A Response to Senge's Ideas about Learning Organizations and Leadership
Extracted from the article "Peter Senge and the Learning Organization"
Smith, M. K. (2001) 'Peter Senge and the learning organization', the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm

Issues and problems
When making judgments about Peter Senge's work, and the ideas he promotes, we need to place his contribution in context. His is not meant to be a definitive addition to the 'academic' literature of organizational learning. Peter Senge writes for practicing and aspiring managers and leaders. The concern is to identify how interventions can be made to turn organizations into 'learning organizations'. Much of his, and similar theorists' efforts, have been 'devoted to identifying templates, which real organizations could attempt to emulate' (Easterby-Smith and Araujo 1999: 2). In this field some of the significant contributions have been based around studies of organizational practice, others have 'relied more on theoretical principles, such as systems dynamics or psychological learning theory, from which implications for design and implementation have been derived' (op. cU.). Peter Senge, while making use of individual case studies, tends to the latter orientation.

The most appropriate question in respect of this contribution would seem to be whether it fosters praxis - informed, committed action on the part of those it is aimed at? This is an especially pertinent question as Peter Senge looks to promote a more holistic vision of organizations and the lives of people within them. Here we focus on three aspects. We start with the organization.
Organizational imperatives. Here the case against Peter Senge is fairly simple. We can find very few organizations that come close to the combination of characteristics that he identifies with the learning organization. Within