From Organizational Oneness to Organizational Wellness: The Role of Individuals, Teams, and Organizations from a Whole Systems Framework

Etymologically oneness (or wholeness) has roots in Anglo-Saxon language (originally named as hal) meaning healthy, whole, or holy (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 2005) while the Sanskrit root is ‘sampoorna’ meaning totality, completeness, and wholeness (Apte, 2004). Having roots in theories of physics and cosmology, on a personal level, oneness implies a sense of connectedness to our worlds (Miller, 2006) both social and physical, and to everything around us that represents life. The types of connections being defined are: 1. Intrapersonal, 2. Interpersonal, and 3. Transpersonal (Johnson, 2005). The human system is composed of four systems: Mind, body, emotion, and energy. Like an organization, a human is also a system, composed of parts, interrelationships between those parts, and something that goes beyond those interrelationships. An organization is another system, operating similarly, albeit on a larger scope. Therefore, humans are systems inside the organizational systems. Thinking about the humans as whole systems, considering them as active agents playing critical roles inside the organizations, we can think of the role of consciousness at all levels: individual, work unit/team level and organizational. For organizations to provide a healthy space for employees’ health and well-being, culture seems to be prominent. The relationship between personal-organizational wellness thus depends on many factors at different levels in terms of both structure and process.