The Fifth Discipline

Autor: Peter Senge

The Fifth Discipline brings word of “learning organizations,” organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. Five disciplines are described as the means of building learning organizations. Case studies are provided to show how the disciplines have worked in particular companies.

The need for learning organizations is due to business becoming more complex, dynamic, and globally competitive. Excelling in a dynamic business environment requires more understanding, knowledge, preparation, and agreement than one person’s expertise and experience provides. David Garvin of Harvard University says that “Continuous improvement requires a commitment to learning.”

The five disciplines are:

  • systems thinking
  • personal mastery
  • mental models
  • shared vision
  • team learning

The first three disciplines have particular application for the individual participant, and the last two have group application. The author writes of the disciplines that these might just as well be called the leadership disciplines as the learning disciplines. Those who excel in these areas will be the natural leaders of learning organizations. Systems thinking has the distinction of being the “fifth discipline” since it serves to make the results of the other disciplines work together for business benefit.

The Fifth Discipline as a book consists of five parts – business setting that calls for change, systems thinking, four other disciplines, case studies, and final thoughts about future disciplines and the possible effect of learning organizations. In an additional section the systems thinking archetypes are explained.

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