The engineer of the human corporati

The engineer of the human corporation
Peter Senge has influence. The Fifth Discipline, which encapsulated Prof Senge’s ideals about organizational change, personal development and more besides, has sold close to a million copies. The Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), these days the main focus of his energies, count BP, Shell, Hewlett-Packard and Intel among its supporters. So, how did a business school academic – he remains a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts – end up pursuing an agenda that centres on ‘the interdependent development of people and their organizations as responsible and effective global citizens’?
‘Remember that my training is in engineering, not management’ he says.’ I trained as an engineer because it was the best way of learning about systems. This field- systems- seemed to me to address the problem: the world was becoming more and more interdependent, we were creating these patterns of interdependence, and yet we didn’t know how to understand that. We were simply blind’.
Prof Senge’s ambition remain to apply systems thinking to human systems: societies, organizations and companies. It was an urge that led him in the 1980s to seek out Chris Argyris, of Harvard Business School, and Edgar schein of MIT Sloan-leaders of the ‘organizational development’ movement. For Prof Argyris, this mean persuading managers to question the politics, back-biting and ‘defensive routine’ that so negatively affect corporate life. For Prof Schein, it means recognizing the importance of ‘culture’, the unspoken assumptions and established processes that dictate individual behavior in organizations.
It was from this mix of ingredients that Prof Senge produce The Fifth Discipline. The first four disciplines are: •‘personal mastery’ (broadly, a commitment to your own and other people’s full development)
•‘mental models’ (reflecting upon and questioning assumptions)
•‘shared vision’ (‘a force in people’s hearts’)
•‘team learning’(or teamwork)
Systems thinking is the fifth discipline – a way of thinking about problems that brings together the other ingredients and allow for real organizational development.
The influent of The Fifth Discipline is undeniable. As well as launching the ‘organizational learning’ movement, it gave new force to the argument that the most effective organizations are also the most humane. You do not need to be a true believer to acknowledge that the ideals are intriguing. They challenge managers to think deeply not only about their own role but also about corporate goals and purpose. The question is whether the techniques laid out in The Fifth Discipline have really helped organizations become more effective.
Prof Senge point to SoL’s ‘sustainability consortium’, a group of companies working to take environmentally unfriendly materials out of their supply chains, as systems thinking and ‘shared vision’ in action. Others are less convinced. Says Prof Schein:’It is by no means clear that making organizations more humane, making them worth being part of, will work in the larger Darwinian scheme of things’

Результаты (русский) 1:

Инженер человеческой корпорации Питер Сенге имеет влияние. Пятая дисциплина, инкапсулированный проф Сенге идеалы об организационных перемен, развития личности и многое другое, было продано около миллиона копий. Общество для организационного обучения (SoL), в эти дни основное внимание его энергий, граф BP, Shell, Hewlett-Packard и Intel среди своих сторонников. Итак, как же бизнес школа академической – он остается старшим преподавателем в Массачусетс – в конечном итоге реализации повестки дня, что центры по «взаимозависимого развития людей» и их организаций, как ответственные и эффективные глобальные граждане? «Помните, что мое обучение в машиностроении, не управления»,-говорит он.» Тренировался как инженер, потому что это был лучший способ узнать о системах. Это поле - системы - мне казалось, для решения проблемы: мир становится все более взаимозависимым, мы создавали эти модели взаимозависимости и все же мы не знали, как понять, что. Мы были просто слепым». Prof Senge’s ambition remain to apply systems thinking to human systems: societies, organizations and companies. It was an urge that led him in the 1980s to seek out Chris Argyris, of Harvard Business School, and Edgar schein of MIT Sloan-leaders of the ‘organizational development’ movement. For Prof Argyris, this mean persuading managers to question the politics, back-biting and ‘defensive routine’ that so negatively affect corporate life. For Prof Schein, it means recognizing the importance of ‘culture’, the unspoken assumptions and established processes that dictate individual behavior in organizations. It was from this mix of ingredients that Prof Senge produce The Fifth Discipline. The first four disciplines are: •‘personal mastery’ (broadly, a commitment to your own and other people’s full development) •‘mental models’ (reflecting upon and questioning assumptions) •‘shared vision’ (‘a force in people’s hearts’) •‘team learning’(or teamwork) Systems thinking is the fifth discipline – a way of thinking about problems that brings together the other ingredients and allow for real organizational development. The influent of The Fifth Discipline is undeniable. As well as launching the ‘organizational learning’ movement, it gave new force to the argument that the most effective organizations are also the most humane. You do not need to be a true believer to acknowledge that the ideals are intriguing. They challenge managers to think deeply not only about their own role but also about corporate goals and purpose. The question is whether the techniques laid out in The Fifth Discipline have really helped organizations become more effective. Prof Senge point to SoL’s ‘sustainability consortium’, a group of companies working to take environmentally unfriendly materials out of their supply chains, as systems thinking and ‘shared vision’ in action. Others are less convinced. Says Prof Schein:’It is by no means clear that making organizations more humane, making them worth being part of, will work in the larger Darwinian scheme of things’