Doctoral Research Scholar, JECRC University, Jaipur
Online published on 21 April, 2016.
Since the last three decades an increasing number of HR initiatives have become value based and value driven in India as well as large parts of the Non-Muslim world. Consequently ethics has entered the curriculum of human resources management in a big way. Detailed literature survey shows that there has indeed been a lot of work done on ethics in India especially during the last three decades. However what emerged decisively by 2000 was the fact that there are two distinct schools of thought in the field of business ethics. One is headed by S K Chakraborty from Kolkata and is called the soul-based approach. He depends on the fact that the heart, soul and mind must work in unison and also uses the rich Vedantic philosophy to buttress his arguments. He uses values and ethics almost synonymously. The other is headed by Sorab Sadri from Pune and is called the mind-based approach. He discounts the soul from his calculus not because he is an agnostic but because it is empirically un-verifiable. For him human beings are the beginning and the end of all analysis they are both the subject and the object of all social inquiry. Human beings thus must be able to act ethically and be willing to act ethically. This is the classic choice paradigm in microeconomics and Sadri relies on the homo logicus philosophicus (rational man). Hence to him values are a thought-based concept while ethics are an activity-based concept. Subhash Sharma from Bangalore uses Sadri's paradigm of praxis and converts it into soul based argument thereby treading a thin logical line between Sadri and Chakraborty with academic brilliance. This academic-review paper essentially looks critically at the seminal work done on ethics by the mind-based theorists in India, first based in XLRI and later based in Bharati Vidyapeeth University and now at Manipal University Jaipur. In my considered opinion, they deserve pride of place in the pantheon of scholars who have worked on ethics and so are singled out for treatment in this paper.
