Senge’s Learning Organization: Development of the Learning Organization Model

Abstract

Despite a number of critics, Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization is one of the best-selling books on management of all time. This chapter revisits Senge’s learning organization by looking at how the idea has been conceptualized since its publication. Consequently, it aims to further develop a more holistic model of Senge’s learning organization philosophy that can enable systematic evaluation of the process of creating a learning organization. In detail, it attempts to develop all possible antecedents for the five disciplines of a learning organization, namely personal mastery, mental models, team learning, shared vision, and systems thinking mainly based on what has been developed in the literature so far. This conceptual framework is expected to assist both practitioners and researchers in building learning organizations.