Improving the Effectiveness of New Construction Management Philosophies using the Integral Theory

Abstract

Currently, most management approaches coming from engineering focus on the external world, i.e. everything that can be seen (structures-processes-outcome). This situation has created low sustainability for 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, in order to design the organization’s inner world (personality-emotionality-values-culture) as a space that facilitates the incorporation of effective management practices focused on the external world, such as lean construction. This article describes and discusses the revolutionary theory of integral vision proposed by Ken Wilber, as a framework that embraces different insights, theories and practices in such a manner that strengthens the discipline of project management under the lean construction perspective. A production planning and control tool termed Last Planner System, which was 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, the inclusion of some elements of the integral vision is needed, in order to make human and technical development inside the organization or project compatible. To achieve the above, lean construction must strengthen those research areas related to people, which so far has received little attention. Key words: Integral vision, last planner, lean construction.