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Chapter 19 — A Sixth Discipline?

Core Thesis

The DC-3 (Ch. 1) started commercial aviation, but the industry didn't become major until two more technologies converged over a decade later — the jet engine and radar, the latter a wartime by-product, not aviation research at all. Senge's closing hedge on his own framework: the five disciplines form a critical mass sufficient to make building learning organizations systematic rather than accidental, but they are probably not the last word.

The Shift

Just as jet engines and radar built the infrastructure (airports, pilots, mechanics, airlines) that made the DC-3's breakthrough into a real industry, the immediate task is mastering the five disciplines as they stand — establishing the foundation on which some future, currently unimaginable discipline might be built, likely arriving from an unlikely direction, the way radar arrived from war research rather than aeronautics.

Key Terms

  • Critical mass of disciplines — the claim that five specific disciplines, together, are sufficient (not necessarily final) for systematic learning-organization building

Connections