Learning Organisation or Learning

Community? A Critique of Senge

Michael Fielding

This paper takes a close look at a central aspect of the work of Peter Senge,' namely his advocacy of the
learning organisation and the 'Communities of Commitment' that he suggests are its central dynamic.
Echoing strands of the liberal-communitarian debate, Senge argues for 'the primacy of the whole' and 'the
community nature of the self as two of the three Galilean shifts2 which have the potential to enable
business to accomplish fundamental changes in our ways of thinking and being which have thus far eluded
other agencies of social and political transformation. My concern is that Senge is not at all clear about the
relationship between organisation and community, or, indeed, what community actually is. Arguing that
his account is disappointingly partial and damagingly flawed, I then suggest a number of sites for future
philosophical work for those who wish to develop an emancipatory notion of community. I end by
advocating the work of John Macmurray as a major source of philosophical insight and human wisdom,
both with regard to community and the development of a person-centred philosophy of work. A second
paper will explore some of his ideas on these matters more fully.

Introduction

Dilemmas facing UK policy makers in the fields of education, business and social policy are more
profound than they themselves appear to acknowledge. Certainly within education there seems to
be a predilection for the superficial and the smartly opportunistic, typified by an increasingly
intemperate and insistent repetition of 'what works'. We are urged, for example, by the head of the
Standards and Effectiveness Unit at the DfES to 'throw away' Marx3 and ignore 'academic
definitions (of the learning society)....being concocted in journals that nobody reads'.4 This
regrettable anti-intellectual petulance and the seemingly irresistible pull of populism, typical of
virtually every sphere of our professional and public life, is deeply disappointing since the challenges
that confront us merit an intellectual engagement commensurate with the difficulties we face. As I

1
See Senge, P The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization Century Business, London
1990; Senge, P 'The Leaders New Work: Building Learning Organisations' Sloan Management Review 22 (1)
Fall 1990 pp 7-23; Senge, P 'The Learning Organization Made Plain' Training & Development October 1991
pp 37-44; Kofman F & Senge P M 'Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations'
Organizational Dynamics 22 (2) Autumn 1993 pp 5-23; Senge P, Roberts C, Ross R C, Smith B J, & Kleiner A
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization Nicholas Brealey, London
1994; Senge P, Kleiner A, Roberts C, Ross R, Roth G, & Smith B The Dance of Change: The Challenges of
Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations Nicholas Brealey, London 1999; and O'Neil J 'On Schools as
Learning Organisations: A Conversation with Peter Senge' Educational Leadership 52 (7) April 1995 pp 20-23.
Senge is not, of course, alone in developing and promoting the notion of a learning organisation. The literature
is now substantial.
For a useful, short overview see Jones A & Hendry C 'The Learning Organization: Adult Learning and
Organizational Transformation' British Journal of Management 5, 1994 pp 153-162. They locate the emergence
of the term (though not the idea) in the USA with Hayes R H, Wheelwright S C, & Clark K B Dynamic
Manufacturing: Creating the Learning Organization Free Press, New York 1988. In the UK they locate the term's
emergence with Pedler M, Burgoyne J, & Boydell T The Learning Company Project: A Report on Work
Undertaken October 1987 to April 1988 The Training Agency, Sheffield 1988; Pedler M, Burgoyne T & Boydell
T Towards the Learning Company' Management Education & Development 20 (1) 1989 pp 1-8; and Pedler M,
Burgoyne T & Boydell T The Learning Company: A Strategy for Sustainable Development McGraw Hill,
London 1991. In this paper I will be drawing primarily, though by no means exclusively, on Kofman & Senge's
'Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations' (1993) since, as the title suggests, it
provides one of Senge's most focused treatments of community and its place in the learning organisation
2
Kofman & Senge op citl993 p 7
3
Barber, M 'No More Marx. Future success is in your imagination' Times Educational Supplement April 3, 1998
p 20
4
Barber, M 'Chelsea scores an own goal for learning society' Times Educational Supplement March 6, 1998 p 22

Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001 17

 Michael Fielding

have argued elsewhere,5 our main tasks are intellectual, not practical, or at least they have to be
intellectual before they become practical. We cannot solve the practical tasks facing our society
unless we embrace the intellectual tasks on whose resolution the success or otherwise of our practical
endeavours depends. We are operating in the wrong frame of reference and as a consequence our
lives will continue to become more busy, more exhausting, less humanly productive or satisfying and
increasingly devoid of meaning.

The most important issue at the heart of our dilemmas concerns the nature and place of community
in our economic, cultural and political life. It is centrally important because any adequate
understanding of community must, by its very nature, rest upon our most fundamental notions of
what it is to be and become a person. Thus John Gardner's suggestion that 'Wholeness
incorporating diversity is the transcendent goal of our time, the task of our generation - close to
home and worldwide'6 captures both the hope and the challenge of community that faces us in the
daily workings of our society.

A powerful exemplification of the dilemmas we face can be found in the twin notions of the
learning organisation and the learning community. Often used interchangeably, it is becoming
increasingly clear that they are, in fact, quite different notions and that the conflation of the two is
not only unhelpful but potentially destructive of the very things they aspire to create. Organisations
and communities are not at all the same thing, but they are related. And yet we continue to be
puzzled as to what their differences are, how they might be most productively and satisfyingly put to
work.

I approach these issues through the work of Peter Senge, who, as much as any other, has been
responsible for the virtual hegemony of 'the learning organisation' as an intellectual and practical
motif generative of much that has been imaginative and powerfully productive within the world of
business and education in the last decade. Whilst enjoying much of Senge's energy and commitment
and whilst acknowledging the importance of his challenge to much that is both dreary and
misleading in the field, my concern is that his understanding of community is disappointingly
partial and damagingly flawed. The first main section of this paper, 'The Generative Dialectic of
Organisational and Self Transformation', briefly articulates some of the key features of Senge's work
on organisation and community before raising six main issues which give rise to concern The second
and final section 'Beyond Critique: Four Possibilities and an Inspiration', takes stock and, in positive
vein, suggests a number of sites for future philosophical work central to furthering the
understanding and aspirations of those who wish to develop an emancipatory notion of community
which is attentive enough to the multiple demands of diversity and profound enough in its
commitment to an inclusive, rather than an exclusive, unity within an increasingly fractured
postmodernity. The paper closes by briefly advocating the work of John Macmurray as a major and
unjustifiably neglected source of philosophical insight and human wisdom, both with regard to
community and the development of a person-centred philosophy of work. A second paper will
explore his ideas more fully.

1 The Generative Dialectic of Organisational and Self Transformation

Senge, Community and the Learning Organisation

Before looking at Senge's account of a learning community it is important to try to get clear what he
means by a learning organisation. For Senge, it is best understood as "a group of people continually
enhancing their capacity to create what they want to create". 7 It is thus a collective undertaking
which is about fostering the creative process in ways which underscore the importance of human

5
Fielding, M 'Taking Education Really Seriously: Four Years Hard Labour' in Fielding, M (ed) Taking Education
Really Seriously: Four Years Hard Labour Routledge Falmer, London 2001 pp 1-14
6
Gardner, J W Building Community Independent Sector, New York 1991 p 15
7
Senge 1991 loc cit p 42

18 Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001

 Learning Organisation or Learning Community?

agency. His choice of language is revealing here. The learning organisation is not a monolithic or
alienating undertaking; it involves people acting in concert with one another in ways which are
essentially creative. It is not an event or a thing; it is about a never-ending process of increasing
developmental capacity. It is not a mechanistic process driven by impersonal external forces; it is
about people making choices about creating what they want to create - hence Senge's notion of
'generative' learning which is not a reactive response to external pressure, but an anticipatory or
imaginative act of engagement with the world. At root he argues that organisations are reflections of
how we think and how we interact and if those organisations are to be vibrant and productive then
we need to change our patterns of thinking and interacting "so that learning can become a way of
life rather than an episodic event".8 The five 'disciplines' of the learning organisation, for which he
is now well known, are ways of bringing about that generative capacity.

In a fascinating interview9 shortly after the publication of The Fifth Discipline, it becomes
immediately apparent that Senge's view of the learning organisation is deeply humanistic in the
sense that it is less about productivity and profit in narrow financial terms and more about how
human beings might express themselves creatively through the process of work; it is a profoundly
aesthetic undertaking to be contrasted with what, in a later paper, he calls "bureaucratic
organisations where the wonder and joy of living have no place".10 Before summarising the five
disciplines of the learning organisation, he is insistent that "there is no substitute for commitment
and passion" and that while you cannot insist or guarantee that people learn "you may be able to
help them to realize there are things they really care about." (Ibid) He insists that in writing about
the five disciplines he "felt a real responsibility for helping unearth people's real caring" and that
each of the disciplines "touches on an aspect of the human condition that people care deeply about
but that gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the organization".11 His summary of the five disciplines
which follows continues the same commitment to work as an essentially creative, shared process
about which people have the capacity to care very deeply because it a process which is potentially
expressive of who they are and who they might become. His summary is expressed in the form of
answers to five questions:

♦ In an organisation, how do we develop our capacity to clarify what is most important to

us? That is the discipline of personal mastery.
♦ How do we develop our capacity for conversation, which is what the team learning
discipline is all about?
♦ How do we develop our capacity for putting pieces together and seeing wholes, which is
what systems thinking does?
♦ How do we develop our capacity to reflect on internal pictures of the world to see how
they shape our actions? This is the discipline of mental models.
♦ And finally, how do we learn to build a sense of commitment in a group based on what
people would really like to create? That is shared vision.

Where does community come in? In the first place, it is clear that creativity and personal
transformation require certain conditions for their growth and expression and, for Kofman and
Senge, "the only safe place to allow for this transformation is a learning community".12 This suggests
that community is at the heart of the learning organisation because it is only in community that the
synergy of significance and belonging creates the freedom for us to be in ways which are
adventurous and challenging. Thus, they argue that "it is little coincidence that virtually all spiritual
disciplines, regardless of culture or religious setting, are practised in communities. Only with the
support, insight, and fellowship of a community can we face the dangers of learning meaningful
things".13 For an organisation this is significant because "without communities of people genuinely
committed, there is no real chance of going forward."14

8
Ibid p 38
9
Senge 1991 loc cit
10
Kofman & Senge 1993 p 22
1
Ibid
12
Kofman & Senge 1993 loc cit p 5
13
Ibid p 19
14
Ibid p 6

Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001 19

 Michael Fielding

Secondly, in answer to the question 'But Commitment to What?', at least part of Kofman and
Senge's response brings us back to community once again. What they argue for is a "Galilean
Shift" 15 to a systems view of the world in which "we move from the primacy of pieces to the
primacy of the whole, from absolute truths to coherent interpretations, from self to community,
from problem solving to creating".16 In exploring the third of these shifts he advocates what he calls
'The Community Nature of the Self. What this amounts to is a rejection of the disembodied,
unencumbered self and the contractarian account of community central to the liberal philosophical
tradition. For Kofman and Senge the self is essentially "a web of relationships" and "the constitution
of the self happens only in a community".17 Furthermore, "a systems view of life suggests that the
self is never 'given' and is always in the process of transformation. Whenever we do not take the
other as an object for use, whenever we see the other as a legitimate fellow human being with which
we can learn and change - a 'Thou' - we engage in a passionate interaction that can open new
possibilities for our being."18

Thirdly, Kofman and Senge suggest that the learning organisation embodies new capabilities beyond
the traditional organisation, two of which connect strongly to community. For them a learning
organisation

Must be grounded in three foundations (1) a culture based on transcendent human values of love, wonder,
humility and compassion; (2) a set of practices for generative conversation and co-ordinated action; and
(3) a capacity to see and work with the flow of life as a system.19

In the first of these, "love" is seen as "acceptance of the other as a legitimate being - a Thou" (Ibid),
whilst the second is primarily about providing "spaces for generative conversations and concerted
action ... (where) people can talk from their hearts and connect with one another in the spirit of
dialogue".20

For Kofman and Senge, then, community is at the heart of the learning organisation; it is where the
generative learning takes place and, like the learning organisation itself, it is conceived primarily as a
process, not as a thing or group of people. Whilst Senge sometimes uses the terms organisation and
community interchangeably21 it is nonetheless clear that he sees them as picking out importantly
different aspects of human experience and, of the two, the latter is more important than the former.

Critique of Senge
It is difficult not to be attracted by the creative energy and confidence of Senge's work. Its manifest
desire to transform the necessity of work from an all-consuming drudgery or intermittent battle into
a joyful expression of self through an holistic framework which nonetheless values difference has the
double virtues of addressing issues at the heart of our postmodern situation and in a way which
captures our imagination. However, it seems to me that his project is flawed both for reasons of
omission and commission.

Firstly, and perhaps unexpectedly for someone whose professional commitments in both theoretical
and practical arenas of the business world are so clearly substantial, Senge's work seems to lack an

15
At various points in this paper Kofman and Senge do themselves no favours by making claims that are wildly
overblown. For example, their claim to be making 'Galilean' shifts is, to say the least, immodest. I realise that
with the intellectual hype and postmodern turbulence of the early 21 st Century one can hardly draw breath
before someone else has claimed another paradigm shift on our behalf. However, I would have thought that
Kofman and Senge's work has enough internal strength to make recourse to Galilean imagery unnecessary.
16
Ibid
17
Ibid p 14
18
Ibid
19
Ibid p 16
20
Ibid
21
I take Senge to task for this carefree oscillation in 'Organisation, Community and the Dangers of Linguistic
Sleight of Hand' below

20 Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001

 Learning Organisation or Learning Community?

adequate understanding of the pervasiveness of power in organisational life or any realistic strategy
for incorporating it into the theory and practice of the learning organisation. Secondly, and closely
connected to this first concern, he effectively marginalises difference by placing too much weight on
the process of dialogue. Dialogue can only bear so much reality and the reality it is asked to carry is
too readily assumed to be both amenable and available to dialogic engagement. Third, despite its
ambitions to transform its host society, ironically, the learning organisation lacks a sufficiently
developed sense of social and historical placement. Fourthly, the energy that gives Senge's work
much of its appeal sometimes overleaps itself. Thus the desire to make work a transformational
experience is in danger of sailing too close to the wind of totalitarianism. Fifthly, and most
surprisingly, Senge seems to lack a sufficiently coherent philosophy of work. Lastly, his failure to
adequately address the differences, and, hence, the interrelationships between community and
organisation in a deliberate and explicit way give those whose dispositions and interests are less
benign than his own many opportunities to mask oppression and exploitation in the language of
meaning and belonging: semantic carelessness too easily becomes the agent of an interest that is
neither lazy nor indifferent in its demands and expectations.

1 The Invisibility of Power

I shall argue later that Senge's account of leadership, particularly in its relation to the discipline of
mental models, raises serious issues about personal capture. At a less dramatic level it also raises
issues about power and control and its visibility, or otherwise, in a learning organisation. This issue
provides the focus of John Coopey's paper in which, contra Senge and most other advocates of the
learning organisation, he argues the stark and deliberate exclusion of anyone other than the
managing elite from access to "the framework and institutions of governance, and the political
processes constrained by them" is a serious weakness, "especially as it affects the interest of rank and
file employees".22 Advocates of the learning organisation, Senge included, more often than not
retain a traditional grip on the levers of power. At the fundamental level of ownership and control,
nothing changes.23

There are at least two respects in which Coopey's concern about the exclusion of rank and file
employees from matters which affect the central political processes of organisational life has a
particular resonance in the present context. Firstly, this kind of exclusion cuts out a significant realm
of action and reflection which is potentially of substantial moral, social, and political significance to
both employers and employees.24 Secondly, and more negatively, the virtual denial of power as a
significant, manifest, contestable feature of learning organisations renders them susceptible to
critique from those, like Chris Grey, who, ironically, look over their shoulder to traditional
organisations in their insistence on the importance of protection against unbridled (ab)use of
power. Citing the work of Paul du Gay25 Grey suggests that whatever the dehumanising effects of
bureaucratically driven workplaces, they nonetheless offered some degree of protection from the
arbitrary exercise of power.26

To marginalise discussions of power in organisations seems either Utopian, odd, or both. And yet
this is exactly what Senge does. Whilst post-bureaucratic organisations may seek to reconfigure
power relations, they cannot eliminate them. Even if organisational structures are flatter,
segmentalism eroded, teams empowered, status replaced by stature, and information more readily
accessible, power remains as interstitial as it ever was in the heyday of archetypical bureaucratic

22
Coopey, J 'The Learning Organization, Power, Politics and Ideology' Management Learning 26 (2) 1995 pp
193-213 (quotation p 197)
23
Willmott, H 'Postmodernism and Excellence: The De-differentiation of Economy and Culture' Journal of
Organizational Change Management 5 (1) 1992 pp 58-68 (quotation p 65)
24
Compare Alvesson, M & Willmott, H 'On the Idea of Emancipation in Management and Organization
Studies' Academy of Management Review 17(3) 1992 pp 432-464 (quotation p 434)
25
du Gay, P 'Making up managers: bureaucracy, enterprise and the liberal art of separation' British Journal of
Sociology 45 (4) 1994 pp 655-674
26
Grey, C 'Towards a Critique of Managerialism: The Contribution of Simone Weil' Journal of Management
Studies 33 (5) September 1996 pp 591-611 (quotation p 604)

Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001 21

 Michael Fielding

organisations. Indeed, Grey argues that recent writing on post-bureaucratic organisation suggests
"the rehumanisation of such workplaces entails a refinement, even an intensification, but not a
relaxation of control".27 Similar lines of argument are pursued by Brown and by Lyons;28 increased
surveillance and pressure to conform seem to be interestingly coterminous with post-bureaucratic
aspirations.

Coopey argues persuasively that in a learning organisation those reconfigurations of power are likely
to coalesce around the capacity to use discursive proficiency and penetrative knowledge of
organisational structures and systems to build up agency, both alone and in collaboration with
others.29 Furthermore, it is likely that managers are particularly well placed to do this since they
operate at nodal points of organisational life where a number of circuits of power intersect.30

An additional, and in some respects more radical, criticism of the learning organisation's frequent
unwillingness to confront issues of power is made by David Brown.31 Citing the work of
Scarborough and Corbett,32 he argues that it is possible to challenge Senge's assumption that
learning organisations have made a clean break from Taylorist command and coordination
management models.

Others have chosen to see more continuity and to see the 'learning organization as simply the appropriate
form of command and co-ordination for the new market conditions in which the knowledge necessary
for mastering the rapidly changing environment is spread throughout an organisation and in which
professional expertises which are not transparent to management and hence amenable to direct monitoring
become more important.33

Whether or not Brown's historical judgements about the continuity of Taylorism are correct, it
seems likely that, in the end, the self-induced invisibility of power may well turn out to be the ghost
of Banquo at the table of the learning organisation.

2 Overreliance on the Power of Dialogue

Whilst one of the particularly attractive aspects of Senge's work is the importance he attaches to
dialogue and discussion and the differences between the two, paradoxically, that strand of the theory
and practice of the learning organisation is asked to bear too much weight. I say this for two main
reasons.

Firstly, there is an assumption that the nature of the differences which characterise the internal
workings of any business undertaking in early twenty-first century western society are resolvable by
discussion and dialogue. Senge's faith in this is, in part, due to his view that there is a unitary reality
to be discovered and that disagreement is the result of misperception, rather than the result of
rationalities that are in some respects incommensurable. For commentators like Brown, such a view
sounds the death knell of Senge's project precisely because

It does not recognize the limits of formal rationality and believes learning is a process of removing false
perceptions rather than coming to terms with different and incompatible substantive rationalities.34

27
Ibid
28
Brown, D S 'The 'Essences' of the Fifth Discipline: Or Where Does Senge Stand to View the World?' Systems
Research 13 (2) 1996 pp 91-107 (quotation p 101); Lyons, D The Electronic Eye: The Rise of the Surveillance
Society Polity Press, Cambridge 1992
29
Coopey op cit 1995 p 202
30
Ibid p 203
31
Brown 1996 op cit
32
Scarborough, H & Corbett, M Technology and Organization Routledge, London 1992
33
Brown op cit 1996 pp 100-101
34
Brown op cit 1996 p 106)

22 Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001

 Learning Organisation or Learning Community?

Secondly, even if this approach to the resolution of differences were to generally turn out to be less
Utopian than some believe,35 it is highly unlikely that when the going got tough, either internally or
externally, a dialogic approach divorced from company-wide conduits of power and responsibility
would carry the weight it is asked to bear.

3 Lack of Social and Historical Placement: Business as Unencumbered Self

One of the persistently interesting aspects of Senge's work is its propensity, not only to challenge,
but to challenge grandly. One such example is his insistence that the learning organisation is
primarily a way of seeing the world differently and, by virtue of those mental habits and the insights
that accrue from them, a potent tool for the transformation of society, not just of this or that
organisation: it is, he claims, nothing less than the beginnings of a "new, more inventive model for
business, education, health care, government and family".36 Whilst admiring the boldness of such a
claim, one cannot help but reflect upon the absence of any thoroughly argued social and historical
placement of his ideas.

This insensitivity to the context of systemic thinking is a contributory factor to the overambitious
claims he makes for dialogue and for the prevailing capacities of a unitary rationality. The success or
otherwise of our attempts to think and feel in ways which enable us to break with the social and
political institutions that had such an important role in shaping our identities is not just about
individual or collective willpower.37 The differences we articulate may not be differences in
perception, but differences in the fundamental interests which connect with different social and
political locations. We have seen from his remarks on the nature of the self that Senge is sensitive to
both the embedded and the dynamic nature of the self. However, the nature of that embeddeness
seems to be effectively disregarded in his virtually untrammelled valorisation of human agency.

A further concern about a position which in some respects seems to be historically and politically
unlocated would be that it is likely to fall prey to the defects of unsituated analysis. Prominent
amongst these would be a propensity to unwittingly operate within the constraints of current
hegemonic frameworks, despite the five disciplines of the learning organisation. What, for example,
would the leader of a learning organisation make of suggestions that challenged the whole basis of
international capitalism? What, for example, of some of the interesting work that came out of the
brief flowering of the Yugoslav self-management movement in the 1970s such as Rudi Supek's work
on the development of what he called 'humanitarian', not just 'democratic', organisations? What of
Supek's suggestion that if one became involved in participatory approaches to the management and
actuality of production this would have implications for the management and actuality of
consumption? What would the leader of a learning organisation make of the notion of "a 'collective
consumer'; who can no longer exist as an 'individual' or 'private consumer' under the control of
market forces because of his participation in the management of production,... but, precisely for the
protection of his individuality, must appear both as a 'collective worker' and a 'collective
consumer'."38 Such a line of thought addresses the three areas of cultural dysfunction that Kofman
and Senge identify and clearly exhibits the companion virtues which comprise their self-proclaimed
Galilean shift - namely, the primacy of the whole, the community nature of the self, and language as a
generative practice. However, it is difficult to see how such suggestions could be seriously
considered within, say, contemporary American business. And one of the main reasons why this is
likely to be the case has to do with the incommensurability of Supek's systems thinking with the
ideological and historical placement of Kofman, Senge and their client organisations.

35
Coopey op cit 1995 p 199
36
Kofman & Senge op cit 1993 p 22
37
Brown op cit 1996 p 99
38
Supek, R 'Organisation as an Intermediary Between the Individual and Society: The Democratic and
Humanitarian Form of Organisation' in Horvat B, Markovic M, & Supek R (eds) Self-Governing Socialism Vol.2
M.E.Sharp, New York 1975 pp 49-60

Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001 23

 Michael Fielding

4 Constructing Commitment: The Dangers of Personal Capture

The fourth point I wish to raise about Senge's work is more of a concern than a critique, primarily
because I am unsure whether the grounds of my worries are substantial enough to warrant a
thorough taking-to-task. That said, the focus of my concern is perhaps the most important. Briefly
stated it concerns the extent to which Senge's desire to capture the creative potential of those within
the learning organisation becomes overwhelming and, in the end, amounts to something perilously
close to personal capture, or what Willmott calls the "systemic and totalizing approach to the design
and strengthening of the normative framework of work" which amounts to "managing the design of
people". 39

There are two main grounds for such a worry. Firstly, some of his remarks on the role of leaders
point to an ambition which overreaches itself. Leaving aside for a moment the apparent tensions
between his earlier and later positions on the role of leaders in the learning organisation, 4 0 his
overall stance consistently underscores their impor tance. Thus, he quotes with approval the
statement by Max de Pree that 'The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality'. 4 1 Whilst he
then goes on to soften such a claim by emphasising that "leader as teacher does not mean leader as
authoritarian expert whose job it is to teach people the 'correct' view of reality" (Ibid), the modified
position still insists that the job of the leader "is about helping everyone in the organisation, (the
leader) included, to gain more insightful views of current reality ... by explicit attention to people's
mental models and by the influence of the systems perspective". 4 2 Residual worries about whether
the 'help' from a CEO with one's mental models is likely to be consistently accepted in a manner
which ignores the power relations involved are rekindled when Kofman and Senge remind us firmly
that "Our mental models are not like pieces of clothing that we put on and take off. They are basic
constitutive structures of our personality. For all intents and purposes, most of the time, we are our
mental models". 4 3 The concern here is that, in the world that most of us inhabit, that kind of
juxtaposition raises serious issues, not just of constrained action, but constrained ways of seeing and
being in the world. If we are not very careful, what we could be about here, is something perilously
close to "managing the design of people". 44

Secondly, there are occasions when the importance of commitment and the necessity of learning
involving personal transformation break through the parameters of work and stretch an intrusive
hand towards life in its broader aspects. One such example occurs as part of Senge's insistence that it
is never appropriate to claim to be a learning organisation. Having affirmed that the process is never
complete, he goes on to say that there is, nonetheless, an entry point: "You choose to undertake the
path because you care enough to say, 'Yes, this is what my life is about'." 45 Notice, not 'This is what
my job is about', but 'This is what my life is about.'

Passages such as these exemplify, but do not exhaust, my worries that there is too much about the
learning organisation project which exemplifies what Hugh Willmott calls the

De-differentiation of economy and culture - an overcoming of the division between the 'personal life',
values and beliefs of employees and the 'impersonal' demands of corporations for greater productivity
and quality.46

39
Willmott, H 'Strength is Ignorance; Slavery is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations' Journal
of Management Studies 30 (4) 1993 pp 515-552 (quotation pp 524-525)
40
Senge insists that the redefined role of leaders in a learning organisation is enormously demanding (eg Senge
'The Leader's New Work' loc cit 1990 pp 8, 22) and that, leadership is the prime responsibility of those "at the
top" (Senge loc cit 1991 p 38). In his later, joint paper with Fred Kofman he is equally emphatic that in the
learning organisation 'leaders are those building the new organisation and its capabilities ... the ones 'walking
ahead' regardless of their management position or hierarchical authority" and the observation that "such leadership
is inevitably collective (Kofman & Senge op cit 1993 p 17).
41
Senge 'the Leader's New Work' loc cit 1990 p 11
42
Ibid
43
Kofman & Senge op cit 1993 p 19
44
Willmott, H op cit 1993 p 525
45
Senge op cit 1991 p 38
46
Willmott op cit 1992 p 63

24 Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001

 Learning Organisation or Learning Community?

De-differentiation within the context of unequal power relations is more likely to lead to the co-
option, if not absorption, of the employee by the organisation in ways which are subtle and
persuasive.

Senge's approach can be clearly located within the widespread reconceptualisation of work described
by Nikolas Rose in which "organisations...get the most out of their employees by releasing the
psychological striving of individuals for autonomy and creativity and channelling them into the
search of the firm for excellence and success".47 Whilst this is not necessarily worrying, it has
enough about it to make us alert to possible difficulties, in particular, those centring round location
of the creative and emotional dimensions of human activity within the ambit of managerial
control.48 Such concerns also have a disturbing resonance with the work of Deetz49 who
demonstrates the effectiveness, not only of workplace socialisation and the internalisation of
company norms , but also of the embrace of further responsibility and self-surveillance by individual
employees, sometimes amounting to a revised personal identity.50 Similarly, the work of Randall on
commitment in modern organisations suggests it is often secured at too high a price: it seems that
'the costs of commitment outweigh the advantages.... individuals may suffer an array of personal,
family, social and work-related problems".51

Finally, it is worth bearing in mind that the sorts of issues I have just been raising are, potentially at
least, only a few steps away from the kind of example of the learning organisation's potential for
personal, and, indeed, social colonisation recently cited by Jones and Hendry. Referring to a paper
by a corporate vice-president of the Xerox Corporation, J S Brown,52 they explain how his desire to
ensure the coherence of the learning organisation's vision has led to a pro-active stance of
breathtaking boldness. Since it was felt one cannot just tell or enquire of people what was going to
happen to them in the future, one ought therefore to enable them to experience it. With this in
mind Xerox developed 'envisioning laboratories' which use computer simulation techniques to be
experienced both by their own employees and their customers. Small wonder that Jones and Hendry
suggest that "This 'envisioning experience' combined with, at a more mundane level, flatter and
more open organisations, may well create tensions within organisations which result in employees
asking searching questions of a social, ethical, moral and personal kind related to the purpose of
work and the nature of society".53 One certainly hopes so.

5 Living to Work or Working to Live? On the Need for a Philosophy of Work

At the root of my worries about organisational capture lie important questions about the nature of
work and its place in human flourishing, and it is to this fundamental area of concern that I now
turn. Ultimately any debate about the nature of learning organisations has to confront hard choices
about whether work is seen as the raison d'être of human activity or whether work is subservient to
wider notions of human fulfilment; crudely, do we live to work or work to live?

These issues were raised in an arresting way by Jones and Hendry, who in a section of their paper
headed 'Housing the Human Spirit' raise a series of fundamental questions which go to the heart of
what I have called the philosophy of work.

Do organisations exist, adapt, and change for economic purposes first and individual development second?
Or should the focus be on human beings first, their needs and personal community development, with

47
Rose, N 'Governing the enterprising self in: Heelas, P & Morris, P (eds) The Values of the Enterprise Culture
Routledge, London 1992 pp 141-164
48
Grey op cit 1996 p 604
49
Deetz, S 'Disciplinary Power in Modern Corporations' in Alvesson, M & Willmott, H (eds) Critical Management
Studies Sage, London 1992 pp 21-45
50
Coopey op cit 1995 p 209
51
Randall, D M 'Commitment and the Organisation: The Organisation Man Revisited' Academy of Management
Review 12 (3) 1987 pp 460-371 (quotation p 467)
52
Brown, J S 'Research that Re-invents the Corporation' Harvard Business Review January/February 1991
pp 147-179
53
Jones & Hendry op cit 1994 p 156

Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001 25

 Michael Fielding

the organisation playing a subordinate role? In other words, how best can the human spirit be housed?
Such questions are about human values. What do human beings value and how should organisations be
changed, created, or abandoned in the light of answers to such questions?54

Whilst I warm to what Jones and Hendry are saying, it seems to me that the debate is not just about
how we house the human spirit: it is equally and ultimately about whether we should seek to house it
at all; whether there might be a different way of conceptualising the dialectic of creativity and
function which lies at the heart of the dilemma. Reflecting the first of these positions, one approach
would be to explore how the human spirit can be housed within the functional structures of work in
ways which are expressive rather" than repressive of its vitality. Reflecting the second possibility, a
radically different approach would be to explore how the human spirit can itself become the source
of work; rather than housing it, should we not start with its energy and creativity and enable it to be
the architect rather than the object of human flourishing?

That the answers one gives to questions about the nature and purposes of work will inevitably have
profound consequences at the micro as well as the macro level is well illustrated by Jones and
Hendry's further reflections on the potential power of what they call 'unintended' or 'soft' learning
which, by its nature, is indirect and not controlled by the organisation. If such learning is as deep as
they suggest, then "the paradox and dilemma for organisations is how to relax their control over the
learning process while channelling the benefit from it".55 The crucial point to underscore here is
that the nature of the dilemma is not primarily technical. It is not just a question about the
emergence of a sufficiently sensitive and responsive strategy; rather it is a question of whether we are
about a more sophisticated form of capture or the further transformation of work in the service of
human well-being.

The dilemmas we are beginning to explore also clearly impact on the place of community on the
conceptual map of the learning organisation. For example, if one were to take a personalist
standpoint then, whilst there would almost certainly be a place for community within the
geography of the learning organisation, the learning organisation itself would gain significance from
and be subservient to community as the means and end of human fulfilment. If, on the other hand,
one were to regard work as the proper site and goal of human flourishing - what one might call an
occupation-centred standpoint exemplified by, say, Peter Drucker,56 then community within the
learning organisation would turn out to be one amongst a number of means to organisational
success.

Which of these two broad positions one takes matters a great deal both to the account one gives of
community and to its place within and alongside the notion of a learning organisation, yet it is not
clear to me where Senge stands on the issue. This may, of course, be because I have failed to pick up
on strands of his argument which either provide answers to these kinds of question or give sufficient
indication about the direction they might take. The important thing is that Senge has answers to
give.

6 Organisation, Community and the Dangers of Linguistic Sleight of Hand

The last of my misgivings about Senge's work brings us back to the central concern of this paper,
namely, the nature and interrelationship of organisations and communities. Whilst I think his
account of community is largely right, his threefold failure, firstly, to make his understanding
sufficiently explicit; secondly, to differentiate with appropriate clarity between organisation and
community; and, thirdly, his further failure to articulate the nature and rationale of their

54
Ibid p 159
55
Ibid p 160)
56
Drucker, P F 'The New Society of Organisations' Harvard Business Review 70 (5) September-October 1992
pp 95-104. "Executives in an organization - whether business or university or the Boy Scouts - must believe that
its mission and task are society's most important mission and task as well as the foundation of everything else. If
they do not believe this, their organization will soon lose faith in itself, self-confidence, pride, and the ability to
perform." (p 103)

26 Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001

 Learning Organisation or Learning Community?

interconnection is disappointing. What amounts to something close to intellectually carelessness is

further compounded by his frequent use of the two terms as if they were interchangeable.

These concerns have a resonance that goes well beyond the ambit of Senge's own work. The
designation of a business or a school as a 'learning organisation' or a 'learning community' is
significant in both a cosmetic and a profound sense. Given the still positive cache of community, it
is not surprising to see its ubiquitous use as an ideological cosmetic: to clothe the functional in the
language of the communal remains an important tool in the hands of those who wish to use us for
their ends rather than allow us to pursue our own.

It is significant in a more profound sense, insofar as the kinds of actions which are appropriate in the
development of an organisation are fundamentally different from those appropriate to the growth of
community. If organisational means are employed to achieve communal ends, not only will they
necessarily fail to achieve their intentions, they will inevitably be corrosive of the very qualities,
dispositions and values which make community possible. A the heart of the debate about the
nature of community and the nature of organisation lie disputes about the nature and provenance of
the social, the political and the personal; in other words the nature of what it is to be and become
human.

2 Beyond Critique: Four Possibilities and an Inspiration

It seems to me significant that, as one of the most interesting and creative writers in the field of
management, Peter Senge has placed the notion of community at the heart of his work; his concerns
reflect the wider dilemmas of identity, difference and belonging facing many people in many
societies. Insofar as his work engages authentically, attentively and creatively with those
preoccupations, they are to be applauded. He has challenged contemporary flunking in ways which
are profound, engaging and imaginative and in ways which allow his own voice to be heard and felt.
However, despite the attractiveness and importance of his work, the deficiencies I have drawn
attention to do need to be addressed.

Four Possibilities for Enquiry

Drawing together the various concerns I have explored in this paper I wish to suggest four
overarching areas of enquiry that might form a useful agenda for future work within this domain:

♦ The development of a philosophically robust account of community

♦ Provision of an adequate ontological grounding for such an account
♦ A focused engagement with issues of power and diversity
♦ Clarification of the relation between community and organisation

Firstly, we need a philosophically robust account of community.57 Despite the centrality of

community in his work, Senge does not give a satisfactory account of what community is. Whilst
his advocacy of community as process does begin to locate the debate within the right conceptual
terrain, he is too cavalier in his textual oscillations between organisation and community,
insufficiently clear about the importance of what he is saying, and too sketchy in his substantive
accounts. What we need is an account of community that does not boomerang between community
and organisation, or, as is too often the case, seesaw between prescription and description according
to circumstance or inclination.

Secondly, that account of community must have an adequate ontological grounding. Senge does not
offer us a sufficiently well argued philosophical anthropology. Whilst there are perhaps implicit

57
See for example Fraser, E & Lacey, N The Politics of Community: A Feminist Critique of the Liberal-Communitarian
Debate Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead 1993; Plant, R 'Community: Concept, Conception and
Ideology' Politics & Society 8(1) 1978 pp 79-107

Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001 27

 Michael Fielding

answers to questions that enquire about the link between community and human flourishing (ie
which tell us why community is thought to be a good thing or why it is a feature of human activity),
there is inadequate recognition of the importance of just such a link.

Thirdly, a philosophical account of community which is likely to help us break new ground needs to
address issues of power and diversity in a much more deliberate and focused way than Senge has
demonstrated. He skirts round issues of power, places too much weight on the harmonising
capacities of dialogue, and fails to locate the learning organisation project within a reality which is
socially, politically and historically contested.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, a great deal more work needs to be done on the relation
between community and organisation. This is a matter of considerable importance since its neglect
or misconstrual leads to the possibility of totalising, if not totalitarian places of work. Senge's
cavalier use of the terms organisation and community mirror a lack of clarity about the place of
work in human life. His commendable desire to transform work into something which is creative
and meaningful leads to the insistent possibility of transgressions, not merely on the topography, but
within the geomorphology, of the self. We need to be clear about the relationship between
community and organisation for two reasons. In its absence, it is difficult to know what we might
do to enhance or diminish community within our places of work and, secondly, without an
adequately argued philosophy of work we cannot even begin to intervene, since we would have no
rationale for beginning at all.

An Inspiration
My own view is that there is a philosophical account of community which has the depth of insight
and breadth of imaginative endeavour to take us forward in ways which are fresh and convincing. It
is to be found in the work of the Scottish philosopher, John Macmurray, who, in his writings from
the late 1920s until a year before his death in 1976 explored the communal nature of human being
and becoming with an unerring commitment and originality unrivalled by his British peers, so
delightfully and aptly described by Jonathan Ree as the "logic louts" of analytic philosophy.58
Macmurray argues for a notion of community which goes beyond the dialogic to embrace human
beings in the many-sidedness of their agency as persons; community is, for Macmurray,
fundamentally relational, emancipatory and inclusive. Whereas most accounts of community are
inadequate, primarily because they have sought to comprehend it as a thing or an entity, Macmurray
posits a notion of community which is most appropriately understood as a process. His work is
exhilarating, clear and demanding at just the point where most accounts of community become
mundane, opaque and less exacting in their both their intellectual and existential engagement.59
The companion paper, 'Towards Person-Centred Learning Communities: On the Importance of
John Macmurray' which will appear in the next issue of Reason in Practice, explores and extends
Macmurray's work on community and offers an emancipatory framework for its future
development.

Macmurray's Writings on Community

The two best short papers setting out Macmurray's philosophy of community are 'The Personal
Life' (in Macmurray, J Reason and Emotion Faber, London 1935 pp 93-115) and 'Freedom in the
Personal Nexus' (in Anshen, R (ed) Freedom: Its Meaning Allen & Unwin, London 1942 pp 176-
193). His short, beautifully clear book Conditions of Freedom (Faber, London 1950) contains his
most sustained treatment of the subject. More demanding, but equally rewarding is the second
volume of his Gifford Lectures Persons in Relation (Faber, London 1961). Two early Aristotelian

58
Ree, J 'Selflessness' London Review of Books 8 May 1997 pp 16-19
59
It is both interesting and encouraging to note that recent work in sociology (eg Giddens, A Beyond Left and
Right: The Future of Radical Politics Polity Press, Oxford 1994), political philosophy (eg Fraser & Lacey op cit
1993) and philosophy of education (eg Noddings, N 'On Community' Educational Theory 46 (3) Summer
1996 pp 245-267) seems to be giving fresh impetus to some of the insights Macmurray began to offer us some
sixty years ago.

28 Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001

 Learning Organisation or Learning Community?

Society papers which repay careful reading are 'The Principle of Personality in Experience'
{Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society NS Vol XXIX 1928/29 pp 316-330) and 'The Conception of
Society' {Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society NS Vol XXXI 1930/31 pp 127-142)

Whilst Macmurray's position on the philosophy of work can be inferred from the main corpus of
this work there are two important sources where he addresses some of the central issues head on.
The first is his series of BBC radio talks published in The Listener in 1941 under the umbrella tide
'Persons and Functions' ('People and their Jobs' The Listener Vol 36 No 673, 4 December 1941 p
759; 'Fellowship in the Common Life' Vol 36 No 674, 11 December p 787; 'Two Lives in One' Vol
36 No 675, 18 December p 822; 'The Community of Mankind' Vol 36 No 676, 24 December p
856). The second source is his National Peace Council Pamphlet Foundations of Economic
Reconstruction National Peace Council, London 1943).

Michael Fielding

Dr Michael Fielding is Reader in Education at the University of Sussex where he is in the process of
setting up a Centre for Educational Transformation. Currently involved in a major ESRC project on
'Student Voice', for some time he has also been developing an alternative intellectual and practical
framework to "the increasingly pernicious hegemony of school effectiveness". Much of his doctoral
work was on John Macmurray's philosophy of community and many of his publications are in the
field of applied philosophy. His edited book Taking Education Really Seriously: Four Years Hard
Labour was published by Routledge Falmer in June 2001 and includes "a much needed attack on
target setting as the new panacea for all human ills".

Reason in Practice Volume 1 Number 2 2001 29