Tri Kaya Parisuda as an Ethical Framework for Cooperative Governance:Genealogy, Operationalization, and Its Relevance in Economic Studies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34199/ijracs.2026.10.02Keywords:
Tri Kaya Parisuda, Local Ethics, Cooperative Governance, Social Capital, Balinese CultureAbstract
This article examines Tri Kaya Parisuda as an ethical framework grounded in Balinese Hindu tradition and its relevance to contemporary economic and management contexts (promoting cooperative governance). The term Tri Kaya Parisuda, however, is not found in classical Indian Hindu texts; ethical constructs emphasizing harmony between thought, speech, and action, however, can be traced to the teachings of texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Manusmriti. The study adopts a qualitative interpretive perspective, mapping the genealogy of the term from India, through its adaptation in the Old Javanese tradition, to its final crystallization in Bali as an ethical, operational, and pedagogical system. Additionally, this study advances Tri Kaya Parisuda as an analytical framework that can be operationalized into research variables and explores its relevance to institutional economics, social capital theory, and cooperative governance. The results show that Tri Kaya Parisuda is both a normative ethical system and an institutional mechanism for protecting trust, transparency, and accountability in community-based economic institutions. The findings of the present study help advance the amalgamation of local wisdom with modernity in the social sciences, particularly in economics and management.
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