2023, Vol. 9, Issue 5, Part C

Objective: Management of organizations, people and entities has been a subject matter of great interest today. All Indian business schools teach management concepts propounded by the western scholars in the last 100 years or so. Management as a concept must be as old as rocks and rivers. While civilizations flourished in the West only in the last two millennia, countries such as India has had established civilizations running to several millennia in the past. This naturally raises a question of whether management thoughts and concepts were practiced in ancient times in India. In particular, the thesis seeks to explore the following questions in some detail:

(a)Are there management concepts and practices that were practiced in India in ancient times?

(b)Based on a study of a specific text pertaining to the ancient tie period, is it possible to distill some management concepts?

(c)What can current-day organizations learn from the insights gathered from such a study? Are there a few workable ideas that current-day organizations need to imbibe?

India has a vast repository of literary resources spanning more than three millennia. A preliminary list of works was shortlisted for our consideration. The list includes Ramayana, Mahabharatha, Bhagavad Gita, ArthaShastra, Vidhuraneethi and Shishupalavadha. It was finally decided to take up Shishupalavadha for a detailed study.

This excellent poetry by Magha shows us his fantastic vocabulary, comparisons, and great meanings. We all should be immensely proud to have had these kinds of marvelous poets fabulously rich in literacy, knowledge, and culture in the past centuries.

Hence, I have tried with my humble effort in bringing out the various management concepts described in Shishupalavadha from various reference books mentioned in the Bibliography at the end.

I thank Prof. B. Mahadevan (IIMB) & Prof. Thiyagarajan (Sastra) for their kind guidance and huge support to make this possible.

a.Concepts on speech management

b.Concepts on leadership qualities management

c.Concepts on anger management

d.Concepts on knowledge management

e.Concepts on enemy/enmity management

f.Concepts on general management

Conclusion: The above management concepts advised as per Shishupalavadha, may be used in our organisations/industries for day-to-day management as well as advice to the senior management in taking important decisions whenever there are ambiguities.