TRANS4M COMMUNIVERSITY ASSOCIATES (TCA)
Introduction to Integral Theory & Practice
The whole integral approach as developed by Lessem and Schieffer is modelled on life itself and aspires to contribute to healing today's fragmented conflictual and often destructive individual organizational communal and societal ways of being. There is a disconnect. This is what they basically came up with. The integral here, refers to all these elements which is the individual, the organization, the community and society. They all work in separation and isolation from each other. The integral theory and practice that they develop provides a framework which supports individuals organizations, communities and societies to engage in carefully designed transformative process. It holds that each member of a social organism has a distinct task to contribute to the healthy evolution of the whole. This is why we call it a holistic as well as holistic approach to human development. This is equally relevant for the development of an individual, an organization and a community. It is also pertinent for the world at large where each society with its unique culture and people has a contributing role to play to humanity and the planet.
Introduction to Integral enterprise
The new integral form, therefore, involves the enterprise as a society builder, encompassing public and private, civic and animate sectors, rather than being a merely private profit maximiser. The transformed enterprise is characterised by an inclusive natural, that is, animate, cultural, which is civic, social, which is public, and economic private form. For us, what is key is the reintegration of the enterprise in a particular society, whereby it assumes a private-public-civic-animate form. Such a new form enables the enterprise to simultaneously evolve its community, consciousness, knowledge and sustainability. And such a fully integrated enterprise is aligned with the natural, cultural, technological and economic context it is embedded in, and it becomes an intrinsic society builder. Therefore, the role of organisation and societies is to participate in continuously creating and sustaining a common future in which resources and benefits encompass the integrity of the organisation or the society and incorporate as wide an arena as possible. The only way this can be done is when the society is simultaneously rooted or grounded in itself, while engaging with other societies and the larger environment to bifurcate or emerge into another form.