Page 192 - E2 Integrated Workbook STUDENT 2018

Chapter 13

7.3 Learning organisations – Senge

A learning organisation is an organisation skilled at creating, acquiring and
transferring knowledge and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and
insights. It is an organisation that facilitates the learning of all its members and
continuously transforms itself.

Learning organisations encourage questions and explicitly recognise mistakes as
part of the learning process. They encourage testing and experimentation. Because
they want to find new answers they recognise that failed answers are as important as
successful ones.

Peter Senge outlines five disciplines that individuals and groups should be
encouraged to learn to create a learning organisation.

 Systems thinking – is the ability to see particular problems as part of a wider
whole and to devise appropriate solutions to them.

 Personal learning and growth – individuals should be encouraged to acquire
skills and knowledge.

 Mental models – are deeply ingrained assumptions that determine what people
think, e.g. a marketing group may think that price is more important than quality.
Learning organisations can use a number of group techniques to make these
models explicit and to challenge them.

 A shared vision that does not filter knowledge which undermines learning.

 Team learning – teams must be trained to learn because there are factors in
group dynamics that impede learning.

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