In today’s fast moving global environment, the rate at which organizational members learn and are able to use productively what they learn is its only sustainable source of competitive advantage.
The Learning Organization represents the new cure-all panacea in Corporate America. More evolved than past favorite catchphrases and concepts like empowerment, and Total Quality Management (TQM), the learning organization represents a new paradigm in corporate management and employee relations. The emphasis on leadership has changed: the emphasis is now on learned workers, community and the absence of the conventional lone hero model of management. Peter Senge, an academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helped evolve the paradigm in his book The Fifth Discipline, which gives primary importance to systems thinking, believes “the failure of past models—particularly, the collision of directive leadership with the development of ‘knowledge workers’ who may know more about relevant matters than their bosses—creates a need for ‘a community of leaders’ rather than the single ‘hero-leader’ idea that has long been so popular in Anglo-American business” (Trapp 4).
This analysis will examine the main concepts and ideas proposed in Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, before exploring how many of these concepts are incorporated into the organizational learning strategy introduced by Ford Motor Corporation. A conclusion will address a theory that argues Senge’s vision is somewhat incomplete by offering us a sixth discipline lacking in Senge’s theory.
While learning disabilities may be an impediment for success in the individual, they are disastrous in terms of the organization according to Peter Senge, in The Fifth Discipline. A manager may improve efficiency, cohesion and higher productivity through rejecting former models of management, like TQM and other methods that Senge argues only attack the symp...