Drawing upon the timeless wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, a philosophical-spiritual world classic, this professional book highlights the spiritual and moral dimensions of management using an inside-out leadership development approach. It interprets the Bhagavad Gita's teachings on the personality types and psychological makeup of managers and employees; self-knowledge and self-mastery; and the leadership concepts of vision, motivation, and empowerment. This book covers topics such as training of the mind, ethical leadership, communication, stress management, and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Collectively, the enclosed contributions provide managers with an enhanced outlook on management functions such as leading, planning, organizing, and controlling in today's organizations, particularly those run by knowledge workers. Management research in the 20th century has mainly focused on the industrial paradigm characterized by a hierarchical structure of authority and responsibility with an individualistic focus on the personality of the manager. However, this traditional paradigm cannot solve many of the problems that confront leaders and mangers today. Recent studies have shown that values traditionally associated with spirituality-such as integrity, honesty, trust, kindness, caring, fairness, and humility-have a demonstrable effect on managerial effectiveness and success. Although traditionally interpreted as a religious-spiritual text, the Bhagavad Gita teaches these values which can be extrapolated and applied to practical management lessons in today's corporate boardrooms. Applying the text of the Bhagavad Gita to the context of management, this book views the manager as an "enlightened sage" who operates from higher stance, guided by self-knowledge and self-mastery. It demonstrates how character is the key ingredient for effective management and leadership. This book is therefore applicable to all managers, from first-line to CEOs, in their management and leadership roles in organizations.

With the emergence of a powerful new breed of organization--the knowledge organization--comes a bold new challenge to the old ways of managing people. Workers with special cutting-edge knowledge and the ability to transform it into marketable goods and services can not be managed the old command-and-control way, nor even by some of the more enlightened ways developed since then. Only new ways, and old ways updated and adapted to special new situations, can work. Only in this way can innovation and productivity--the crucial ingredients for success in knowledge-based organizations--be harnessed. Indeed, it is the capacity to innovate, not the infusion of huge amounts of capital, that is the true predictor of success in these new companies. Just as the baby boomers working in traditional settings differ from those who went before, so do the later generations of X-ers and Y-ers differ from them. Their sociology and psychology are totally different, and Amar shows specifically how and why. The result is an in-depth presentation of whom these knowledge workers are and how to select, adapt, and develop new concepts, principles, strategies, and techniques to achieve the unique successes they are capable of delivering.

Amar highlights the difference between these new, knowledge-based organizations and their traditional counterparts. He makes clear with examples, anecdotes, and other illustrative material that the driving force behind them is their ability to innovate. These organizations attract special types of people, and, as Amar points out, they have their own ways of seeing the world and doing things in it. They tend to decry and defy tradition. Amar explores the sociology and psychology of these startling new workers, and provides management with a full bag of tools to interact with them, including ways to redesign work itself as well as the entire organization, plus new ways to approach the commonplace functions of decision-making, leading, motivating, and controlling. He also provides special insights into the modification of behavior, and a means to assess when it can be useful and productive.