Satya Nadella, the Hyderabad-born numero uno of Microsoft, recently kicked off a controversy when he reportedly said women employees of Microsoft should count on their karma for their pay rise.
The media, as was to be expected, started a tirade over that apparently gender-insensitive remark, lambasting him for being chauvinistic and overbearing, inconsistent with the values and ethics of 21st century management practices.
He is reported to have made the remark when asked by a board member of Microsoft Corporation, Maria Klawe, how he would deal with women employees who are often hesitant, for whatever reason, to ask for pay rises consistent with their performance.
Mr. Nadella said: “It’s not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along. And that, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that, quite frankly, women who don’t ask for raises have, because that’s good karma . It’ll come back. Because somebody’s going to know: That’s the kind of person that I want to trust. That’s the kind of person that I want to really give more responsibilities.”
Many people pounced on him over this remark, terming it sexist. The depth of his remark and the use of a philosophically loaded term like karma obviously baffled the western audience whom he was addressing when he made it, considering the context.
To the that particular audience, karma is understood as part of destiny and irrevocable.
In the Indian cultural context, the concept and perception of karma is as an action in which one reaps what one sows — sooner or later — and no one, including the high, the mighty or even the gods, can escape the consequences of one’s karma . Good or bad results are believed to flow in direct proportion to the one’s past karma in all aspects of life and work.
Looked at from a different cultural perception, it is not quite surprising that to the western audience a statement that asks people to believe in karma and wait for rewards in matters of the corporate world, where people look for instant rewards and gratification for good performance and output, would seem shocking, especially when it is also seen as being discriminatory to women.
But when one understands the fact that Mr. Nadella was after all an Indian and was perhaps trying to bring in an Indian perspective to the whole issue of corporate rewards through a subtle and nuanced application of the theory of karma as understood by Indians — that, in effect, says that if you do good work you will always reap good results in terms of rewards including pay rises. You do not have to ask for it since it is bound to be recognised and rewarded by an organisation that values such behaviour especially from women, who are intrinsically stronger and more patient when it comes to rewards.
Though he retracted the statement with an apology for lack of discretion, an enlightened audience, Indian or western, should not have found anything discriminatory or chauvinistic in his remark.
But cultural perceptions being what they are, a western audience is bound to take offence at any suggestion that you should not demand rewards for your accomplishments but leave it to your fate to get it, and not demand it even when you deserve it, especially when it comes in the context of a high-tech industry leader such as Microsoft.
But his immediate retraction in the face of the media onslaught reduced the significance of his original statement, which had far-reaching import — that good karma always catches up with you for sure when you work for a corporation like Microsoft, and one should have faith in the system which takes care of it.
Karma as interpreted by Indian philosophy is a very subtle concept, like dharma , which has several nuances that are not evident to the uninitiated and reveals its depth only when one delves deep into it.
Mr. Nadella was probably espousing the ideal of nishkama karma as propounded by the Bhagavad Gita, which states that one should do one’s work without any expectation of rewards, and the rewards would flow automatically. But it was misunderstood and misinterpreted — which made him retract, perhaps also realising that in a gender-biased world it would not work to the advantage of women.
vnatrajan2001@yahoo.co.in
