Social Development:Inside-Out Approach in Indian Ancient Wisdom (Learning for Business Organizations)

Human development is one of the fundamental quests of all branches of social sciences. Economics and management are not exceptions to this. In the evolution of business management thoughts, attention has moved upward from profit maximization to value maximization. Focus has also shifted from shareholder returns to customer satisfaction. Moving ahead in this direction, now business community and academia are equivocal about society as a whole to be of concern to corporate world. One of the inherent assumptions behind this societal perspective is that human development involves both individual development and social development. Present study is aimed to establish the linkage between individual development and social development in the domain of business management. Along with shareholders and customers, employees, government and society have been considered as stakeholder to the business organizations. Systems approach in management has brought this stakeholders perspective prominent in this field. As a result corporate social responsibilities have gained attention and prominence in literature of economics and management. Social development is integral part of corporate social responsibility. In Indian psycho-philosophic literature 'Loksangrah' as a philosophical construct falls parallel to the notion of social development and sharing of wealth. It is discussed as a main conceptual anchor in the present study. This study is also aimed to find out the world view maintained in Indian scripture and it is hypothesized that world view is an antecedent of human life preferences and human action. As a conclusion author links individual "world view' and 'self concept' for practicing the Moksangrah' i.e. social development by the business organizations.