Creating spiritual purity – a corporate responsibility that has far-reaching positive effects : MAV gets the ‘Best Paper Award’

The Indus Business Academy is a business school in Bengaluru, India. It has consistently been ranked as one of the top business schools in India by prominent media organisations and is among the only 42 colleges in India to be accredited by the International Accreditation Council for Business Education (IACBE).

The 12^th International Conference of the Indus Business Academy (IBA) held recently was attended by people from different fields including businessmen, spiritual speakers, professors and business school students. In all, 35 papers were presented during the conference.

Maharshi Adhyatma Vishwavidyalay (MAV) presented a paper on ‘Creating spiritual purity – a corporate responsibility that has far-reaching positive effects’. The MAV paper was presented at the conference by Mrs. Shilpa Magdum, who works as a Technical Manager at MindTree Ltd. and has been practising Spirituality for 20 years.

Mrs. Magdum started by saying, “Ask any business school (B-school) graduate about the main aim of a corporation and the most likely answer would be ‘enhancing shareholder value’. Practically, however, with the stresses and strains of day-to-day business operations, the pursuit of profit and enhancing shareholder value often supercedes employees’ well-being, the environment, and any social obligations”.

This captured the essence of the issue that the business world faces in meeting their corporate social responsibilities. She then went on to systematically explain how even if businesses crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i’ with regards to their policies around SD and CSR, they would still not get the desired results unless they took the spiritual dimension into consideration. It was a whole new way of thinking that resonated with the audience.

The paper was well-received and generated a good deal of interest, especially amongst the younger participants. Most of the attendees came by after the lecture and personally shared that the presentation was outstanding. Later, Dr. Subhendu Dey, the Program Director of the IBA, said that the IBA will open a new CSR branch and will collaborate with MAV on this.

MAV was presented with the Best Doctoral Paper Award for the conference, which included a cash prize.