Transforming Businesses to Perform in the 21 Century

Abstract

Traditionally business has always been a support mechanism for societies to grow and evolve, but in the last 150 years (primarily 20th century) with corporatization of businesses the roles have got reversed with society transcending into becoming the support mechanism for businesses to grow and expand. This brought about a radical change in the socioeconomic mindset of society. From the perspective of economic evolution there have been 4 waves of development. The first was the 'agricultural wave', the second 'industrial wave' which is still existing in some parts of the world, the third 'information wave' and lastly 'the wave of 'spiritual consciousness' which is unfolding in this 21st century. Each wave is based on new knowledge and it ushers in a new worldview - a paradigm. When new knowledge emerges, we revise our understanding of reality. This does not imply that the old knowledge was wrong; it only means that the old knowledge was partial and now it needs to be looked afresh and accordingly modified or supplemented with the new knowledge. This is an evolutionary process and societies including organization accordingly take necessary steps to survive in the new environment. Transformation is the only solution to ensure that we do not lose out on all the advancements made in the past and our march forward. While businesses are battling to find solutions to align to the requirements of the 21st century viz. inclusion of consciousness in all dimensions of human life including business; this paper proposes a transformation model for businesses to align themselves to the new emerging reality of the 21st century. The model integrates the modern management practices with the
Indian ethos and focus on developing 'organizational consciousness' without disrupting the existing operations. The authors believe that 'business has to be done the business way, but the righteous way'.