The Management and Ethics Omnibus
The Management and Ethics Omnibus
S.K. ChakrabortyOxford University Press$21.99ISBN 0-19565623-7
Corporate responsibility is a "big issue" in the contemporary business climate. Global companies are now very powerful, having significant influence on world events. They are accused of economic imperialism and are subject to constant and intense scrutiny to assess their "ethical stance". They must be seen to act with responsibility to their environment, to their employees and to other stakeholders as well as to their shareholders.
This work is appropriately entitled an "omnibus" since it comprises three separate books, by the same author on the same subject. This is a mammoth production, both physically and metaphysically – it is a major achievment by the man who founded the Centre for Human Values at the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta. The three books together constitute over 900 pages of close print, and the treatment of the subject is complete, comprehensive, and encyclopaedic. It is thus a work for serious scholars – not "an easy read". The author was an acknowledged authority in management by objectives(MBO) and wrote a treatise on MBO in 1976. Subsequently, however,disillusionment seems to have set in, and he came to believe "that in the ultimate analysis, organisational values always derive from individual values,and that importing the latest technology does not mandate the import of methods for handling the human side of the organisation".
He thus started a search into the orthodox system of normative values enshrined in the wisdom of Indian classical scriptures – this resulted in the first book in this series, Management by Values (1991). Three years later, when the author discovered that his quest to determine an intrinsically Indian ethos had led him straight and sure into the Vedantic school of philosophy, he collated all his views on the subject, and came out with the second book, Ethics in Management (1994). A further three years later, he published the third book, Values and Ethics for Organisations (1997).
The collection of these books into this omnibus is welcome. Though the content is rooted in Indian philosophy, the values espoused are international and global – this work deserves to be widely read, and to form the basis of real discussion and debate.
