Spirituality - RoundTable

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Prabhu Guptara

What are the challenges faced by the world of business today? Can spirituality play a role in overcoming these challenges?

Prabhu Guptara

The main challenges faced by business are: How to survive in a hypercompetitive world, and how to deal with the increasing demands of regulation, corporate governance, ethics, corporate social responsibility, and so on. Spirituality/religion can indeed play a key part in this, in terms of motivation, fair play, and providing a means of understanding and relating not only to the world in general but also specifically to financial, economic, environmental, health and other challenges. This is too wide and complex a subject to go into in this brief space, but a Google search for my somewhat unusual name will indicate at least some materials with which to begin an exploration of some of these matters.

Wayne Visser

Business is essentially a human enterprise, and therefore faces all the challenges of human relationships.

Engaging in these relationships in a fair, loving, caring, compassionate way is the essence of spirituality. However, in addition to the complexity of relationships inherent in business, companies have to deal with power-more than ever before, business commands vast resources and great influence. And power has the potential to corrupt the human spirit. Therefore, the onus on business to act responsibility is that much greater. In practical terms, business faces challenges of practicing business ethics, ensuring economic justice, striving for environmental sustainability, displaying social responsibility and upholding human rights. Since all of these challenges rely on human values, spirituality is at the heart of business' response, although few companies would use the "spiritual" label to describe their actions.

Alex Pattakos

The challenges faced by the world of business, and government for that matter, are many and complex. Fundamentally, however, I would distill these various challenges into one- the "search for meaning". Rather than seeking to compete, survive, and thrive through either a search for power, money, or pleasure, I submit that the challenge is much deeper. How business relates to its environment, broadly-defined, is an existential challenge, not simply one grounded in traditional notions of profit. And it is here, that is, at the "meaning" nexus, where spirituality plays a key role in overcoming these challenges. How business authentically takes care of "business"- in relation to its entire community of stakeholders-is a moral, ethical, value-based, and therefore meaning centered or spiritual concern.

Linda Sue Grimes

The challenges of the unrealized human being are always the same whether in business or in personal relationships: How to become realized. The first steps to soul-realization are moral steps: Treating our fellow human beings humanely, kindly, with love and respect. Truly believing and living under the rule that treating others with fairness will result in receiving fairness in return. The world of business must be a place where each participant realizes that his role is to offer service to the best of his ability. Businesses must be places that exist to make the world a better place not merely for the accumulation of wealth for selfish purposes. If every business deemed its purpose to offer the best service possible, then prosperity would come to all businesses. Such a dedication as described above comes from the spiritual law of the Golden Rule. A strong spiritual life forms the basis for the ability to be of service to others. Serving others becomes a way to serve God. A strong spiritual life gives one the courage to accept life's challenges and still continue to offer selfless service.

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