Dear readers,
in a column - in Dutch, i'm afraid,
http://www.democracy-online.org/community/lerende_organisatie.htm
Veerle Rooze publishes her essay on Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline. She
motivates her writing as a consequence of the perceived enthousiasm
with students for this book and its concepts. She tries to prove that
the LO is a kind of religion - assuming that a relegion is a kind of
form and quite independent of a content.
The LO provides for:
- identification with a group
- support in times of insecurity
- comfort when we're disappointed
- goals and a vision (paradise) of the future
- community feelings
- elements for aquiring personal identity
- goals and means for conquering guilt
She notes that The Fifth Discipline contains all or most of the important
Christian values (integrity, freedom, loyality, openness, forgiveness) but
lacks a normative framework. Here she is not very clear. I get the
impression that she says something like: LO promotes uninhibited learning,
but one can learn to supress, to stifle people as easy as learning people
to grow, to develop. Senge assumes that the latter will be the case and
doesn't say anything of LO as means of suppression, physic prisons and the
like. She notes - in my words - that the ideas of the LO have a narcotic
effect on (MBA) students: the LO is the opium of the business community.
She invites comments.
What do you think? Are we the disciples of a new faith? Is LO great and
Senge its prophet?
Kind regards,
Jan Lelie
--Jan Lelie <janlelie@wxs.nl>
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