Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Second Edition

The Success of Senge’s TLO

Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline drew millions of readers and popularized the TLO concept. The book presented five techniques or ‘disciplines’ that Senge said ‘must be studied and mastered to be put into practice’ within a TLO (1990: 10). Senge defined TLOs 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.

The book sold over two and a half million copies, a result that encouraged Senge to say more about TLO. Over the following decade, he provided examples of the application of TLO principles in different contexts. In 1994, he and colleagues published The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization. It has sold over 400,000 copies. A second fieldbook came out in 1999 under the title The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations. In 2000, Senge co-authored Schools that Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents and Everyone Who Cares about Education. A revised version of the original Fifth Discipline appeared in 2006.

Senge created a compelling vision. Jackson (2000: 207) claimed the TLO concept had dramatic qualities and inspired ‘followers to see themselves actively engaged in building a learning organization.’ As popularity of the TLO concept ...