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This special issue of The Learning Organization journal reflects upon 30 years of impact resulting from Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. The articles within this issue discuss the influence of Senge’s groundbreaking work in which he integrated system thinking into learning organization constructs. Just as much of Senge’s work originated from practice and experimentation, many of the articles within this issue test Senge’s five disciplines against organizational change and practical applications over the past three decades. For a practitioner, this issue holds many benefits in understanding how theories created in the 1980s still apply in the modern world. One can walk away from the issue with an understanding of how in an ever-changing, fast-paced world, Senge’s five disciplines remain resilient in many areas unthought of when the groundbreaking book first hit the bookshelves in 1990.
For those less familiar with Dr Senge or his book, he is recognized by the Journal of Business Strategy as one of the 24 people who had the greatest influence on business strategy in the twentieth century (https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/peter-m-senge). And his book, which has sold over two million copies, has been recognized by both Harvard Business Review as “one of the seminal management ideas of the last 75 years” and Financial Times as one of the five “most important” management books (https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/peter-m-senge). The Fifth Discipline originated from over 10 years of work Dr Senge and his colleagues conducted through both practical experiments conducted with participating companies and a series of senior management forums. These origins of the book lead nicely to practical application because at its foundation, the book was built from practical reflection. In this issue of The Learning Organization, the authors of each article set out to reflect on what may have changed in the five disciplines, namely, shared vision, system thinking, mental models, team learning and personal mastery, and how those five disciplines have or have not remained resilient during the past three decades.
Before assessing the past 30 years, a good starting point is to read the interview article with Dr Senge. Reese (2020), in “Taking the learning organization mainstream and beyond the organizational level: an interview with Peter Senge,” provides the reader a view, in Senge’s own...