Acknowledgments

As an author who has included spirituality as one of the variables of organisational behaviour (OB), how can I start this acknowledgment, but by mentioning the grace of God! It comes first, always and every time.

Concealed within this book is the power of an organisation—TAPMI. If TAPMI ever wants to showcase how it helps its faculty to grow, this book is a seminal example. Time, resources, autonomy to plan and work, opportunity to test concepts and cases, access to a plethora of journal aggregations—all belong to TAPMI.

No book can be written without the support of a lot of people around you, more so a book of this nature. First and foremost, my gratitude goes to Pradeep Kumar Bhattacharjee, C. Purushothaman and the team at Pearson. They had planted the idea of the book and nurtured it. Their support has been singular, and their creativity, phenomenal.

Ms Shanta Mathai gave me unquestionable support to complete this book. I solicited her support not only for her knowledge and language expertise, but also because I wanted this book to pass the ‘Grandma’s test’, to check if the ideas that I expressed were simple enough to be understood by a novice. Her powerful feedback and questions made me sit up and take note of many inefficiencies, which I could rectify on time. I acknowledge her observation competencies and language skills.

My students, who reviewed several chapters, gave me the confidence that I was delivering something that is truly student-oriented. They impressed upon me the value of a long summary from their perspective, and persuaded me to shift from the standard summary to a long summary.

The final punch came from Ms Aparna Bhat, the communication professor at TAPMI, with her careful finetuning, from commas to sentences and from syntaxes to headings. I thank Ms Anusooya Rao for coordinating many aspects of this book.

Behind the scene is a plethora of my corporate colleagues who told me powerful stories on which I built the initiating cases. Some of them are entrepreneurs, some are managers, and some are senior civil servants. I also gained learning and experience from the Indian Army as a frontline combat officer and from various organisations I served.

There are tacit, but tactful and forceful, supporters to this effort—my wife Alina, and children, Savio, Stella, and Harshada, and of course, my late parents. Let me use an OB term and state that my vicarious learning to put in focused hard work is derived from my parents.

P. S. James