The Fifth Discipline

Peter M. Senge (b. 1947) is a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and the founder of the Society for Organizational Learning. Senge received a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from Stanford University and also studied philosophy. In the book, he describes his childhood desire to travel to space as an astronaut before he became interested in the science of systems. Despite the change in his career goals, he remained interested in space and soon befriended the astronaut Rusty Schweikart. After taking an interest is systems, Senge received a master of science degree in social systems modeling from MIT and a PhD in Management from MIT Sloan School of Management. Besides the two editions of The Fifth Discipline in 1990 and 2006, respectively, he has also written The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (1994), Schools that Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares about Education (2000), Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (2004), and Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, ‘Organizations, and Society’ (2005), the last of which he co-wrote with C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers.

In his study of systems and management, he has gained insight and knowledge from companies such as Shell, Hanover Insurance, Harley-Davidson, Kyocera, the World Bank, and BP, who have used organizational learning to the benefit of the companies and people outside the organizations.