Corporate Governance and Ethical Compliance—Deriving Values from Indian Mythology

Abstract

Corporation is the most important part of value chain of growth for any nation, being developed or developing. These corporation acts through the board of directors elected by management team and shareholders. With markets expanding beyond domestic boundaries, globalization has found new space, first in vision and then very swiftly in mission statements of corporates. By these expanding organizations, not only the balance sheets of these new global corporates have become rich but also brought citizens from every corner of world to contribute and become part either as employees or as valuable stakeholders. This wave of globalization led to the amalgamation of different cultures under ambit of leadership which itself varied in terms of cultures and richness of moral values. For such originations and multinational corporations, the whole world is one market, both for their input requirement and output sell. The phrase Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam from Maha Upanishad REF _Ref464676168 \r \h [1] rightly suits the new culture of such global organizations. While competing in global market, they do require inheriting, replicating and practicing age old principles of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, ensuring competition in healthy sense while maintaining ethics and integrity in entire range of decision making process. This paper attempts to review the age old mythological principle of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam to inherit leadership traits required in tough competitive market and incorporate an ethical dimension into the values, they stress upon. This paper will also attempt to review the various models like Utilitarian model, moral rights model and Justice model and draw a fine analogy between Indian mythological principle and corporate governance. The paper establishes the growing consensus that effective corporate governance, just like human behaviour, is and ought to be firmly anchored in assimilated values rather than cosmetic compliances which aims to reassure stakeholders about the company’s exposure to various risks, mostly in reference to decision making process. This was achieved by analysing and interpretation of various available research to help understand good corporate governance from Indian culture and traditions.