contribute towards this march to Sustainability. The answer begins with a simple thougthfulness, a realization. We take our society, our environs, our work, our lives and the luxuries as given. We want to acquire more and more and more. There is nothing wrong about this desire to seek more. After all Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha are the four tenets of human aspiration in Sanatan Dharma. Literarly translated, Dharma refers to peforming one's duty; Artha refers to accumulation of wealth, Kama to fulfill the physical human desires and Moksha is attainment of Salvation.

Sanatan Dharma or sometimes we refer to it as Hinduism does not mean religion. Sanatan means that what is eternal, never ending. Dharma is often misconstrued to be Religion, but Dharma is not religion and interestingly enough Dharma is religion! However, it is Religion in the connotation to follow religiously that is what is my duty, my responsibility in other words my karma. Karma is the work that one is spiritually ordained to do. Though literally translated Karma means work in English but Karma is not just work. When we work, we do it with a certain thought. For instance if one works on an article with a desire to attain high readership, then there is a desire attached to the work one is pursuing. This desire is to be known, to attain a stature within the legal community. However, if the same action is performed with a desire for the good of the society with no expectations in return it is Nishkaam Karma .. the Karma as referred to in the aforemetioned four tenets. This Karma is then the Dharma.
Since we are all ordained to fulfill our respective responsibilities, each one of us has our own respective Dharma. As a Cardiologist, someone is ordained to treat his patients well and get them back to health. As a Lawyer, another individual's Dharma is to handle his clients well. Likewise a given individual will have different Dharma's at different points in life depending on what role is she playing. As a child, her Dharma would be to look after her parents when they need her. As an employee, her Dharma is to work well for the company and steer it towards an Ethical path. As a customer, the Dharma then is to use products that are ethical, that are good for her and her as a family. As a shareholder, her Dharma is to invest in Companies that invest ethically, that contribute to growth of the economy. Dharma then is the constant companion in each one of our lives and we have to understand in the different facets we have, different roles that we play what is our Dharma? In this ecosytem we are stakeholders, with varying shades of roles to be played in different plays. Somewhere we play the most central role, someplace sidelines, sometimes faded to the background, sometimes more, sometimes less, but we all play a role and the idea is to play the role well. This then is the Dharma.

Artha referred to as the second objective of Human life in Sanatana Dharma refers to 'money or material prosperity'. But this is not material prosperity as is commonly understood, for material prosperity does not mean a march towards materialism. Ever wondered why the richest people are not the happiest or why the most prosperous nations are not the happiest nations. Why there is no significant co-relation between wealth and happiness. The reason is that the material prosperity that we seek to attain may make us rich, but does not really make us prosperous. We are all running in the rat race to be rich to prosper, by all means fair or foul. Mostly, if not always, we do not see how our investments make money, whether we are investing in ethical companies; what work are we doing to make money … are we being robots run on power to generate endless papers called currency... are we just promoting the system... or adding a soul to the system. Is the organization we work with contributing to the growth of the society. Are we as stakeholders to our environment giving back to our society or are we only endlessly taking from it. Little acts of kindness, like a conscious decision to invest in ethical shares, work for an ethical company, taking a little share of our fortune to contribute to the growth of the society and acting ambitiously but not greedily to amass a fortune is Artha. Islam has the beautiful concept of Zakat in this direction to make one's money, one's Artha. Zakat is one of the five basic responsibilities every Muslim is ordained to perform. Zakat simply put means, that every Muslim must give two percent of his earnings in charity to the less privileged. He is encouraged to contribute more, but the minimum two percent is mandatory.

Kama is the third pillar which means fulfilling one's physical desires. In Santan Dharma, one is encouraged to enter into the Marital Bliss, referred to as the Ghrihasthaahrama to fulfill ones physical desires. Marriage is much more then that. But this is one of the important functions of Marital Bliss. Osho's critically acclaimed writing 'From Sex to Superconsciousness' provides interesting insight on the topic. Thus, it is perfectly Divine to fulfill one's physical Desires and then tread on the path to Moksha. If one's desire are fulfilled in a spiritual manner with a social sanctity, then it is easier to control one's wrong desires.

And finally the attainment of the Moksha is that one ultimate goal that is the quinteessential essence of spirituality. If one performs one's Dharma, Artha and Kama well, then the path to Moksha or salvation becomes much easier. The essence of Spirituality is not about reading scripture one after another, watching one religious channel after another to increase its TRPs(atleast this has become the trend in India of late!) or a race to engage in discussions that about the differences in religions and societies; the essence is to be spiritual, to be a good human, to fulfill one's responsibilities well, to be thoughtful, critical thinkers that we humans are ordained to be and to be a constructive stakeholder in the Sustainable development of the society.
Corporate Governace and Corporate Social Responsibilty is in essence then the modern day equivalent of Spirituality.

In search of a business for business....

Is doing business the only business of the business? From Milton Friedman to The Future of Industrial Man(Peter Drucker, 1942), the concept of responsibility and conscious of nations has come a long way. Why do corporations have to be socially conscious. Is it a mere legal compliance or a philanthropic attitude of Companies is well taken by its stakeholders?  
David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard remark perhaps seems to answer this beautifully, “I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company's existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so that they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately- they make a contribution to society, a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental.”
And Hewlett-Packard is not a not for profit Organization. It makes profit like any other company. It is after all in the business of making money. But it is in the business of making something more then money and that is 'contribution to the society'. The important question is does this responsive behaviour has any value for the company.
Organizations do not work in vaccum. They work in a dynamic environment wherein the various elements of the environment inter-play and interact. A pro-active and responsive behaviour by corporations is not just a good PR exercise, it can also be a great value-creator. The concept then is to visualize Corporate Responsibility as social in essence and strategic in content. Examples galore of Companies that have successfully implemented this strategy and leveraged from it. Working on its mantra of triple bottom line: profits, people and presence, Cicso has successfully managed to meet the shortfall of talented IT professionals by collaborating with local schools and universities and providing industry-relevant education.

The concept of Triple Bottom Line refers to the three important elements and value creation for them: The People, The Planet and The Profits.

From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, it was largely believed the only people that a corporation was answerable to was its shareholders; but with the changing times, increased public awareness and business impact increasingly felt on the everyday functioning of society, the presence of Corporations was no longer confined to boardroom decisions or shareholder meetings, 'people' other then shareholders too seemed to become important. These people other then shareholders involved the employees, the suppliers, the local community, the consumers. The vast ambit of this people was collectively referred to as the stakeholders. Stakeholders are people who simply put effect and are in turn influenced by the presence and functioning of the Organization. Thus, the organization must be seen to benefit them or atleast not harm them through its presence.

The Second P... that is the Planet... refers to the Environmental Impact that the activities of an Organization has on the Environment. Thus, with this second P in the Triple Bottom Line, emerged the concept of Eco Labelling and Fair Trade Companies.

The Third P is the Profit.. with Milton's eternal mantra, that profit is the only business of the business, the importance of a profitability of a business can not be overemphasized.

Thus, today for an Organization to exist it must not only exist in harmony with its Balance Sheet, it has an even larger and more accountable role to play.... the profitabilty of an Organization must resonate in terms of contribution to its stakeholders and environment as well. Simply, we need organic organizations that are soulful in spirit and humane in approach.

All religions talk about being good. All of humanity is laid on the foundation of being good and fair. Yet, there is so much of unfairness and so little fairness in us all. What accounts for this element of unfairness reflected in the present day materialism.

Whether religion is Divine or religions evolved as checks and measures to balance the human conscious as humanity developed is a question of law, ethics, society, sociology and the philosophers to contemplate. What is of greater significance and what is more important is the realization that all the religions have some basic common tenents on which their foundation lay. For those who do not believe in religion, they still have some basic principles which may be referred to as principles of humanity. And for those existing at an even more meta-physical level it is spirituality. The essence is the basic fundamental tenents spoken by different sages at different times, with the cardinal message remaining quintessentially the same. As borders become meaningless, multinationals ride high on the wave of globalization, leveraging from geographical competencies embedded in clusters across the world, as the brain drains on the modern day equivalent of Pushpak Vimans the Boeings and the Airplanes, as the inquistive mind questions the dogmatic religion and seeks solace in spirituality, the enigmatic question that rises like a wave is there an emerging wave of new age spirituality. The truth is one, the sages say it by different names. The moving mind thinks and having thought contemplates. In the shadows of Corporate Governance, as I see the buds of Corporate Social Responsibilty blossom, my heart cherishes the emergence of a new wave of spirituality.