The following writing is a result of a vexing problem that I have at my end. A problem that has been of concern to me for many years now but beginning to increasingly bother me as I enter the third year of my work life. The problem is only a take off from one of the oldest challenges that human beings have faced. Specifically, ever since man has lived as a community, one of the confounding problems has been how to organise our societal life in such a way that each individual leads a life that gives him a sense of contenment. Within this realm, a secondary concern has been how to organise productive work which conforms to the ideal laid out above. Perhaps with my training as a management student in IRMA where one was sensitised to the idea of a humane society and trained to think of organising productive work to further the realisation of such an idea, I do have a partiality to this latter problem. I do realise that classifying this as a secondary concern and treating it separately from the main question laid out above is likely to result in eliminating some of the possibly desirous directions of organising produtive work and thereby divert me from the main question. I hope to guard myself against this by constantly revisiting the main concern in my mind as I pen my thoughts. This hope also rests on some assumption that I make about productive work and its nature. By productive work I hope to cover the entire range of work that leads to outcomes which supports the achievement of a sense of contentment in human beings. (This does not eliminate manufacture of pet foods.) Also I do feel that it is not possible for any unit in society to be fully self sufficient in material and spiritual terms. (Yes. Productive work does include work which leads to spiritual upliftment.)
Therefore, how to organise productive work in such a way that the ideal of a human society is achieved is to me the central challenge of a manager. If there is prayer that plays on my lips with regard to my 'professional work', it is only for grace and strength to live up to this challenge. (To be completed)
