Bhagavad Gita

Although the Bhagavad Gita was first recited in 3137 BCE, I find its messages to be still very relevant for managing the twenty-first century organizations. Going over many of the Bhagavad Gita’s shlokas, I select some of them for the currency of their application. In this paper, I give these in Sanskrit in Devanagari script, their recitations in English in Latin script, and their translations into English for interpreting them so as to learn how they could be employed for their applications in the management of the contemporary organizations.

Human being is searching for wholeness or fulfillment or unconditional freedom in life. He is usually searching for it in wealth, power, fame etc., but obviously does not find it because freedom happens to be one’s own nature and Self-knowledge is the only means to attain/discover it. Life should become a process leading to this destination. Vedanta which consists of scriptures such as the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita teaches both the end as well as the means.

Professor Mahadevan’s research interests include researching the possibility of using ancient Indian wisdom to address contemporary concerns, spirituality in the work place, and management paradigms from Bhagavad Gita. In the traditional areas of management, the research interests include design of service systems in customer co-creation of value and order allocation issues in electronic markets. This talk will provide an overview of Indian Knowledge systems. The  talk will discuss the epistemology and ontology of IKS and bring out the contemporary applications of IKS.