Skip to content
Practice Problems

Peter Senge On The Challenges Of Creating a Learning Organization

Struggling with Senge�s theories? Get Assignment Answers here!

Preview 3 of 9 pages

See the first 3 pages exactly as they appear in the document.

  1. Page 1
    Read page 1 as text

    Peter Senge on the Challenges of Creating a Learning Organization In the article “Why Organizations Still Aren’t Learning,” Peter Senge discusses the challenges organizations face in implementing the concept of a learning organization. Based on Senge's perspective, what are the key barriers preventing companies from becoming successful learning organizations? How do Senge’s five disciplines (systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning) help address these challenges? In your response, critically analyze how Senge’s ideas can be applied in modern organizational settings. (Word count: 600 - 800 words)

  2. Page 2
  3. Page 3
    Read page 3 as text

    Peter Senge sounds off on easy answers, the cult of the CEO, and other nuisances that stand in the way of the learning organization. It is a whole lot easier to talk about a "learning organization" than to create one. Peter M. Senge knew that even in 1990, when he introduced the concept to the business world in his landmark book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Doubleday/Currency). But a decade of feverish effort on the part of Senge and his many disciples has shown the task to be considerably more formidable than he anticipated. The frustration shows in the subtitle of his latest book, The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations (Doubleday/Currency, 1999), co - authored with several colleagues. The Fifth Discipline sold 650,000 copies, a home run by business - book standards, and catapulted Senge, director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, into the first rank of management gurus. In that book, he described the successful organization of the future as an "organism" with the developed capacity to continually enhance its capabilities and shape its own future. At its core, a learning organization is a company, association, church, school or government agency that understands itself as a complex, organic system. It has a conscious vision and purpose. It is aware of its feedback systems and alignment mechanisms, and deliberate about the way it uses them. Throughout the 1990s, the learning organization has been a particular cause celebre for trainers and organization development specialists, and not just because "learning" is in the name. Trainers also are attracted to Senge's championship of human values in the workplace, to his view that teams are the core performance units in organizations, and to his insistence that leadership is something that occurs at many levels in an organization, not just in the executive suite. Indeed, he argues that line managers and even non - managers must function as leaders in order for any meaningful and lasting organizational change to occur. At 51, Senge maintains his position at MIT, has a busy consulting practice, and is a member of the Society for Organizational Learning, a research group comprising both companies and individuals. But for all the action and energy around the idea of the learning organization, it remains a slippery concept to put into practice. TRAINING's senior editor Ron Zemke caught up with Senge by phone. TRAINING: What bottom - line results are you seeing that can be attributed to people putting your ideas to work in their organizations?

6 more pages in the full document

Unlock it once and it stays in your library, ready to chat with or turn into flashcards.

Unlock the full document

More Organizational Behavior study materials

See all

Study this document with CramX

Once it is in your library, every tool can work from it.