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Integration

 

March 31, 2006

  • Integration of functions is based on integration of existence. The existence of a company can be brought under several heads as 1) the functional, 2) structural, 3) existential points of view.
  • Before integrating the functions, they must be coordinated. In a college, the timetable magnificently coordinates 1) classes, 2) rooms,3) subjects, 4) periods, 5) teachers, so that each student's preference is taken care of. This is a functional coordination in Time and Space.
  • As the standardisation of parts of a machine helped the trade to spread worldwide while making the efficient functioning of the individual machine possible, it is obvious for any type of integration in a company the following must be given thought to and standardised wherever necessary:

- The various functions in different departments must be of the same level of efficiency. (Typists who type at 15 words a minute in some departments can upset work in other departments).

- Normal flow of work in all the departments must be of the same speed.

- Should fast functioning machines be used in a section, it must be extended to all sections.

- Speed, skill, efficiency, level of organisation, flow of work, standard of gadgets utilised need certain attention with a view to standardise before integration or even coordination is taken up.

- Integration can be best described as a centralised existence of the most possible decentralised functioning - till each individual item is a centre by itself.

- The same is true of energy levels in different segments.

- While cooperation and coordination are of organisation, integration is of the culture of life in the company. Hence attitudes and motives acquire greatest significance.

- One who wants to THINK of integration in a company will do well to conceive of integration of work in the society. On closer analysis, the most disparate or diverse functions can be seen to be tied together by invisible social forces in the subtle plane.

- Integration is a great concept, and when implemented, a great power.

  • Electric apparatus made in another country is to be readapted to local standards of voltage, wattage, ampere which need adjustment. There are some adapters. Social energy in work cutting across culture or function needs such adjustment in intensity, speed of flow, density of composition, etc. For a permanent integration, standardisation of each trait is to be installed.

 

IAS officers recruited by a central Delhi agency - Public Service Commission - work in the states, centre, quasi government institutions, embassies and are interchangeable sometimes. Over a couple of centuries the ground rules are fixed. Rules for change are fixed. About their salary, they draw it themselves irrespective of the government in which they work, as it is managed by a statutory authority beyond the control of the agency under which they serve. In an office, there are rules, procedures, customs, usage, local habits, cultural habits of the individuals. Many are fixed, others are flexible. Even the flexible ones would get fixed somewhere or somehow. OBSERVE a company in a foreign culture and imagine how it differs from your own culture. Then go behind the culture to the first principles of force, energy, skill, power, etc. Reduce each to its primary strand. See at what level they can cooperate, what is the level needed by coordination. Move them to integration and visualise each aspect, each trait, in that intensity needed for integration. Suppose there is an integrated organisation.

  • Enumerate all these in that organisation.
  • Put them on a scale.
  • Put your own organisation on the same scale.
  • Work out how one can rise to the level of the other.
  • That transition is a science executed artistically.
  • Integration is vision of the work of the whole in terms of the parts where parts emerge as a whole.
  • Also the whole, by an integration functioning, will discover it is after all a part of a greater whole.
  • Greater wholes are work, life, universal life, existence and the final status of no work reached through Non-Being.
  • For us, when a company realises itself as a part of its trade, business, national economy, cultural life, it is great.



story | by Dr. Radut