The 4 th National Human Resource Management Conference 2008 115 Transformational Leadership from the Bhagavad-Gita and the Significance for Human Capital Development Balakrishnan Muniapan a & M. Rajantheran b a Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak Campus, Kuching Email: mbalakrsna@yahoo.com b Faculty of Arts and Social Science, University of Malaya Email: rajantheran@yahoo.com Abstract The significance of transformational leadership has received great deal of attention in the leadership literature during the last two decade as the current business environment requires organizational leaders to be transformational. This is also due to several studies, which have been done in this area, leading to a wider recognition that transformational leadership style is extremely essential for organizational growth and development as it is the quality of the leaders and their leadership determines the quality of the organizations. In this paper, an attempt has been made by the authors to explore transformational leadership from an ancient Indian Vedic philosophy and provide the significance to human capital development. A review of literature in transformational leadership shows that there are thousands of articles which have been written by several academics on this subject from numerous perspectives, but limited articles have been written from the philosophical perspectives. As a result, this paper not only fills the gap in the literature of transformational leadership, but also provides some significance and insights on human capital development from the ancient Indian Vedic philosophical perspective. For this purpose, the authors have selected the Bhagavad-Gita, which provides the essence of the Indian Vedic thought to explore transformational leadership concepts for human capital development. This paper is based on hermeneutics, a qualitative research methodology which involves study, understanding and interpretation of ancient or classical text. The Bhagavad-Gita is more than 5,000 years old and is written in Sanskrit language. In a nutshell, the Bhagavad-Gita provides an inside-out approach to leadership and human capital development which is the self leadership first before leadership of every other thing. The organizational leaders are advised to firstly conquer the enemies within such as desires, anger, greed, arrogance, infatuation, envy, pride or ego and foolhardiness as it is often said that a leader who conquers the enemies within will be able to conquer his self and also others. The prospects of analysis of the Bhagavad-Gita in other areas of organizational leadership such as strategic management, organizational behavior, human resource management and employment relations can be considered for future research. Key words: Transformational leadership, leadership philosophy, Bhagavad-Gita and Human Capital Development INTRODUCTION Leadership theories and concepts from the west have dominated the world for over two centuries. This dominance is due to colonization and the widespread use of English in many countries and the readily available of leadership literatures in English language. However, a careful analysis reveals that many of the recently popularized western leadership theories and concepts have been in practice in east especially in Asia for centuries. These practices however were not in the context business organization but in the state or political governance. Sharma 1 argues that for a leadership system, to be effective, it has to be rooted in the cultural soil of the country, where it is practiced. Many communities and countries in the world are now trying to discover and explore their own system of leadership and management, which includes financial management, human resource management, customer relationship management, corporate social responsibility and also corporate governance. 1 Sharma, G.D, (2001), Management and the Indian Ethos, Rupa & Co, New Delhi, p.1 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by UUM Repository