S. S. Sharma

Taking a managerial perspective, this article presents some models of history with a view to draw lessons for leadership and management of organizations and institutions. The suggested models include: evolution of human thought in terms of religions, science and spirituality and their convergence; transitions in society from kingdom–state to nation–state to corporates as state and beyond; creativity view of history; dignity struggle and liberation view of history; ‘fall of the fittest’ view of history; and the swastika analysis of history. The article explores the implications of these models for providing enlightened leadership to organizations and society by creating synergy between influences from the West and the East.

This paper expounds the model of a 'sacro-civic' society, drawing upon psycho-spiritual insights of the Gita. Four major management themes of common interest in the East and the West have been selected. Then the relevant verses of the Gita have been used to elaborate on their respective deeper imports. These four broad themes have later again been decomposed into 20 specific subthemes, and verses connected with each of them are presented. The author offers simple rhymed English translations of these verses using some of the well-known renderings by earlier masters of the Gita. The reader is invited to reflect upon and assimilate the spirit of these verses for application in the field of daily management practice and in the wider arena of social reconstruction.

This paper presents the idea of 'Corporate Veda' as a basis for application of Indian ethos in corporate context. Societies have undergone transitions from kingdom states to nation-states and now we are witnessing the emergence of corporates as states. Indian ethos provides us a strong foundational basis for the development of management ideas for 'new age corporates'. This paper outlines the concept of 'VEDA' leadership in terms of Vision, Enlightenment, Devotion and Action and argues for the develop ment of a corporate Veda rooted in this definition. The paper also provides the 'Swastik model' as a framework to analyze change. The model is useful in the further development of the idea of corporate Veda. A comparative analysis of American, Japanese and Indian theories and approaches to manage ment is presented as a basis for their integrative synthesis in the form of corporate Veda.

This paper presents the concept of character competence as a basis for creating ethical organizations. In view of the gaps between the 'statement' of values and the 'state' of values that have been witnessed recently in many corporates, the need to improve character competence of the corporates has become critical to the success of organizations. While corporates pay a lot of attention to core competence, they hardly pay much to character competence. Drawing upon various paradigms of ethics, this paper suggests a holistic framework of business ethics rooted in ethical imperatives for individuals, organizations and markets. The framework developed in the paper forms the foundational basis for the concept of character competence. The author suggests the need for developing a character competence index and rating corporates on such an index. Further, it is suggested that ethical sensitivity can be inculcated through development of ethics-based management models with roots in character competence.

This paper explores the level of corporate social responsibility contributions disclosed by central public sector enterprises in India. This paper analyses the nature and quality of CSR disclosures made by CPSEs listed in India following the issue of CSR guidelines by the Department of Public Enterprises for CPSEs in March 2010. The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of CSR guidelines on the reporting practices of the CPSEs. A content analysis of annual reports across seven themes shows that Human Resources and Community Development are the prime focus areas of CSR disclosures, whereas Carbon and Greenhouse Gas emissions are the least reported activity. The disclosures across all CSR themes are primarily narrative rather than quantitative or in monetary terms. The findings of the study may help policy makers in India to assess practices and devise detailed and specific CSRD requirements, rather than the current general mandatory requirements, to enhance the performance and quality of CSRDs by the CPSEs.

With the onset of heretofore unprecedented instances of labor unrest in the summer of 2010, it has become readily apparent that China’s economy has reached a critical juncture. Perceptions of rising social inequity and redistributive injustice are indicative of strains of economic growth that have proved as inevitable as they are consequential. Against the backdrop of an impending leadership transition and a global economy emerging from recessionary throes, changing labor market conditions will shape economic development and growth in substan­tive ways as first-tier cities and provinces are beginning a transition from take-off to early maturity stage of development. In its effort to mitigate regional disparities, China is locked into a precarious socio-economic balancing act with far-reaching consequences for domestic stability and international competitiveness. What are the short- to medium-term implica­tions for China’s domestic political economy space? What is the likely effect on China’s global labor cost arbitrage and international competitiveness?

Romantic criticism has traditionally read Wordsworth as a poet who affirms the "autonomy of consciousness." Contrary to these readings this dissertation argues that Wordsworth's climactic moments emphasize a state in which the subject is annihilated into a "blank desertion"; so complete is the extinguishing of consciousness in these moments that Wordsworth's discourse integrates them into the poetic narrative only through a process of negative referentiality: "unknown modes of being," "fallings from us, vanishings," "usurpation." ;This dissertation argues that Wordsworth criticism has failed to attend to these moments because its methodology is fundamentally constituted by the epistemological assumptions that shape the subject-centered discourse of modernity. The first chapter clarifies the coordinates of subjectivity as they emerge in the discourse of modernity through thinkers such as Descartes and Kant. The following three chapters focus on moments in Wordsworth in which each of the essential constituents of subjectivity---the senses, the mind, the "objective" world, and the field of representation and language---becomes an agent of the undoing of the self in "Tintern Abbey," "Resolution and Independence," and the boat-stealing, crossing of the Alps, and Mt. Snowdon episodes in The Prelude. In the course of these analyses the argument engages with Derrida's notion of differance and Heidegger's critique of humanism to indicate the resonance and dissonance of the death of the subject in Wordsworth with these two major critiques of the notion of the subject. ;Kant's "Analytic of the Sublime" has been the most influential text for reading moments such as those analyzed in the preceding chapters. The last chapter looks closely at the Kantian sublime to show the manner in which Kant saves the subject from annihilation through the device or reason, and thus turns a potentially radical erasure of the subject in the sublime into a version of recuperative subjectivity. The dissertation concludes by proposing a thinking that is open to the eruption of the nonhuman in the matrix of language, revealing from its hiddenness an Other humanness, one that speaks from the nowhere of "blank desertion.".

This paper attempts to give an insight into emerging ethical issues due to the increased usage of the Internet in our lives. We discuss three main theoretical approaches relating to the ethics involved in the information technology era: first, the use of IT as a tool; second, the use of social constructivist methods; and third, the approach of phenomenologists. Certain aspects of ethics and IT have been discussed based on a phenomenological approach and moral development. Further, ethical issues related to social networking sites are discussed. A plausible way to make the virtual world ethically responsive is collective responsibility which proposes that society has the power to influence but not control behavior in the virtual world

REIMER‐KIRKHAM S, SHARMA S, PESUT B, SAWATZKY R, MEYERHOFF H and COCHRANE M. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 202–212 Sacred spaces in public places: religious and spiritual plurality in health careSeveral intriguing developments mark the role and expression of religion and spirituality in society in recent years. In what were deemed secular societies, flows of increased sacralization (variously referred to as ‘new’, ‘alternative’, ‘emergent’ and ‘progressive’ spiritualities) and resurgent globalizing religions (sometimes with fundamentalist expressions) are resulting in unprecedented plurality. These shifts are occurring in conjunction with increasing ethnic diversity associated with global migration, as well as other axes of difference within contemporary society. Democratic secular nations such as Canada are challenged to achieve social cohesion in the face of growing religious, spiritual and ethnic diversity. These challenges are evident in the high‐paced, demanding arena of Health care. Here, religious and spiritual plurality enter in, sometimes resulting in conflict between medical services and patients’ beliefs, other times provoking uncertainties on the part of healthcare professionals about what to do with their own religiously or spiritually grounded values and beliefs. In this paper, we present selected findings from a 3‐year study that examined the negotiation of religious and spiritual pluralism in Health care. Our focus is on the themes of ‘sacred’ and ‘place’, exploring how the sacred – that which is attributed as special and set apart as it pertains to the divine, transcendence, God or higher power – takes form in social and material spaces in hospitals.