Improving effectiveness of new construction management philosophy using the Integral Model

Abstract

Currently, most management approaches coming from engineering have been focused on the external world, it means, everything that can be seen (structures-processes-outcomes). This situation has created a low sustainability of these management approaches and tools, because they forget central aspects of people behavior both in individual and collective domains. Therefore, some efforts to integrate the organization’s inner and outer world have been carried out, with the aim of designing the organization’s inner world (personality-emotionality-values-culture) as a space that facilitate the incorporation of effective management practices focused on the external world, such as lean construction. This article describes and analyzes the revolutionary theory of integral vision proposed by Ken Wilber,
En la actualidad, la mayoría de los enfoques de gestión provenientes de la ingeniería se han centrado en el mundo exterior, o sea, todo lo que se puede ver (estructuras-procesos-resultados). Esta situación ha creado una baja sustentabilidad de estos enfoques y herramientas, pues olvidan aspectos centrales del comportamiento individual y colectivo de las personas. Dado esto, se han realizado diversos esfuerzos para integrar el mundo interior y exterior de la organización, con el objetivo de diseñar el mundo interior (personalidad, afectividad, valores, cultura) como un espacio que facilite la incorporación de prácticas de gestión eficaces centradas en el mundo exterior, como la construcción lean. Este artículo describe y analiza la revolucionaria teoría de la visión integral propuesta por Ken as a framework that embraces different insights, theories and practices in such a manner that strengthen the discipline of project management under lean construction perspective. A production planning and control tool termed Last Planner System, which is based on lean construction principles, is used to illustrate the impact of integral vision over lean construction and project management. As a conclusion, it can be argued that, if lean construction wants to evolve towards an effective management practice, needs to include some elements of integral vision, in order to make compatible human and technical development inside the organization or project. By doing so, lean construction has to strength research areas related to people, which so far has received little attention.