My friends in the corporate world tell me that India managers, especially in accounting firms, are confused and demoralized after the governance scandals in America involving Enron, Anderson and others. Their situation is, of course, nothing compared to the devastation wrought to the morale of the American manager, and I observed this at ringside over several days when I was recently with a dozen senior managers in Chicago.

In the evening over dinner one vice-president opened up, and began to relate murky stories in his friend's company. Gradually the others joined in and one of them emotionally asked what he should do. He was worried that his boss had done the wrong thing and then lied to the auditors. He was afraid that something terrible might happen to his company. All of us felt sympathy for his troubles, and I'm not sure how we got on the subject but we began to talk about the Bhagavad Gita.

Somewhat to my surprise these hard-nosed managers showed serious interested in Gita's concept of nishkama karma (nkk). We spoke at length about desireless or detached action and they wondered what it might mean in a practical sense in the corporate life. They questioned if it is possible to act without thinking of its fruit (nishphala). One of them objected that the result is inseparable from the act—one cannot avoid feeling satisfied when one is successful. He had difficulty imagining how a person might behave when one is not driven by ambition or ego, and if the result would be satisfactory without engaging the will power of the individual.

Someone then recalled that he had experienced this psychological state. He had been so absorbed in his work that he had forgotten himself, and he remembered saying, 'God, it's already six o'clock; I thought it was three.' He felt his ego had disappeared for those three hours. An athletic type added, 'you were in the zone, man; I experience this all the time when I train for the marathon.' I told them that Henry Moore, the sculptor, was perpetually in this state and his wife had to drag him home from his studio at midnight because he had forgotten to eat lunch and dinner (and send bills to his customers).

At his point someone raised a more practical problem. 'While nkk sounds great, it doesn't tell me whether I am doing the right or the wrong thing. To act in a detached way doesn't guide me about my duties. It is empty of moral content. I could kill somebody in a detached manner without seeking personal reward. This is in fact what Krishna is advising Arjuna to do, and it's wrong.' This was a serious problem with nkk, we felt.

Amongst us was a very senior CFO of Indian origin and he suggested that nkk might not be an ethic of morality but of excellence. We said that when one removed the human ego out of the equation, one was left only with the activity, and to be driven by the activity could only mean that one was driven by the excellence of the activity. A folksy vice-president from the mid-west quoted Harry Truman, the American President, saying 'the work will succeed as long as you don't care who gets the credit.' The Indian CFO believed that nkk could provide an ethic of excellence for Indian institutions and become a source of national competitive advantage versus China. He added that teamwork was a serious problem in Indian organizations and poor teamwork was often the result of narcissistic behav iour and nkk might help change this.

By the end of the evening this distinguished group concluded that nishkama karma was truly an innovative idea. They thought that it nicely described the absorbed world of the artist or scientist but were less sure if it offered a moral principle for the average person on the job. They admitted, however, that it might offer a technique to CEOs, generals, and civil servants to motivate and gain high performance from their employees.