In this article, we consider several issues being faced in the corporate world today, and how Vedic psychological analysis helps in understanding and remedying them.
1. CEOs considering the organizations as purely Cash Cows and not "treating" their employees as people but treating them as disposable resources.
The normal tendency of every individual is self-aggrandisement at the expense of others. That is the praanamaya kosha in action. However, there is greater joy and fulfillment in enabling others' success. This is the manomaya aananda i.e. communal self seeking satisfaction. The way to arouse it is to kindle organisational consciousness by showing a taste of its joy.
Feeling for others gets kindled through group activities where there is no scope for competition. Examples are team games, seva and community services involving the entire team's collaboration.
Once the joy of working with others is tasted, one no longer treats others as obstruction to one's own growth and expansion. One can no longer crush others to rise. Once aroused, the manomaya kosha dominates praanamaya kosha. An organisation should focus on kindling such a consciousness among its employees and leadership during induction and periodically. Manomaya kosha is what causes one to consider a family member's joy or sorrow as one's own.
2. Employees not having any sort of "loyalty" or "attachment" to the organization but treating it as a means to make only "livelihood" and not a "life".
The loyalty and attachment exists naturally for one's family members. The feeling of organisation as one's own family is organizational consciousness.
3. No respect to the harm being caused by the products and services to the environment around, only focus on making profits.
One becomes sensitive to what one experiences directly physically. If people are to become environmentally sensitive, they need to be exposed to Nature both in its pristine and abused forms.
They should experience joy and love for Nature as well as abhorrence for harm caused to Nature, first-hand. Their affinity to Nature needs to be kindled and the associated joy of nature-friendly living experienced. Psychologically, their vijnanamaya kosha needs to experience the joy of dharma.
Then it will naturally override their praanamaya urge of egoistic dominance, which is the root cause of exploitation of environment.
4. Increasing "inter-personal" issues in offices due to increased stress.
Stress arises when there is no joy in work. The worst scenario is when people are compelled to work for survival, and the work environment is poking at their ego constantly - either via criticism, lack of trust, no opportunity to showcase unique talent and excel etc.
The corporate strategy to improve productivity by setting high goals, making people compete, performance reviews pointing out why a person is not up to the mark etc - are all very toxic to individual wellbeing as they expose one's praanamaya kosha to constant duhkha/grief. When success is defined as outperforming coworkers, then one is forced to treat coworkers as enemies. This can only lead to interpersonal issues.
Joy is the best motivator for excellence. Each kosha seeks its own type of joy - money, power and dominance, love and belonging, intellectual satisfaction, and larger good or dharma - in increasing order of intensity.
The job of a supervisor is to detect what his team members seek in each of the above dimensions of joy and facilitate them by providing a conducive ambience.
5. Leaders resorting to unethical means which is wiping out organizations (ENRON, Satyam, etc).
Ethics are cherished universal values based on humanity's innate intuitive sense of oneness as the underlying truth of all existence. Though many cultures and religions may express it differently, there is a common joy that everyone experiences when observing ethical behaviour. Vedic wisdom identifies it as dharma and the aspect of our self that resonates with dharma is the vijnanamaya kosha.
Though all human beings have this kosha, its urge is drowned out by the clamor of lower koshas for satisfaction, especially the praanamaya kosha.
It is naive to expect someone to behave ethically unless he/she strongly experiences the joy and pride of being ethical enough to override the joy of self-assertion. When leaders behave unethically, their vijnanamaya kosha is not strong enough. The best way to arouse it is via exposure to inspiring examples, giving opportunity for seva, and showing the harm caused to others by unethical behavior. People should be made to feel abhorrence towards unethical behavior by exposing them to the ugliness it causes.
In summary, joy is the ultimate reliable motive for behavioral transformation. Once we recognize the sources of joy, we can open up avenues for its flow and remove its obstructions, so as to naturally change situations for the better.
