This review has been accessed  times since June 1, 2000
Senge, Peter M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and
Practice of the Learning. New York: Doubleday
vii + 424pp.
$26.25 (cloth) ISBN: 0-3852-6094-6
$18.95 (paper) ISBN: 0-3852-6095-4
Reviewed by Eric Brown
Ohio University and Chillicothe City Schools
June 1, 2000
Significant improvements in schools have often been expected
to result simply from staff development programs designed to
train individual teachers to perform in effective ways. A
compelling argument from recent years, however, has been that the
success of students
depends upon a school's ability to improve itself as an
organization as well as to promote the development of individual
teachers. One of the strategies gaining popularity as demands
for school improvement have increased is systems thinking.
According to proponents of systems thinking, a thoughtful
understanding of the dynamic interactions in educational
organizations is critical if educators are to make decisions
about school improvement that are likely to succeed.
The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge, Director of the
Center for Organizational Learning at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Sloan School of Management, has been an influential
and popular work among business professionals. Because
educational leaders—for good and ill—continue to look
to business for new information about management, the book has
also had an impact on the way educational administrators view
school leadership.
In the The Fifth Discipline, Senge lays out plans for
cultivating a "learning organization," one that constitutes an
alternative to traditional hierarchical organizations. He
describes "learning organizations" as "organizations where people
continually expand their capacity to create the results they
truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are
nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where
people are continually learning how to learn together" (p. 3).
The book details five "disciplines" that serve as guides for
creating learning organizations. And to demonstrate how these
five disciplines have worked in major corporations, Senge makes
extensive use of case studies.
According to Senge, learning organizations are needed because
businesses are now competing in an economy that is becoming more
complicated, vibrant, and globally oriented. He argues that for
organizations to be successful in this challenging global
economy, they need to make extensive use of a "learning
approach," a practice not typically undertaken in traditional
authoritarian organizations. Senge claims that organizations
need to be more understanding, more knowledgeable, and better
prepared. To accomplish these improvements, in Senge's view,
organizations must cultivate and learn from the ideas and
expertise of their various members.
The keys to transforming organizations from traditional
authoritarian to "learning" modes are the five disciplines:
systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision,
and team learning. The first three of these disciplines are
intended to be used by individuals in an organization, while the
last two disciplines are intended to be used by groups within the
organization. Concerning the five disciplines, Senge claims,
"these might just as well be called the leadership disciplines as
the learning disciplines. Those who excel in these areas will be
the natural leaders of learning organizations" (p. 359). The
author writes that of the disciplines, systems thinking has the
distinction of being designated as the "fifth discipline,"
because it strengthens organizations by binding the other four
disciplines together.
Senge divides the book into five sections. In the first
section, he lays out the claim that human beings are empowered
and can create their own realities. He contends that business
organizations have the power to control their futures and that
the solutions to the difficulties confronting business
organizations are within their reach. Then Senge explains the
concept of leverage within a system, pointing out the presence of
leverage points where small efforts can have significant results.
In chapter three, Senge uses an example—"the beer game"
—to explain these claims further. By means of this example,
he demonstrates how rational individuals within a system can be
overwhelmed by problems of the system. These problems result
from individual actions taken without regard to the overall
dynamics of the system. As is the case in most organizations, to
succeed in the beer game, a player must work to help the other
players (or participants in the system) succeed.
Based on the dynamics elucidated in this example, Senge
proceeds to describe the "fifth discipline," systems thinking.
He explains how systems thinking requires the understanding that
relationships are not always linear: whereas many relationships
embed causality, complex relationships embed circular chains of
causality. Senge claims that, because of the growing complexity
of modern society, systems thinking is needed even more today
than it was in the past.
Further exploring the ramifications of systems thinking,
Senge explains how organizational structures produce specific
behaviors. The reason that structural explanation is important,
he claims, is that it shows the underlying causes of behavior at
a point where the pattern of behavior can be changed, in other
words at the leverage point. Importantly, Senge argues that by
reorienting individuals' decision-making, one is able to modify
the system's structure.
In the eighth chapter of the text, Senge provides a case
study to illustrate the problems that arise when an organization
fails to understand how underlying structures affect the
organizational system as a whole. This example concerns the rise
and decline of People Express Airlines. According to Senge, this
organization's growth was limited by its own structure of under-
investment. Moreover, limitation of growth constitutes one of
Senge's structural archetypes, a recurring pattern that impedes
organizational success.
Critique of The Fifth Discipline
Despite the use of this and other case studies, Senge fails
to provide adequate empirical evidence to support any of his
claims. The examples that he presents are narrowly focused,
mainly concerning the histories of individual corporations. But
despite a method of warrant based on case studies only, Senge
argues that the dynamics he uncovers apply to all organizations.
To make such assertions legitimately, Senge would need to base
his claims on more thorough and systematic research.
Another serious problem with the argument concerns the
process of identifying the most appropriate points of leverage
within a system. In fact, Senge fails to provide an adequate
explanation of how individuals discern the correct points of
leverage. Instead, he waffles, "There are no simple rules for
finding high-leverage changes, but there are ways of thinking
that make it more likely. Learning to see underlying
'structures' rather than 'events' is a starting point" (p. 65).
According to Senge, individuals must rely on intuition and a
developed understanding of systems and structures to determine
appropriate points of leverage.
Nevertheless, with no sure way to locate correct points of
leverage, there is no way to know if such points really exist.
For example, one might think one has found a point of leverage.
But failure to effect important change via that lever would
suggest that it was not a true leverage point after all. This
type of argument is, of course, circular. Leverage points are
those that promote improvement, but improvement is the only way
to know if one has really found a leverage point.
Another of Senge's central arguments is that organizations
need to build on the collective experiences and learning of
individuals at all levels. He reasons that, if organizations are
to become learning organizations, their individual members need
to shift their ways of thinking. They need to see that they are
connected to the world, understand how they affect the world, and
acknowledge that they can play a key role in solving their own
problems.
Senge claims that a leader who wants to create lasting change
needs to adopt systems thinking. This systemic perspective,
Senge further contends, allows the leader to understand that his
of her actions may produce consequences, some of which are
negative in nature, beyond the immediate outcomes of those
action. For this reason, change agents needs to have an
understanding of their organizations at the structural level. If
the system's dynamics are not fully understood, attempts to make
improvement will be impeded by hidden structures within the
system, structures that tend to perpetuate stagnation or even
failure.
One major problem with this approach to fostering change is
that leaders may find it extremely difficult to determine where a
system begins and ends. Any given system is most often a
subsystem of yet a larger system. A problem thus arises in
determining the boundaries of the system one needs to analyze.
On the one hand, if a leader chooses to focus his or her analysis
narrowly, then he or she may pass over dynamics relevant to the
success of the organization. On the other hand, interpreting the
system's boundaries broadly may make the system's
interrelationships too complex to analyze.
This concern is especially relevant to educational
organizations, which tend to be shaped over time by numerous
internal and external influences. As a result of (or perhaps in
response to) the variety of competing influences, school systems
seem to achieve a certain kind of equilibrium. Whereas the
fulcrum of such systems may change somewhat over time, the
dynamics tend to remain stable. This type of stability offers
effective resistance to change initiatives generated either from
outside or from within such systems. For fundamental and lasting
change to occur in educational organizations, therefore,
widespread cultural changes are necessary. And these changes
must take place within systems so broad that they defy analysis.
Relevance of The Fifth Discipline to Education
My initial reaction to The Fifth Discipline was skepticism.
I said to myself, "here is another model from the business world
that is being foisted on educational organizations." I was
concerned that, once again, a business model would not truly fit
educational organizations, where the products of the work are
human beings. After recovering from these initial reactions to
the book, however, I found that Senge's central claims were worth
considering. Construed broadly, systems thinking seems to match
the—albeit difficult to analyze—dynamics of schooling.
I also agreed with several of Senge's supporting points. In
particular, I found merit in his view that organizations ought to
enhance the collective capacity of their members. Enabling
organizational members to develop and implement an overarching
vision focuses the organization's attention on aims that, through
negotiation, are found to be worthy. And vision, derived from
such negotiation, tends to be shared widely by participants.
Unfortunately, many educational administrators take
approaches to leadership that are more traditional and
individualistic than those Senge proposes. By doing so, they
restrict the involvement of all members of the organization,
thereby limiting opportunities for organizational learning. Both
teachers and students, however, would benefit from a more
inclusive approach.
With respect to adult learning, the traditional approach
(i.e., the "staff development" approach) narrowly focuses
attention on the skills of individual teachers. Commonly,
teachers are sent to workshops and other in-service events to
acquire new ideas. Rarely, however, does this approach
incorporate meaningful, enduring follow-up. In order to build
"learning organizations," school leaders must begin to think of
professional growth, not in terms of workshops, but in terms of
on-going learning at the school site. Changes in the culture of
schools will be necessary to counter the norms of teacher
isolation and curricular fragmentation. These features of school
culture are ingrained; and they impede efforts to promote
collaborative learning among administrators, teachers, parents,
and others involved in the school enterprise.
I also agree with Senge's notion that organizations,
including schools and school districts, need to become "learning
organizations" if they are to succeed in the future. A major
problem confronting those who attempt to foster educational
improvements is the fragmentation that exists in the present
educational system. Senge's insight that fragmentation causes
people at different levels within organizations to feel that they
lack sufficient power to bring about necessary change is salient
to this issue. In my opinion many good and useful proposals fail
to be implemented because people don't believe that their ideas
could be acted upon in our current educational organizations.
Leaders in educational organizations need to take chances if
they wish to foster improvement. Because schools and districts
have linkages to many different levels of the educational system,
it is especially important that they establish common goals
unifying and authorizing the work of all those involved. Having
a common vision helps each participant—irrespective of his
or her level in the organization—coordinate efforts with
others in the school, district, or school-community. Indeed a
common vision is the cornerstone of the learning organization,
for it defines the proper nature of the organization's work. And
an organization must understand what work it is to accomplish
before it can consider ways to improve its performance in
accomplishing that work. Thus, by making shared vision the
central feature of the learning organization, one can readily
shape Senge's dynamic systems theory into a workable model for
promoting school improvement.
|
