Published on June 2026 | Leadership, Organisation Development, Organisation Behaviour, Leadership Model

Building World-class Organisations through the AVEPRR Framework - Evidence from India’s Greatest Warrior-kings

Management scholarship has long been dominated by Western-centric leadership frameworks, leaving a vast reservoir of organisational wisdom embedded in non-Western civilizational history largely untapped. This paper introduces the AVEPRR Model - a six-pillar leadership framework comprising Authenticity (A), Values (V), Emotional Intelligence (E), Purpose (P), Resilience (R1), and Responsiveness (R2) and validates it historically, through the governance systems of nine iconic Indian warrior-kings: Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka the Great, Raja Raja Chola I, Rajendra Chola I, Prithviraj Chauhan, Rana Sanga, Krishna Devaraya, Maharana Pratap, and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Employing a qualitative historical-comparative methodology drawn from Ashokan edicts, Kautilya’s Arthashastra, Tamil Sangam literature, Chola copper-plate inscriptions, and peer-reviewed scholarship, the paper demonstrates how each AVEPRR pillar manifested in documented governance behaviour spanning two and a half millennia. The study maps these historical insights to contemporary management theory and practice, arguing that India’s warrior-kings were, in essence, world-class organisational architects whose governance instincts and systems prefigure modern constructs in authentic leadership, values-based governance, emotional intelligence, purposeful enterprise, resilient institutions, and agile responsiveness. Shivaji Maharaj emerges as the most complete AVEPRR exemplar. The framework offers a culturally rooted, empirically grounded alternative to Western-centric leadership paradigms.