The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization

Peter M. Senge

Doubleday/Currency, 1990 - Business & Economics - 423 pages

An MIT Professor's pathbreaking book on building "learning organizations" -- corporations that overcome inherent obstacles to learning and develop dynamic ways to pinpoint the threats that face them and to recognize new opportunities. Not only is the learning organization a new source of competitive advantage, it also offers a marvelously empowering approach to work, one which promises that, as Archimedes put it, "with a lever long enough... single-handed I can move the world."

"Forget your old, tired ideas about leadership. The most successful corporation of the 1990s will be something called a learning organization." -- "Fortune Magazine."

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - scottjpearson - LibraryThing

This book is the seminal statement of systems thinking – the philosophic idea that knowledge is increasingly aligned in groups of thought. And the goal of systems thinking is to produce an ...

User Review -

For a relatively old book (for business learning) the book itself and the 5 disciplines cover a wide area of business and are applicable still today. Senge describes the disciplines and even though he focuses on his prediction of the learning organizations, he seems to have presented the best topics in the other areas of the book around system thinking, management of a dynamic and "learning" organization. He presents great stories, covers excellent aspects of timeless management theory. Its a very great read to help broaden your thinking and impact in any organization. 

Contents

• II: 3
• III: 17
• IV: 27

About the author

PETER M. SENGE is the founding chairperson of the Society for Organizational Learning and a senior lecturer at MIT. He is the co-author of "The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, The Dance of Change," and "Schools That Learn "(part of the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook series)" "and has lectured extensively throughout the world. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization; A Currency paperback; Currency Doubleday Books
• Author: Peter M. Senge
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Doubleday/Currency, 1990
• ISBN: 0385260954, 9780385260954
• Length: 423 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Organizational Behavior