CHAPTER 1

Causality

In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

—Carl Sagan*

Society’s demands, in principle, are expectations arising out of ethical motives. When a joint-stock company is formed, by and large society welcomes such a business endeavor and participates willingly. The stock market is one of the points of investment for society and it is society’s support for a corporate that churns out profits and ensures that dividends remain robust. Society becomes apprehensive when companies falter, and investments in mutual funds and pension funds fail to payback adequate returns, resulting in the loss of hard-earned income earned over several decades of employment. Society’s expectation from a corporate is simple: Entrusting my money with you for safe keep. Period. Many companies do realize this factor and acknowledge that society sits at the top of all stakeholders. Corporate undertakes a fiduciary responsibility. A fiduciary is legally bound to act, within the confines of the law, in the best interests of the beneficiary. The beneficiary is society. Unfortunately, this responsibility is not always upheld. There are several cases of corporate negligence that abandon the fiduciary responsibility. When trust earned is lost, society’s support is lost, and it is corporate that suffers ultimately. The corporate goes from being a joint-stock company to a deserted collection of individuals running from banker to banker. When an ethical motive is absent, profits dive. The key, which is what this book is about, is to highlight business enterprise motives toward the betterment of profits and growth while optimizing the trust factor.

Some recent major events in the realm of fiduciary responsibility are noteworthy. Volkswagen’s diesel cheat software shook the world. It cost the company $33.6 billion,1 the price for having allowed the cheat software through the front gate, duly authorized and signed by the board and the CEO. But a greater cost has been the loss of credibility for what had been one of the most trusted automotive brands in the world until the debacle. Hardly has the cost of dieselgate been counted, when Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto at $63 billion was followed by class-action lawsuits against Bayer in many countries. Glyphosate is being banned by countries like France and Germany. Roundup cancer lawsuits may cost Bayer tens of billions, says Top Class Actions.2 The merger and acquisition of Autonomy resulted in Hewlett-Packard (HP) writing off $8.8 billion in Q4 of 2012. Toshiba’s president and CEO, Hisao Tanaka, stepped down after an investigative panel found that company executives were complicit in misreported earnings. The incident highlighted “a systematic involvement including by top management.”3 Siemens’s code of conduct was described by Joseph Murphy.as the “read, laughed and filed code.”4 To add to the agony is Carillion (2018),5 which failed to “wake up and listen” to warnings. Two committees found that board minutes reveal a finance director was attempting to blow the whistle on accounting irregularities.

Tech giant Infosys and global conglomerate the Tata Group are said to have faltered on the corporate governance front, with respect to the conduct of Vishal Sikka, CEO of Infosys, and Cyrus Mistry, chairman of Tata Sons. The failure of infrastructure giant Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) has not only brought the entire Indian economy to a slowdown but has also highlighted the failure of individuals across the board. This collective pattern of failure represents a larger image of dreadful consequences. We are, however, at the cusp of corporate civilization, of do or die, make history or accept defeat.6 Volkswagen, Bayer–Monsanto, Toshiba, HP–Autonomy, Carillion, and IL&FS are classic cases that define how a few at the helm can damage the entire future of industrial growth.

When we are looking at the corporate civilization, we are looking at the society we have formed. Society’s constituents, if they remain in different layers, then corporate, which is part of the bigger canvas, will find somewhat irksome to be bracketed with all and sundry. Some may find it distasteful, if not irksome, when society finds the arrogant assumptions of inviolable authority, as displayed by Ferdinand Piëch, Volkswagen’s chairman, before the scandal erupted. Piëch chided a lawyer for mispronouncing “Lamborghini.” “Those who can’t afford one, should say it properly,” were his precise words.7 A few people assume the right to decide on multibillion dollar commitments that impact society at large. Marc Benioff (2019), co-CEO of Salesforce and owner of Time, has pronounced that “capitalism, as we know it, is dead.”8 If so, the way corporate is run, from Lockheed to Enron to VW to Carillion to IL&FS, would ever be classified as capitalism. The society of different communities, which we do not know of fully, demands the answers. Marc Benioff (2019) calls for a new form of capitalism that focuses more on societal good. Societal good for one should be the same for another. Within the society’s infrastructure, the new capitalism, as one part, should survive and endeavor to create a new corporate civilization.9

Corporate is missing the point. Their fault lines are visible, goalposts are missing, the future is bleak, and the present is shaky. Profits are the mainstay of corporate, and this is entrusted to and ensured by ethical motives. It is not a matter simply of a corporate giant bites the dust. There are 30 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in India. When a giant falls, the repercussions affect millions. The behavior of such failed business magnates further delays our collective commitments to the United Nations Millennium Declaration of sustainability of economic, social, environmental protection and development goals.

What has happened in India between 2004 and 2014 of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is the aggrandizement of public wealth at the cost of extreme poverty. The consequences of the big corporate tree falling are now being made apparent. The Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI), Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI), and International Finance Corporation (IFC) as development institutions have disappeared, after writing off millions.10 No one the wiser, but the agony is repeated. Lessons are not learned. Corporate must change, banking must change. Non-performing assets (NPAs) threaten the very basis of business survival. There’s no connection between the declaration of sustainable goals and the tracking of such goals. Society remains in the iron age. For society, it’s a signal to acknowledge the difficulty of essential survival.

Change, Change, Change Corporate! You are squandering away the riches of the earth. It is often said, “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got.” No longer can the promoter of a corporate entity afford to recklessly abandon the entity for society to bear the burden. This is what Benioff meant when he called upon America’s top corporations to be responsible for improving society by serving all stakeholders ethically, morally, and fairly and not merely by boosting the stock price for shareholders.11 In this work, we will examine what ethically, morally, and fairly means.

The late cosmologist Carl Sagan says we make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers. If society remains a passive observer, the degradation of industry is sure to follow. Paul Polman of Unilever urges, “Don’t stay on the sidelines. It boils down to small actions, big difference. Together we can do it.” He adds, “I don’t like that word, responsibility. It is about co-responsibility.” Till the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate could easily talk of business ethics, corporate governance, and so on without being attached to something called society. Corporate looks at itself as a giver of benefits and favor to the society, never to take responsibility for societal good. CSR has changed that. Paul Polman has done yeoman service to the society by his Sustainable Living Plan project through Unilever in the last decade. He would surely agree with the willingness of the society and the enthusiasm with which it has taken to his call for co-responsibility, however limited Unilever’s interaction with it. Small actions do make a big difference, as he rightly observes. However, from the society, it is not co-responsibility but a sense of consequent responsibility that corporate must clearly understand. Bayer invests in Monsanto a $63 billion and comes a cropper. Society looks at companies that invest wisely and benefit society. Society has no means of advising the board as to what and how they function. It is the corporate that needs to go to the society regarding its intentions to execute a multibillion dollar investment. This work expands CSR to corporate fiscal responsibility (CFR) and corporate ethical responsibility (CER). CER of the corporate defines its ethical responsibility and then the consequent responsibility undertaken by the society is truly a quid pro quo.

Former secretary-general of the UN Kofi Annan while releasing the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) document said,

Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies. It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish.12

UNCAC is one of the finest, rather the finest, document ever written, for two of its articles: (1) Article 13, Participation of Society, and (2) Article 10, Public Reporting. These statutes best exemplify Abraham Lincoln’s words: A government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. A corporate setup is created by the people. Article 13, Participation of Society, of the UNCAC ensures the dictum of the people, and Article 10, Public Reporting, endows the rights for the people to get the reports back. As President Barack Obama said during his inaugural address to Congress, “Here in Washington, we’ve all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending.” Society needs to get qualitative data, for sure. UNCAC Article 13 could have cautioned corporate before it implanted a cheat software. UNCAC Article 10 could have ensured the concept of co-responsibility was executed by the declaration of ethical assets.

The participation of a society is a matured extension of people electing a government. What society wants from corporate is a confirmation of an intrinsic value system. Article 10 of the UNCAC, Public Reporting, ensures the people know what their own roles are and what the government’s role is. Society, at the top of the pyramid of stakeholders, has been demanding more and more transparency from corporate and is dissatisfied with the less and less it is being given. Despite government-enacted laws and active ingredients from regulatory bodies, corporate evades the core demands and is indeed found wanting. It remains aloof from happenings that demand corrections. It is stubborn in its isolation from society. There is no need for such a disconnect. All corporate has to do is to quantify and make known its ethical values. These two articles of the UNCAC would go a long way to satisfy the demands of society.

As a first step toward corporate governance, align fiscal responsibility with ethical responsibility. For example, before a drug can be prescribed in the United States it must undergo the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process. Once approved, drug companies stand to benefit. This process is aligning fiscal responsibility with ethical responsibility that the FDA inspects to ensure compliance with the laws and good manufacturing practice (GMP). Similar management practices applied to each area of management are termed as corporate governance. Aligning all issue areas in a company would be critical to an overall assessment of corporate governance, without an exception. This includes a code of conduct or code of business principles (CoBP) or Whistleblower Policy or UNCAC or United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) covering 10 principles that are meant to benefit a company and typify the value system practiced. These have to be adopted by a company in detail for governance of each such issue area. That document so prepared is a tangible substance of quality, as good as installed machinery. Such documents, which are very many mandatory as well as nonmandatory policy documents, fall under the head management quality. This is a repository of policy statements a company adheres to. When effectively practiced, the result would be the measurement of corporate governance. Just as detailed factory inspections and audits to check and certify GMP or total quality management (TQM) practices are verified, corporate governance certification is to be verified. When an issue area is present in management quality that becomes the Cause. When measured and certified for compliance with such a policy, the Effect is assessed. The balance of these is corporate governance. Just as a six sigma process is established for manufacturing, a similar six sigma process improvement for corporate governance is established. Management quality and corporate governance would go hand in hand as effectively and surely as Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Establish management quality to precede corporate governance. The cheat software got in because the company skipped the deference to management quality.

Volkswagen was awarded the Best Corporate Governance for the Automotive Sector for 2014 in Europe by Ethical Boardroom. It was reminiscent of the AAA ratings that Standard & Poor’s (S&P), Moody’s, and Fitch granted companies like Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers before they collapsed. IL&FS credit ratings were equally misstated. In the case of Volkswagen, there was no policy document to show that a cheat software would be against their CoBP policies, although Volkswagen had prepared a detailed code of conduct for the group. This document lists several international conventions followed, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), in addition to the laws and regulations for the countries.

After the deluge, society is not aware whether any adequate measures have now been taken that were missing earlier in CoBP. When there’s no such correction made, fiscal responsibility doesn’t align with ethical responsibility. There are also cases where clear written policies exist but are cast aside under the “read, laughed and filed code.” This will be the case in general for all companies where the effort is not made to align fiscal and ethical responsibilities. One will see a long list of policy statements under management quality with no corresponding compliance under corporate governance. However, when such an event like the Volkswagen case explodes, the general reaction is lack of corporate governance, which is questioned immediately. In this context, a corresponding perspective comes from Hermes EOS, the stewardship division of Hermes Investment Management, one of the major stakeholders in Volkswagen, which called for an overhaul of the management and corporate governance culture at Volkswagen. There was no such corporate governance culture, Volkswagen displayed. Aligning fiscal responsibility with ethical responsibility is going to be paramount for companies to be just and equitable.

What Paul Polman said in 2010 are the same value statements made by Marc Benioff today but remain as relevant for companies that seek to be just and equitable. Business ethics has indeed become just lip service. Companies would not even file a balance sheet if it was not mandatory. Corporates will remain required to communicate voluntarily just and equitable practices to society by Article 10 of the UNCAC, until it becomes mandatory, which it will only when society insists.

Mandatory regulations are imposed by a government but at the insistence of society. Society is not a nonentity; it is a powerful apparatus when the government listens.

There are three distinct pronounced areas for corporate to note:

1. Management quality, which is a repository of policies.
2. Corporate governance, which involves the practices of the CEO team.
3. Society or people, who usher in changes inside corporate through the government and regulatory bodies.

These three Ps of management—policy, practices, and people—are the crux of management of corporate affairs that we shall discuss in the coming chapters. There are clear boundaries and functions for each, a clear-cut set of duties to perform, a responsibility to participate, and accountability to own.

Business enterprise is a profound thought of good intentions toward society that sets apart corporate culture over individual choice. A culture is a function of true knowledge of awareness, an identity with ethical responsibility, that by which corporate infers and society teaches. The ethical motive, incorporated at the time of registration for a joint-stock company, remains untouched. “Just and equitable” is not an expression of political statement for voters, but an invitation for stakeholders to vote with their wallet. Money is business, to attract money in business, state your stand. Measure it so that society understands it as a testimony of your will and actions. Just and equitable should have a reference to the context, and so should “societal good,” instead of being merely a catchword, for catchwords face the issue of being unexamined and unanalyzed over a while. They just disappear for another new catchword. Society remains confused and disordered. Practically, the society does not respond, and the catchwords remain the monopoly of a few.

Bring data to society’s table. Writing to the board of Infosys during the previous Vishal Sikka imbroglio, the Infoscions, an organization of former employees, said, “In God we trust; everyone else brings data to the table used to be our adage in everything we did and there were no exceptions!” This is a good adage that can be extended to society and shall be served a measured qualitative data at the table without exception. First of all, let corporate create a platform for qualitative data within whereas this book recommends bringing the data to society’s table. Here we are looking at qualitative data, such as the code of good conduct. Disclosure of such data is going to improve upon a company’s reputation. If you are doing well, do not withhold such data. If you are practicing and measuring the code of conduct of every employee in your company and your grade reveals that you are excelling, make it known to the society. The dignity and responsibility of an individual are recognized, a sense of honor. Contrarily, very many companies in India are marching toward insolvency procedures, all at the same time, because of the Modi government introducing the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). This has ended crony capitalism. The slate is clean for doing good business in India, for those who are ready to go for a corruption-free business model.13 NPAs would surely be a thing of the past. Corporate governance is the governance standard for the value system within a company. Measuring quantitative data is already in existence, nothing more to be added to it. Value system is existing for a few but not measured. By measuring the value system, corporate governance makes itself known.

Let us move forward in our endeavor to establish qualitative data that is measurable, meaningful first of all within corporate, and then communicable to society. Note, society already recognizes how corporate uses ethical assets, and ethical performance establishes how just and equitable corporates are discharging their fiduciary duties, not merely fiscal assets, which are the domain of market speculators. Toshiba, Enron, Worldcom, and many more tampered with their balance sheets and failed miserably. Fiscal assets have a limited period usage, of use and throw. Ethical assets are the mainstay of your organization. Bring a list of ethical assets to society’s table. They are intangible. In the sense ethical assets are everlasting, they would remain the backbone of an organization. Intangible as everlasting is one thing but remaining the backbone of the organization is another. The former is a time factor but the latter warrants positioning.

Dr Radhakrishnan (Indian philosopher and former president of India) mentions Pascal’s well-known classification of the ways to belief, custom, reason, and inspiration suggests three stages of mental evolution—sense, reason, and intuition—though they are not to be regarded as chronologically successive and separate. In youth, we rise from the empirical to the dialectical stage when we argue and derive conclusions from observed data. At a more mature stage, we obtain a synthetic and intuitive knowledge of reality by means of an experience that embraces the whole soul. But intuition, though it includes the testimony of will and feeling, is never fully attained without strenuous intellectual effort. It cannot dispense with the discipline of reason and the technique of proof. He goes on to warn that the intuitive consciousness is not to be confused with the instinctive.14

Instinctive is a term we associate with reaction and intuitive with knowledge, from gross to subtle. The dictionary meaning of it, however, describes instinctive as one without conscious thought and intuitive as one without conscious reasoning, and as the expression goes many a slip between the cup and the lip. When we analyze the three stages of mental evolution, senses are related to instinctive reaction, reason to logical knowledge, which Dr Radhakrishnan says is comparable to a finger that points to the object and disappears when the object is seen, whereas intuitive knowledge is to a higher wavelength of the discipline of reason with the technique of proof. All three have a common thread: Instinctive reaction relates to a physical effort, reasoning to an intellectual effort (to trigger the finger to go in search of an object or a solution), and intuitive knowledge to an intellectual effort of egoistic discrimination. It’s personal, the domain where a single dot produces several patents by different people, each unique. The one that is common to all, as the gems strung together that may vary in color and species, but the supporting string is the same all through, is intangible. Intangible is an effort, an energy force to be reckoned with. Intangible is all pervasive. Intangible influences actions and identifies inactions simultaneously, when energy force is absent, that is, without conscious thought or conscious reasoning. Intangible is a constant, enabling to derive a fixed value in a specified mathematical context, for example, return on intangible.

Illustratively, in an age-old country-music album, the song “Deck of Cards” by Tex Ritter goes like this:

A boy soldier being caught with playing cards in church, was brought before Provost Marshall. After warning of dire consequences, the soldier did narrate an interesting story. Sir, after marching for six days neither I had a Bible nor a Prayer Book that I spread the deck of cards I had, in the church. You see sir, when I look at the Ace it reminds me that there is but one God. Two, Old and the New Testament. Three, Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. He goes on. The King, the Queen, the jack or knave. Sir, I count the number of spots in a deck I find three-hundred-sixty-five—the number of days in a year, Fifty-two cards—the number of weeks in a year, Twelve picture cards—number of months, thirteen tricks—the number of weeks in a Quarter. Four colors—the number of seasons in a year. Sir, my pack of cards serves me as a Bible, an almanac and a prayer book.

Provost Marshall who warned of the dire consequences was left wondering how the boy soldier could count the fiscal assets—the deck of cards—solve a puzzle, and also retain the ethical assets. Connecting the different perspectives, the human mind focuses on the behavior of highly sensitive dynamical systems, given access to a constant.

Understanding the Intangible—A CERN Perspective

Let us peep into the minds of the scientists of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, a little bit. On June 18, 2004, an unusual new landmark was unveiled at CERN, a 2-meter high statue of the Indian deity Shiva Nataraja, the Lord of Dance. The statue, symbolizing Shiva’s cosmic dance of creation and destruction, was given to CERN by the Indian government to celebrate the research center’s long association with India. Shiva’s cosmic dance then became a central metaphor in Austrian-born American physicist, systems theorist, and deep ecologist Fritjof Capra’s international bestseller The Tao of Physics. A special plaque next to the Shiva statue at CERN explains the significance of the metaphor. Capra finds a similarity between modern physics and Shiva, not only in terms of the birth and death of living creatures, but also the very essence of inorganic matter. Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter that, Capra says, “unifies ancient mythology, religious art, and modern physics” (Figure 1.1)15

Figure 1.1 The Shiva’s cosmic dance statue at CERN

Photo Credit: Giovanni Chierico.

Plato’s Cave

Writing about Shiva’s statue, Aidan Randle-Conde, a postdoctoral student at CERN, looks at it from two different angles. During the daytime, Shiva reminds us that the universe is constantly shaking things up, is remaking itself, and is never static, she says, and by night, when we have more time to contemplate the deeper questions, Shiva literally casts a long shadow over our work, a bit like the shadows on Plato’s cave.16 This is an interesting observation that can be extended to the corporate model.

A comparative study of CERN and corporate throws some light on the existence of matter and its creation of energy. It is critical to the very existence of corporate, what it does, how it could use its capability for a sustainable, trouble-free future of industry and commerce. CERN states, (a) subatomic matter not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance and (b) subatomic matter does not remain static. We shall restrict subatomic matter to protons, neutrons, and electrons for this work, which primarily establishes the connect between corporate and nature. Then we shall look into whether corporate is stuck in Plato’s cave.

Lessons derived from CERN would bring metaphysics and physics into fusion. In other words, aligning fiscal responsibility with ethical responsibility. Corporate is masquerading under the claim of secrecy, unwilling to publish qualitative data that would be detrimental to their own progress vis-à-vis the competition. Measuring management quality, a repository of mandatory as well as nonmandatory rules and regulations adopted by a company, is necessary. So would be other qualitative data: accounting quality, risk management, and corporate governance. The reality is not that corporate doesn’t want to release the data, but rather that corporate doesn’t have any data to publish. In the aftermath of the Toshiba expose, news of manipulation of accounting emerges. In the aftermath of cheat software, Volkswagen is left defending multibillion dollar class-action lawsuits. Whistleblowers did their job, and energy giant Enron went through bankruptcy and saw the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, one of the Big 5 audit firms. In the aftermath of the London Inter-bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) being used to tamper with rates, the risk appetite in the top echelons of Barclays bank/group forces their chairman to resign. The inability of corporate to measure metaphysical concepts is more than clear. Even at the height of the BP Deepwater oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the total expenditure was said to be about $2 billion. Not so long after HP entered into a merger and acquisition with Autonomy, a write-off of $8.8 billion became inevitable, which shows how ridiculous it is to be unaware of a company’s qualitative performance at the time of acquisition. Such a failure does not reflect on HP alone but on the four major firms that negotiated the deal. These Big 4 audit firms continue their legacy of ineffectiveness in the Carillion fiasco too. That the next chief financial officer had to go through whistleblowing procedures to get her concerns about accounting irregularities taken seriously by the Carillion board is extraordinary, according to the report.17 Now, Big 4 firms are being investigated by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), GoI, in the case of the fraud in IL&FS.18 That’s the last straw that broke the camel’s back. One can legitimately say corporate management is utterly depraved and incapable of establishing a value system, crucial to establish the tenets of the righteousness of corporate civilization.

Corporate Is Living in Plato’s Cave

In Plato’s cave, the chained prisoners could only see the shadow on the front wall, not the action of puppeteers behind them. They have no concept of reality as they never look back but look only at what plays out on the front wall. One of the prisoners breaks free and runs outside to acquire knowledge. He returns to the cave to explain the reality to the remaining prisoners. They think he is stupid. They resist any attempt to free them. Corporate is living in Plato’s cave. They are unwilling to see energy in its pure form. Companies are injured but the remedy is being rejected. The vision for ethical responsibility must evolve from within; it cannot be administered through external consulting. As Carl Sagan reminds us, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere; corporate resides in a do-it-yourself domain.

Notes

1. G. Kable. 2019. “Volkswagen’s Dieselgate Costs Top $33.6 Billion.” https://www.wardsauto.com/industry/volkswagen-s-dieselgate-costs-top-336-billion.

2. S. Datko. 2019. “Roundup Cancer Lawsuits May Cost Bayer Tens of Billions,” Top Class Action. https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/roundup-cancer-lawsuits-may-cost-bayer-tens-of-billions.

3. R. Savage. 2015. “Toshiba’s $1.2bn Accounting Scandal and the Problem with Japanese Corporate Governance.” https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/toshibas-12bn-accounting-scandal-problem-japanese-corporate-governance/article/1356743.

4. OECD. “Mr. Joseph E. Murphy (Corporate Compliance and Ethics Professional).” In: Review of the OECD Anti-Bribery Instruments: Compilation of Responses to Consultation Paper, March 31, 2008. http://www.oecd.org/daf/anti-bribery/anti-briberyconvention/40773471.pdf.

5. Sky News. 2018. “Carillion Failed to ‘Wake Up and Listen’ to Warnings.” https://news.sky.com/story/carillion-failed-to-wake-up-and-listen-to-warnings-11269033.

6. J. Iyer. 2015. “Who failed Infosys, Is It Corporate Governance or Management Quality?” https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6309431719099490304.

7. J. Useem. 2016. “What Was Volkswagen Thinking? On the Origins of Corporate Evil—and Idiocy.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/what-was-volkswagen-thinking/419127/.

8. P.R. La Monica. 2019. “Marc Benioff Says Capitalism, As We Know It, Is Dead.” https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/04/business/marc-benioff-capitalism-dead/index.html.

9. Ibid.

10. India Today. 2011. “Scandals during UPA Rule.” https://www.indiatoday.in/india/photo/scandals-during-upa-rule-365055-2011-02-15/7.

11. P.R. La Monica. 2019. “Marc Benioff Says Capitalism, As We Know It, Is Dead.” https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/04/business/marc-benioff-capitalism-dead/index.html.

12. UN_Convention_Against_Corruption.pdf—United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Vienna.

13. Economic Times. 2019. “10,860 Cases under IBC Pending before NCLT at the End of September: Govt.” https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/10860-cases-under-ibc-pending-before-nclt-at-the-end-of-september-govt/articleshow/72348493.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst.

14. S. Radhakrishnan. 1939. Eastern Religions and Western Thoughts (London, UK: Oxford University Press), p. 113.

15. Fritj of Capra. 2004. “Shiva’s Cosmic Dance at CERN.” https://www.fritjofcapra.net/shivas-cosmic-dance-at-cern/.

16. A. Randle-Conde. 2011. “In the shadow of Shiva.” https://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/11/10/in-the-shadow-of-shiva/.

17. Sky News. “Carillion Failed.”

18. S. Dave, S. Shukla. 2019. “Serious Fraud Investigation Office Lens on IL&FS Auditors.” https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/finance/serious-fraud-investigation-office-lens-on-ilfs-auditors/articleshow/69658026.cms.

*A Pale Blue Dot. https://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/earth/pale-blue-dot.html