Learning Organization: Senge’s “The Fifth Discipline”

Garvin, Edmondson, and Gino (106 paras. 1) argue that it is vital that companies should become learning organizations due the tougher competition, and shifting customer preferences. The authors argue that in learning organizations employees continually acquire, create, and transfer knowledge; consequently, helping their organizations acclimatize to the volatile business environment faster than their competitors.

The learning organization is applicable to business organizations in general and to the service sector in particular-academic, hospital organizations, or hotels (Senge 101). Garvin in an article published in the Harvard Business Review describes a learning organization as “an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge and modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge insight and insights” (Garvin et al. 106 par. 2).

Senge further argues that most organizations have difficulty in learning; therefore, to address the problem he identifies the seven learning disabilities:

I am in my position

According to this perspective, most employees view themselves as part of the system in which they have little or no influence at all. In this scenario employees are ho are expected to be loyal to their jobs, tend to confuse them with their own identity. Consequently, the employees are inclined to view their responsibilities as limited to the borders of their position. Senge argues that when people tend to focus only on their position, they lose the sense of collective responsibility and outcomes that result when all positions interact.

Moreover, such views by employees can lead to assumptions that a particular individual made the mistake, particularly when the outcomes are disappointing. Individuals must be able to learn, grow and analyze the process that interacts within the systems in order to improve the delivery of goods and services otherwise the organization of which they are part is bound to fail (Senge 106; Catron 5).

The enemy is out there

Senge argues that employees often tend to blame others particularly when something goes wrong in the organization. Humans have the inclination to find someone or something to lay blame on each time something thing goes wrong. The ‘enemy is out’ there syndrome essentially is a by-product of ‘I am my position’ perspective and the non-systematic ways through which employees look at the world. As argued in the first learning disability, when individuals focus on their position, they are often blinded and cannot see beyond the boundary of their positions and how their actions go beyond these perceived boundaries.

As a matter of fact, when the actions taken by individuals have negative consequences the doer of such actions often misperceive these problems as caused by others. When an organization has employees who are being swift in blaming others for their own mistakes, the organizations can not be able to address the cause of the problem. Therefore, employees must be able to take full responsibility for their actions and avoid blaming others if the organization is to succeed in changing what it is doing wrong.

The narrow role specifications make people to shift blame other people or departments. Unless individuals in the various departments see their place within the larger system, it will remain a challenge for organizations to address the problems within their spheres of operation ultimately leading to organization failure. The failure can only be adequately addressed by employees’ painful realization and recognition that they are the cause of their negative outcomes and not others (Senge 107).

The illusion of taking charge

Workplaces require managers who are proactive-those who make decisions and take actions to make things happen in the organization. Senge however argues that proactive leadership can also be very reactive in disguise. According to Senge true pro-activeness emanates from the worker’s and managers’ capability to realize their contribution to the problems facing them, that is, it is not an emotional state but a product of the individual’s way of thinking. Therefore, by managers becoming more aggressive combating ‘the enemy out there’ thinking that they are being pro-active, they are reacting. In their reactions to problems, the managers create an avenue for the problems to persist which if not urgently addressed may eventually cause organization failure (Senge 108).

The fixation of events

This disability conditions people to focus on the current ‘urgent’ day to day events that grab the attention of everyone in the organization, yet the real threats to the survival of the organization are the ones that are often