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Introduction
We began the thought leader’s interview series to delve into a deeper understanding of the origins and evolution of learning organization theories and practices from the perspectives of those who remain at the forefront of developing the definitions and practices many of us use today. The objective was to construct transparency directly from interviews of those who laid the foundation. Ultimately, upon completion of interviews across multiple thought leaders, the aim was to synthesize the thought leaders’ comments and expand upon questions such as “what is a learning organization” and “what does it mean.” All these objectives remain intact as we begin our fourth interview in the series with Dr Peter Senge. Prior interviews include discussions with Victoria Marsick and Karen Watkins (Sidani and Reese, 2018a), Bob Garratt (Sidani and Reese, 2018b) and Michael Marquardt (Reese and Sidani, 2018).
Although Peter Senge requires no introduction to most everyone within the learning organization field, a brief list of his accomplishments provides readers a quick background. Dr Senge’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty biography succinctly outlines his many accomplishments in the field. Dr Senge currently holds a Senior Lecturer position within MIT’s Sloan School of Management and is a fellow of the J-WEL (world education lab). He co-founded the Academy of Systematic Change, a nonprofit organization focused on advancing the field of awareness-based system change to accelerate ecological, social and economic well-being, and was the founding chair of Society of Organizational Learning (SoL), a global network of organizations, researchers and consultants. Dr Senge’s current work focuses on shared understanding of complex problems that expand as far and wide as global food systems, climate change, education systems and regenerative economics.
Specifically, within the focused area of learning organizations, Dr Senge (1990) is most widely known as the author of The Fifth Discipline and coauthor of the related field books further introducing tools of trade. These books brought the learning organization notion mainstream. The Fifth Discipline alone is reported to have sold over 2 million copies and Harvard Business Review recognized the learning organization text as “one of the seminal management ideas of the past 75 years” while the Financial Times ranks the book as one of the five “most important” management books (https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/peter-m-senge). Dr Senge was also...