A fantasy theme analysis of Peter Senge's learning organization

A fantasy theme analysis of Peter Senge's learning organization

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

Arlington

Jun 2000

Authors: Bradley G Jackson

Volume: 36

Issue: 2

Pagination: 193-209

ISSN: 00218863

Subject Terms: Organizational learning

Studies

Classification Codes: 2500: Organizational behavior

9130: Experimental/theoretical

Abstract:

When it was first articulated in The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge's vision of the learning organization was one of a number of competing conceptions. This article examines what it was about Senge's vision that enabled it to catch on and be assimilated so rapidly and pervasively into everyday business discourse. The method used in this study is fantasy theme analysis, a dramatically based method of rhetorical criticism developed by Ernest Bormann that is rooted in symbolic convergence theory. The analysis reveals 4 interrelated fantasy themes that form the dramatic building blocks of the rhetorical vision of the learning organization. The rhetorical strategies that Senge has deployed to sustain widespread interest in his vision is examined.

Copyright Sage Publications, Inc. Jun 2000

Full Text:

When it was first articulated in The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge's vision of the learning organization was one of a number of competing conceptions. This article examines what it was about Senge's vision that enabled it to catch on and be assimilated so rapidly and pervasively into everyday business discourse. The method used in this study is fantasy theme analysis, a dramatistically based method of rhetorical criticism developed by Ernest Bormann that is rooted in symbolic convergence theory. The analysis reveals four interrelated fantasy themes that form the dramatic building blocks of the rhetorical vision of the learning organization. The article examines the organizational and rhetorical strategies that Senge has deployed to sustain widespread interest in his vision.

Although the term learning organization has in the past decade become one of the most widely used and, many would argue, abused terms in the business lexicon, it is by no means a new concept. Garratt (1995) suggests that, although the desire to create organizations that can consciously cope with change by learning continuously can be traced back to antiquity, "all the necessary conditions to create both the intellectual and practical basis of a learning organization were in place by 1947" (p. 25). Pedler, Burgoyne, and Boydell (1997) have singled out the contributions of Revans (1979), Argyris and Schon (1978), Bateson (1972), Harrison (1995), Dixon (1994), Peters and Waterman (1982), and Deming (1986)in shaping the idea of the learning organization, organizational learning, and their own construct, the learning company. These contributions notwithstanding, it is Peter Senge's (1990a) best-selling book, The Fifth Discipline that has, in their minds, "been largely responsi! ble for bringing the learning organization into the mainstream of business thinking" (Pedler et al., 1997, p. 196).

When it was first articulated in the early 1990s, Senge's vision of the learning organization was neither novel nor original. He was one of a number of academics and consultants on both sides of the Atlantic actively working on and promoting the learning organization concept (Garratt, 1990; Garvin, 1993; Lessem, 1991; Pedler et al., 1997; Watkins & Marsick, 1994). This begs the question of what it was about Senge's vision in particular that enabled it to catch on and be rapidly assimilated into everyday business discourse in such a substantial way. This article attempts to answer this question by conducting an analysis of the discourse that developed around Senge and his particular conception of the learning organization. The method used is fantasy theme analysis, a dramatistically based method of rhetorical criticism developed by Ernest Bormann (1972). Fantasy themes form the building blocks of compelling dramatistic interpretations of reality, which are described as! rhetorical visions. This article describes four interrelated fantasy themes that, it is argued, run through Senge's rhetorical vision of the learning organization. It then looks at how Senge, having successfully created and articulated his vision, has addressed the challenge of maintaining and sustaining interest in this vision by a significant proportion of the notoriously capricious and fickle corporate community (Grint, 1997; Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 1996).

FANTASY THEME ANALYSIS

Fantasy theme analysis is a method of rhetorical criticism underpinned by a general theory of communication called symbolic convergence theory, which attempts to account for the creation, raising, and maintenance of group consciousness through communication (Bormann, 1983). Elsewhere, I have described in detail the origins, assumptions, applications, and major criticisms of this theory (Jackson, 1997) and so will confine my review here to a brief discussion of the fantasy theme analysis method and how I applied it to Senge's conception of the learning organization. The starting point for a critic using this method is neither the speaker, nor the audience, nor the channel, nor the situation, but the message. Bormann argues that the message has an essentially dramatistic form. It is filled with all of the elements that are found in a drama: settings, characters, and actions. Dramatizing moments "chain" within small face-to-face groups and, through the technologies of mass m! edia, to and from small and large groups. The composite dramas that catch up large groups of people in a symbolic reality are called rhetorical visions.

A rhetorical vision is constructed from fantasy themes, which are the means through which the interpretation is accomplished in communication. They are manifested in the form of a word, a phrase, or a statement that interprets events in the past, envisions events in the future, or depicts current events that are removed in time and/or space from the actual activities of the group. In contrast to normal human experience, fantasy themes are organized and artistic. They are "the creative and imaginative interpretations of events that fulfil a psychological or rhetorical need" (Bormann, 1976, p. 434). Bormann distinguishes between setting themes, which depict where the action is taking place or the place where the characters act out their roles; character themes, which describe the agents or actors in the drama, ascribe qualities to them, assign motives to them, and portray them as having certain characteristics; and action themes, which can also be called plotlines, that dea! l with the action of the drama.

Popular management fashions such as excellence, total quality management, reengineering, and the learning organization that have recently gripped the corporate imagination can be fruitfully conceptualized as rhetorical visions in terms of their form and the function they fulfil for managers and organizations (Jackson, 1998). The sanctioning agent of the rhetorical vision is a source that justifies its acceptance by members of the rhetorical community that coalesce around the vision. With respect to management fashions, the management guru acts as the authoritative voice or guarantor of the rhetorical vision in making the vision legitimate and credible in the minds of managers (Burgoyne, 1996). The various processes by which the guru articulates and sanctions a management fashion have been explored in detail in case studies of Michael Hammer and James Champy and the reengineering movement (Jackson, 1996) and Stephen Covey and the effectiveness movement (Jackson, 1999). In ! this article, I will explore the critical role that Senge plays as the sanctioning agent legitimating the rhetorical vision of the learning organization.

Bormann strongly asserts that a single text is insufficient to conduct a proper fantasy theme critique. The effective critic, in his view, tracks fantasy themes across discourse situations, because only then can genuine thematizing be established (Hart, 1989). For the purposes of this study, I have drawn on rhetorical acts performed by Senge at three satellite videoconferences that I attended as well as numerous rhetorical artifacts, including two books, 17 articles, and one audiocassette produced by Senge and his associates. In addition, I analyzed a total of 65 articles written about him and the rhetorical vision of the learning organization that he has fostered.

This study followed the five steps for conducting fantasy theme analyses that have been described by Foss (1989). First, I looked for evidence that the rhetorical vision of the learning organization was being shared within particular rhetorical communities. For these, the vision serves to "sustain the member's sense of community, to impel them strongly to action and to provide them with a social reality with heroes, villains, emotions and attitudes" (Bormann, 1972, p. 398). I sorted through various newspaper, professional, and trade journal articles looking for the use of symbolic cues such as catch phrases and slogans (e.g., "the fifth discipline," "personal mastery") that originally had been coined by Senge and had now fallen into regular currency. My analysis revealed that senior executives, human resource development and training professionals, and educational administrators have been the most vocal supporters of this vision in the realm of public discourse. Second, t! he rhetorical acts and artifacts were coded to isolate any recurrent fantasy themes. This required a careful reading of the artifacts, sentence by sentence, to pick out references to settings, characters, and actions that might form the basis for major fantasy themes. In the third step, patterns in the fantasy themes were sought out. Major themes were isolated from minor themes by virtue of how frequently they were referred to. From these, the rhetorical vision of the learning organization was constructed. Fourth, I began to explore the motives for the participants in the rhetorical vision by examining which of the fantasy themes received the most emphasis and which appeared to have the most impact on the other themes in the vision. Finally, the rhetorical vision was compared and contrasted with other management fashions with particular reference to their ability to meet the needs and expectations of their participants.

THE RHETORICAL VISION OF THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION

In analyzing Senge's rhetorical vision of the learning organization, four major fantasy themes were identified. These are summarized in Table 1. The two setting themes reveal that the drama of the learning organization unfolds at opposite ends of the continuum of human experience. At the macro level, the "living in an unsustainable world" theme creates a general sense of urgency for considering and accepting the vision as it becomes tied with the ongoing debate and concerns about the deteriorating state of the earth's environmental system and the "crisis of the soul" that has received widespread media attention in North America. At the micro level, the "working it out within the micro world" setting theme shows the way forward by depicting individuals coming to grips with these systemic issues through the liberating technology of computer-based simulation. Moving to the who of the rhetorical vision, the character theme labeled as "the manager's new work" lays out a number! of new roles that Senge argues need to be played by individuals at various levels within the learning organization. In terms of what is taking place within the drama of the learning organization, an action theme dubbed "getting control but not controlling" provides a most compelling script for these new actors to follow within Senge's organizational drama.

Setting Theme: Living in an Unsustainable World

Senge situates many organizational woes in a broader societal context, arguing that "organizations are microcosms of the larger society. Thus, at the heart of any serious effort to alter how organizations operate lies a concern with addressing the basic dysfunctions of our larger culture" (Kofman & Senge,1993, p. 7). These problems are rooted in a reductionist philosophy and mechanical thinking that have provided the basis for many of America's successes in the past. Paradoxically, Kofman and Senge (1993) observe,

The very same skills of separation, analysis, and control that gave us the power to shape our environment are producing ecological and social crises in our outer words, and psychological and spiritual crises in our inner world. When we begin to understand the origins of our problems, we begin to see that the "existential crisis" of early 20th century philosophy and the "environmental crisis" of late 20th century ecology are inseparable-caused by the co-evolution of fragmentary world views, social structures, lifestyles, and technology. (pp. 10-lI)

Senge illustrates this paradox by pointing to the popularity of the movie Dances With Wolves (Costner, 1990), which, with its depiction of the destruction of an indigenous culture, has resonated with Americans' sense that "they have lost a particular sensibility of what it means to live together as part of a larger natural order" (Senge, 1995a, p. 227). Pulled between the new and old world orders, he suggests that Costner's heroic lonely outsider is a character to whom an audience that is similarly riddled with existential and environmental doubt can well relate.

[IMAGE TABLE] Captioned as: TABLE 1

In discussing the systemic problems being faced by American organizations, Senge makes frequent reference to a system archetype called the tragedy of the commons that was first identified by ecologist Garrett Hardin (1968). This archetype is seen by Senge as being especially useful for dealing directly with problems where apparently logical local decision making can become completely illogical for the larger system (Senge, 1990a). By way of example, he describes the desertification of the Sahel region in sub-Saharan Africa that was caused by rampant overgrazing encouraged by unusually high rainfalls and international aid assistance. In a neat rhetorical move, Senge makes the claim that the tragedy of the commons is not only confined to ecological disasters but also to organizations. Corporations, he suggests, have many depletable commons to share, including financial capital, productive capital, technology, community reputation, customer good will, and the morale and comp! etence of employees. When a company decentralizes, local divisions compete with each other for these limited resources.

In referring to broader environmental concerns, Senge succeeds not only in grabbing the attention of readers already preoccupied with impending global ecological doom and disaster but also in distinguishing his message from those of other management gurus who, by and large, studiously ignore this issue. Generally, the broader setting used by management gurus encompasses the competitive pressures of globalization and international trade but not environmental system dynamics. By making this connection, Senge develops a setting theme with its own built-in, mass-media-fuelled sense of significance and urgency. It provides an impressive and readily identifiable backdrop against which his special brand of organizational drama can unfold. No one can, therefore, argue that the stakes are not high when creating a learning organization. This is work that might ultimately help to save the earth, let alone the organization. For Senge, there is no doubt from which sector the men with ! the white hats will come riding in to deal with global environmental problems.

My deepest belief is that the way we operate the world as a whole is not sustainable . . . We're basically living off our capital and compromising the future well-being of generations to come. It's ironic that business is the most likely institution (to master change), but it has the greatest capacity to reinvent itself. (cited in Driben, 1995, p. 62)

Action Theme: Getting Control but Not Controlling

Although Senge believes that it will ultimately be the private sector, and large-scale corporations, in particular, that will have to develop the ability to deal with and address many of the societal woes that we are currently facing, he is quite clear that they will have to take on quite different organizational forms and be led in quite different ways to meet these challenges. For example, in an interview, Senge ( 1996b) makes the claim that

the leadership challenges in building learning organizations represent a microcosm of the leadership challenges of our times: how do communities, be they multinational corporations or societies, productively confront complex systemic issues where hierarchical authority is inadequate for change? None of today's most pressing issues will be resolved through hierarchical authority. In all these issues, there are no simple causes, no simple "fixes." There is no one villain to blame. There will be no magic pill. Significant change will require imagination, perseverance, dialogue, deep caring, and a willingness to change on the part of millions of people. The challenges of systemic change where hierarchy is inadequate will, I believe, push us to new views of leadership based on new principles. These challenges cannot be met by isolated heroic leaders. They will require a unique mix of different people, in different positions, who lead in different ways. Changes will be required! in our traditional models. (p. 11)

In Senge's vision, organizations will increasingly have to become localized in that they will seek to extend the maximum degree of authority and power as far away from the top or center as possible. "Localness," a cornerstone of the learning organization, gives individuals the freedom to act, to try out their own ideas and be responsible for producing their own results. It also enables organizations to respond in an appropriate and timely fashion to rapid changes within the marketplace. Despite its obvious advantages, Senge warns that unenlightened senior managers may be unwilling to give up control of the decision-making process for fear of losing the thing they most cherish (i.e., power) and make themselves obsolete. Moreover, they are concerned that, by pursuing localness, the organization may lose its capacity for control.

To these concerns, Senge (1990a) responds, "Just because no one is `in control' does not mean that there is `no control'" (p. 292). By investing in the five disciplines of the learning organization, Senge suggests that organizations can maintain control at the local level through a process of "control by learning." The improved quality of thinking and the new capacity for reflection and team learning, combined with an ability to develop shared visions and understanding of complex business issues, will allow learning organizations to be more effectively controlled and coordinated than their hierarchical predecessors. He adds rhetorical weight to his localness argument by suggesting that the traditional perception that someone "up there" is in control is based on an illusion that it would be possible for anyone to master the dynamic and detailed complexity of an organization from the top. Taking on three icons of American business, he stridently observes,

The days when a Watson or Henry Ford or Alfred B. Sloan "fought for the organization" have long passed. The world is simply too complex to figure out from the top, and too rapidly changing to abide with the slow bureaucratic decision-making processes that come with the top-down decision making in complex organizations. The breakdown of the authoritarian structures is universal, not only in business but in the world of public affairs as well, as can be seen only too well from the demise of the Eastern bloc governments. (cited in Meen & Keough, 1992, p. 78)

Although his localness argument is by no means unique among management gurus, the nonthreatening and generally inoffensive way in which it is presented makes it a reasonably palatable action theme that promises some form of transcendence for both sides of the labor-management divide. Workers are presented an essentially emancipatory vision within which they can take independent action and realize their full potential through learning, unencumbered by formal management controls imposed from above. Managers, on the other hand, can take comfort from the fact that the world is so complicated now that they cannot be expected to be accountable for it. They can also rest assured that control will be maintained in a constructive and tolerably orderly manner. Besides, Senge has some very important new work for these managers to do within the learning organization, which is considerably more meaningful than the work that they have traditionally done within hierarchically based orga! nizations.

Character Theme: The Manager's New Work

Prior to the publication of The Fifth Discipline, Senge published an article in MIT's in-house publication, Sloan Management Review, titled "The Leader's New Work" ( 1990b). In this article, Senge laid out many of the key ideas contained within the book and discussed three new roles that leaders would have to play to build a learning organization: designer, teacher, and steward. Although these roles have antecedents in the ways leaders have contributed to building organizations in the past, Senge notes that they take on new meaning within the learning organization and demand new skills and tools. Likening the organization to an ocean liner, Senge observes that most senior executives readily relate their role to the captain, navigator, helmsman, engineer, or social director. However, they rarely identify their role as the designer of the ship. In this role, Senge charges senior executives with three main tasks: build a foundation of purpose and core values for the organiza! tion; develop the policies, strategies, and structures that translate these guiding ideas into business directions; and create effective learning processes through which the policies, strategies, and structures can be continually improved.

In their role as teachers, Senge (1990b) urges executives to stop trying to be the authoritarian expert whose job is to teach the correct view of reality and begin to "help people restructure their views of reality to see beyond the superficial conditions and events into the underlying causes of problems-and therefore to see the new possibilities for shaping the future" (p. 12). Max de Pree, the retired chief executive officer of Hermann Miller and author of the popular business book Leadership Is an Art ( 1989), is frequently held up by Senge as an exemplar of an executive who was particularly effective in this role.

The third and final new role of the leader, as steward, is, according to Senge, the subtlest role, which is almost solely a matter of attitude. The leader's sense of stewardship operates on two levels: stewardship for the people he or she leads and stewardship for the larger purpose or mission that underlies the enterprise. Quoting Robert Greenleaf, Senge (1990b) argues that

the servant leader is servant first . . . It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. This conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. (p. 12)

More recently, Senge has begun to lay out roles that should be played by individuals at other levels within the learning organization. Specifically, he identifies two other leadership roles: the local line leaders and the internal networkers. The former are heads of organizational units that are microcosms of the larger organization; local line leaders have enough autonomy to be able to undertake meaningful change that is independent of the larger organization. The key role played by the local line leaders is to "sanction significant practical experiments and to lead through active participation in those experiments" (Senge, 1996a, p. 3). In addition to playing a key role in the design and implementation of learning processes, local line leaders often become teachers once these learning processes become established. Although Senge argues that there is much to be gained by taking on this role, he also warns potential local line leaders of the risks they run. He says, "Impr! oved results are often threatening to others, and the more dramatic the improvement, the greater the threat. Large organizations have complex forces that maintain the status quo and inhibit the spread of new ideas" (p. 4). Senge offers the cautionary tale of Fred Simon, a project manager on the new Lincoln Continental at Ford Motor Company and a champion of the learning organization. Through the use of such tools as Chris Argyris's ladder of inference, Senge describes how Simon's team of engineers was able to break every internal product development record at Ford. Despite this impressive achievement, Simon was passed over for promotion and was asked to retire early. He believes that his enthusiasm for the learning organization was a factor in his early retirement. The moral that was drawn from this story was that Simon "should have taken the time to explain the benefits of the learning organization to key people in the top ranks" (cited in Dumaine, 1994, p. 155).

The other key leadership role that is identified by Senge is that of the internal networker, otherwise referred to as internal community builder or seed carrier. Typically, this role is played by internal consultants, trainers, human resources staff, or frontline workers such as engineers, sales representatives, and shop stewards. Of critical importance is their ability to move freely around the organization and their high accessibility to many parts of the organization. According to Senge, their primary asset is their lack of power. Because they do not have any positional authority, they do not pose an obvious threat to management, but they are able to exploit the informal networks "through which information and stories flow and how innovative practices naturally diffuse within organizations" (Senge, 1996a, p. 6). The first function of the internal networker is to identify local line managers who have the power to take action and who are predisposed to developing new lea! rning capabilities. They then connect people of like minds to each other's learning efforts. Senge illustrates how this is done with the example of an informal "leaders of learning" group that was formed at Ford Motor Company by local line leaders and internal networkers who wanted to share learnings and serve as a strategic leadership body.

In addition to providing powerful setting and action themes, Senge also develops a complete and well-integrated character theme that can enable individuals at various levels and within varying functions in the organization to transcend their current roles. Within this character theme, clear and inviting roles are scripted and described. Each is accompanied by a few successful role models who repeatedly appear in his accounts and provide added confidence that this role is not only practicable but also well worth aspiring too.

Setting Theme: Working It Out Within the Micro World

Early in The Fifth Discipline, Senge ( 1990a) devotes an entire chapter to an exposition of the "beer game" that was first developed in the 1960s at MIT and has been played "on five continents, among people of all ages, nationalities, cultural origins and vastly varied business backgrounds" (p. 41). Senge notes that, irrespective of the players' backgrounds or origins, the same crises ensue in the game with respect to the production, distribution, and consumption of beer. These crises graphically illustrate the underlying barriers to implementing a learning organization, which are the fragmentation of problem solving, an overemphasis on competition to the exclusion of collaboration, and a tendency of organizations to experiment or innovate only when compelled to change by outside forces (Kofman & Senge, 1993). Senge argues that, in addition to making these barriers visible, micro worlds like the beer game can be a critical technology for implementing the disciplines o! f the learning organization.

Micro world is a term coined by Seymour Papert, a media technology professor at MIT, to describe an interactive computerized environment that simulates a real-world situation. According to Senge, micro worlds can help managers and their management teams begin to learn about their most important systemic issues by compressing time and space so that it becomes possible to experiment and to learn what the consequences of their decisions are in the future and in distant parts of the organization. Increasingly sophisticated computer technology is helping to create what Senge describes as a new type of managerial practice field for management teams. These are places where teams will learn how to learn together while engaging their most important business issues. Drawing parallels with sports teams and the performing arts, Senge questions why it is that, unlike athletes and musicians, in most organizations, "people only perform. They rarely get to practice, especially together" ! (Kofman & Senge,1993, p. 19). Building micro worlds will help managers practice by "helping us to rediscover the power of learning through play" or, more correctly, "relevant play" (Senge, 1990a, p. 315).

To lend substance to his argument for micro worlds and simulation games in general, Senge provides numerous case studies of organizations that have been able to make important breakthroughs with them. Perhaps the most celebrated case is the claims learning laboratory that was built for Hanover Insurance by a systems group from MIT. Managers at Hanover felt that internal practices were contributing to claim settlements that seemed to be significantly higher than was fair (Hampden-Turner, 1992). By playing the "claims game" within this micro world, Senge shows how managers were able to pinpoint the problem of escalating costs to the quality of the claims settlements that were being made. Senge (1990a) recounts the all-important "aha" moment with obvious relish: "Suddenly there is a wave of realization through the room: If it weren't for all of those overpriced claims settlements, we'd all have more money to build our departments to what they really need to be!" (p. 329). La! ter, he shows how dependent the managers had become on their micro world, with the quote by one of the participants: "So what if we went back to the micro world . . . and tried out some other possible strategies" (p. 331 ). In a later account of this case, Senge informs us somewhat tersely that the takeover of Hanover Insurance by State Mutual Insurance uprooted the management support for the lab so that it never had the opportunity to demonstrate its full value in terms of the anticipatory learning it had generated (Senge & Fulmer, 1993).

In advocating micro worlds as a critical component of. the learning organization vision, Senge provides managers with a powerful setting theme within which they can find a safe haven for dealing with and regaining control of a world that has seemingly gone out of control. In this respect, he has literally presented managers with an opportunity to transport themselves out of their immediate time and space situations to the relative comfort of a world in which problems can be properly managed and even played with alongside one's colleagues in a safe and sealed off environment. The micro-world theme acts as a powerful transcendental antidote to the "unsustainable world" setting theme that emerges from Senge's writing, which stresses that collectively we have lost control of the modernist project and need to act immediately. As Senge and Fulmer ( 1993) somewhat invitingly promise, "By utilizing micro worlds to participate in the anticipation of these consequences, created wit! h system dynamics, managers and their organizations can discover a new capacity for gaining control of their destinies" (p. 33). Giving the micro-world-fantasy theme even more rhetorical weight is the allure of technology, which, of course, will only continue to get better. Despite the setbacks that have prevented micro worlds from reaching their full potential, Senge (1990a) suggests that, with even more sophisticated technology, "future micro worlds for teams will allow managers to play out their real-world roles and understand more deeply how those roles interact" (p. 337). Looking even further ahead, the fantasy may one day become the reality, "when practice fields are cultivated in an organization for a sustained period of time, learning in simuworlds and micro worlds becomes seamlessly integrated with the real organizations they shadow" (Keys, Fulmer, & Stumpf, 1996, p. 48).

THE UNDERLYING MASTER ANALOGUE

Bormann and his colleagues have observed that rhetorical visions will generally reflect a deep structure that is embedded in one of three master analogues: the righteous, social, or pragmatic.

A rhetorical vision based on a righteous master analogue emphasizes the correct way of doing things with its concerns about right and wrong, proper and improper, superior and inferior, moral and immoral, just and unjust. A rhetorical vision with a social master analogue reflects primary human relations, as it keys on friendship, trust, caring, comradeship, compatibility, family ties, brotherhood, sisterhood, and humaneness. A vision with a pragmatic master analogue stresses expediency, utility, efficiency, parsimony, simplicity, practicality, cost effectiveness, and minimal involvement. (Cragan & Shields, 1992, p. 202)

I would contend that Senge's collectivist vision of the learning organization holds lingering generative power for researchers and practitioners alike because of its underlying social master analogue. The vision resonates with a substantial constituency of individuals who are seeking a higher level of meaning and purpose in the work that they do and the relationships they have with the people they work with (Burgoyne, 1996; Dovey, 1997). In this vision, the individual can only truly realize his or her full self through social interaction with other individuals who are working toward a common cause. To Senge (1995b), the cause is clear:

The fundamental purpose of any organization is not to make a profit. A social mission is the essence of a successful business; doing something that makes a difference to somebody ... Business is about making a better world. Everyone needs to live their lives in the service of their highest aspirations. (p. 18)

Senge's altruistic vision of what organizations could and should be doing differs significantly from competing visions of organizational effectiveness that have been actively promoted during the 1990s by two other prominent management gurus. Undergirded by a pragmatic master analogue, Michael Hammer's rhetorical vision of reengineering tells managers they have to reengineer because it is their only choice (Hammer & Champy, 1993; Jackson, 1996). Rooted in a righteous master analogue, the rhetorical vision of effectiveness articulated by Stephen Covey tells managers they should follow the "seven habits" because it is the right thing to do (Covey, 1989; Jackson, 1999). Senge's vision of the learning organization, by contrast, should be pursued because it is a good thing to do.

SUSTAINING RHETORICAL VISIONS

Since the publication of The Fifth Discipline in 1990, Senge has emerged from the relative obscurity of academia to assume full-blown management guru status. Clark and Greatbatch ( 1999) suggest that a key activity of management gurus is to convince their potential followers that it is their particular ideas that offer the most relevant solution to the immediate problems the potential followers are experiencing and trying to resolve. This activity is not only important during the consciousness-creating phase of a rhetorical vision but also during the subsequent consciousness-raising and consciousness-sustaining phases (Bormann, Cragan, & Shields, 1996). The preceding fantasy theme analysis has revealed the dramatic foundation that serves to make Senge's rhetorical vision of the learning organization such a compelling one for potential followers. But what has Senge done to ensure that his rhetorical vision will continue to sustain interest and stave off the inevitable ! rejection of another management fashion? I think there are several features of the way in which Senge has gone about organizing his rhetorical vision that are particularly salient when considering this question.

Most management gurus tend to associate themselves with one particular organization with which they assume a figurehead role. Good exemplars would be Franklin Covey Company, Hammer and Company, and the Tom Peters Group. Senge, by contrast, appears to prefer to be loosely linked with numerous organizations in which he takes on a comparatively lower profile role and works in a more collaborative mode (e.g., Innovation Associates and Pegasus Communications). Working with a networked group of academics, executives, and consultants, he formed the MIT Organizational Learning Center (OLC) in 1990 (Fulmer, 1995). Anxious to extend this work beyond its Anglo-American origins, the OLC was re-created in 1998 as the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), a nonprofit, member-governed organization with global ambitions. In the letter inviting potential individuals and groups to join SoL, Senge and the other two chairpersons show that they are anxious to model the disciplines of the! learning organization: "As in all living systems, the growth of SoL as a global network cannot be controlled or pre-determined. . . . Different chapters (fractals) will pursue their own aspirations and issues and will adapt SoL's basic design to the requirements of their social and cultural environment" (Senge, de Geus, & Carstedt,1998, p. 2). Despite these good intentions, he is cautious about SoL's ability to disseminate the learning organization vision across the globe, observing that "the challenge for all of us at SoL is to manage growth, commitment, community, and scope without watering down the principles that make organizational learning a valuable objective for organizations of all types" (cited in Fulmer 8c Keys, 1998, p. 41).

In addition to his network-building activities, Senge displays a remarkable affinity for publicly reflecting on how and why the learning organization was socially constructed as the next management fashion. Recounting what motivated him to write The Fifth Discipline, he recalls,

It sort of hit me one morning about three years ago while 1 was meditating that the learning organization was going to be a hot area in business. I had already watched a fad cycle come and go related to work I had been doing for years with Innovation Associates. We had been teaching courses in personal mastery and leadership since 1979, and we all sat on the sidelines and watched as other people wrote about vision, empowerment and alignment-ideas that we had been teaching for years. That morning as I meditated it dawned on me that it was not O.K. to sit on the sidelines this time. It was time for a book on the subject of learning organizations, and I wanted to get it out before the whole world was talking about them, I didn't want to define the territory; it is really too broad for one book. My hope was to establish a point of view of learning organizations that might serve as a reference point. (cited in Galaghan, 1991, p. 38)

As it turned out, the book has become the reference point for work on the learning organization, selling more than 300,000 copies worldwide. Senge is, however, typically ambivalent about the success of the book, commenting, "I am not even sure that it's such a good idea for the field that this book has been as popular as it has" (cited in Fulmer & Keys, 1998, p. 34).

He also appears to be quite philosophical about the prospect of the learning organization falling out of favor, accepting it as part of the natural cycle in management thinking in which managers embrace new ideas, explore them, and move on to the next ones (Griffith,1995). Although he is not the first management guru to express concern about his or her concept being consigned to the pile of last year's models, his public statements suggest that he wants his audience to be fully aware of what they are getting into when they decide to embrace the learning organization concept. Perhaps by being explicitly reflexive about the management fashion enterprise and his role within it, Senge hopes that his followers may be more likely to resist the inevitable rejection phase of the cycle and persist with his concepts long after they cease to remain fashionable. The idea is that the learning organization is too important to be treated as another passing fad.

In a rhetorical turn reminiscent of Tom Peters's (1987) opening comments in his book, Thriving on Chaos, about there not being any "excellent companies," Senge has stated a number of times that there is, in fact, no such thing as a learning organization. Instead, he states that

the learning organization is a thing we create in language. Like every linguistic creation, this category is a double-edged sword that can be empowering or tranquilizing. The difference lies in whether we see language as a set of labels that describe a pre-existing reality, or as a medium in which we can articulate new models for living together. (Kofman & Senge, 1993, p. 16)

His unapologetically normative perspective suggests that Senge is more than aware that he is trying to create and sustain a rhetorical vision. He is quite explicit about his aims and objectives:

We are taking a stand for a vision, for creating a type of organization we would truly like to work within and which can thrive in a world of increasing interdependency and change. It is not what the vision is, but what the vision does that matters. (Kofman & Senge, 1993, p. 16)

On another occasion, he has remarked, "This isn't pie-in-the-sky stuff. I believe nothing motivates change more than a clear vision" (cited in Meen & Keough, 1992, p. 58). There is no apparent attempt on his part to use a rhetorical sleight of hand by having his audience confuse his essentially normative vision with a descriptive vision. However, in the media accounts of the learning organization, these two visions have frequently become blurred and confused.

This confusion is further exacerbated by his attempts to respond to demands by practitioners to make the learning organization more concrete by laying out the steps that are required to create one. His first attempt to address this challenge came in the form of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook that he wrote with a number of his colleagues to answer the repeatedly asked question, "What do we do on Monday morning?" (Senge, Roberts, Ross, Smith, & Kleiner, 1994, p. 5). In the practitioner community, response to this book has been mixed, with the general consensus being that, although it contained some interesting and provocative ideas, it was still not sufficiently practical. Five years later, Senge and his colleagues produced The Dance of Change, which is tellingly subtitled The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations (Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Roth, & Ross, 1999). The term dance of change refers to what the authors describe as the inevitable interp! lay between growth processes (i.e., the five disciplines) and limiting processes (i.e., the challenges that accompany any change process). It will be interesting to see whether this latest book and the media attention it receives has the dramatic qualities required to reignite and sustain interest in the learning organization vision over the longer haul.

CONCLUSION

The learning organization continues to inspire a large and growing body of literature in both academic and practitioner journals. Much of this work seeks to build, test, and refine the rhetorical vision of the learning organization (DiBella & Nevis, 1998; Jashapara, 1993; Jones & Hendry, 1994; Starkey, 1996), whereas a sizable portion is devoted to critiquing the vision on instrumental, theoretical, moral, and political grounds (Coopey, 1995; Fenwick, 1998; Flood, 1999; Torbert, 1994; Tsang, 1997; Victor & Stephens, 1994). However, comparatively little attention has been paid to understanding why the concept, particularly as it has been formulated by Senge, has attracted so much interest and, in comparison to a number of other management fashions, has demonstrated considerably more staying power in the realm of managerial discourse. This article has sought to redress this imbalance by conducting a fantasy theme analysis of the rhetorical vision of the learning! organization that has been created and disseminated by Peter Senge and his colleagues. The analysis has suggested that it is the dramatic qualities of his socially rooted vision, that is, its ability to inspire followers to see themselves actively engaged in building a learning organization, that have helped it to stand out from other competing conceptions. In addition, Senge has been shown to be an adept and agile sanctioning agent who, by putting into practice much of what he preaches, has been able to sustain widespread interest in his rhetorical vision.

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Third International Conference on Organizational Discourse held at King's College, London, July 1998. I would like to thank the editors of this special issue, Tom Keenoy, Bob Marshak, Cliff"Oswick, and David Grant, for their constructive criticism and expert guidance. Thanks also to Douglas Bowie, John Burgoyne, Deborah Jones, and Kevin Peterson for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

REFERENCES

Argyris, C., & Schon, D. A. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory in action perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Bateson, G. ( 1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. San Francisco: Chandler.

Bormann, E. G. (1972). Fantasy and rhetorical vision: The rhetorical criticism of social reality. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 58, 396-407.

Bormann, E. G. (1976). General and specific theories of communication. In J. L. Golden, G. F Berquist, & W. E. Coleman (Eds.), The rhetoric of Western thought (pp. 431-449). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Bormann, E. G. (1983). Symbolic convergence theory: Organizational communication and culture. In

L. Putnam & M. E. Paconowsky (Eds.), Communication and organizations: An interpretive approach (pp. 99-122). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Bormann, E. G., Cragan, J. F , & Shields, D. C. ( 1996, March). An expansion of the rhetorical vision component of the symbolic convergence theory: The cold war paradigm case. Communication Monographs, 63, 1-28.

Burgoyne, J. G. (1996). Learning from experience: From individual discovery to meta-dialogue via the evolution of transitional myths. Personnel Review, 24(6), 61-72.

Clark, T.A.C., & Greatbatch, D. (1999, July). Translating actors' interests: How management gurus understand their impacts and success. Paper presented at the 15th EGOS Annual Colloquium, Warwick University U.K.

Coopey, J. (1995). The learning organization: Power, politics, and ideology. Management Learning, 26(2), 193-213.

Costner, K. (Producer & Director). (1990). Dances with wolves. [Film]. (Available from Majestic Film & Tig Productions)

Covey, S. R. (1989). The seven habits of highly effective people. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Cragan, J. F,. & Shields, D. C. ( 1992). The use of symbolic theory in corporate strategic planning. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 20, 199-218.

de Pry, M. (1989). Leadership is an art. New York: Doubleday.

Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the crisis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

DiBella, A. J., 8c Nevis, E. C. (1998). How organizations learn: An integrated strategy for building learning capability. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Dixon, N. (1994). The organizational learning cycle. Maidenhead, UK: McGraw-Hill.

Dovey, K. ( 1997). The learning organization and the organization of learning. Management Learning, 28(3), 331-349.

Driben, L. I. (1995). The Pied Piper of learning. Chief Executive,101, 62. Dumaine, B. (1994, October 17). Mr. Learning Organization. Fortune, pp. 147-157.

Fenwick, T. (1998). Questioning the learning organization. In S. Scott, B. Spencer, & A. Thomas (Eds.), Learning for life (pp. 140-152). Toronto, Canada: Thompson.

Flood, R. L. (1999). Rethinking the Fifth Discipline. London: Routledge.

Foss, S. K. (1989). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration and practice. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.

Fulmer, R. M. ( 1995). Building organizations that learn: The MIT Center for Organizational Learning. Journal of Management Development,14(5), 9-14.

Fulmer, R. M., & Keys, J. B. (1998). A conversation with Peter Senge: New developments in organizational learning. Organizational Dynamics, 27(2), 33-41.

Galaghan, P A. (1991). The learning organization made plain. Training & Development, 45, 37-44. Garratt, B. (1990). Creating a learning organization. Cambridge, UK: Simon & Schuster.

Garratt, B. (1995). An old idea that has come of age. People Management, 19, 25.

Garvin, D. A. ( 1993, July-August). Building a learning organization. Harvard Business Review, pp. 78-91. Griffith, V. (1995, April 12). Corporate fashion victim. Financial Times, p. 15.

Grint, K. (1997). Fuzzy management. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Hammer, M., & Champy, J. (1993). Reengineering the corporation. New York: HarperBusiness. Hampden-Turner, C. (1992). Charting the dilemmas of Hanover Insurance. Planning Review, 20(1), 22-26. Hardin, G, (1968, December 13). The tragedy of the commons. Science, pp. 1243-1248.

Harrison, R. ( 1995). The collected papers of Roger Harrison. Maidenhead, UK: McGraw-Hill. Hart, R. (1989). Modern rhetorical criticism. Glenview, IL,: Scott Foresman/Little, Brown.

Jackson, B. G. (1996). Reengineering the sense of self: The manaer and the management guru .hm.,Jl ir

management Studies, 33(5), 571-590

Jackson, B. G. (I 997). Linking the immediate with the mass-mediated theatre in organizations: The case for symbolic convergence theory. In Proceedings ofthe 15th International Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism, Warsaw, Poland. Available: gttp://www.it.com.pl/scos

Jackson, B. G. ( 1998, July). Management fashion following: Facilitating learning through rhetorical critique. Paper presented at the Lancaster-Leeds Collaborative Conference on Emergent Fields in Management: Connecting Learning and Critique, Leeds University, UK

Jackson, B. G. (1999). The goose that laid the golden egg? A rhetorical critique of Stephen Covey and the effectiveness movement. Journal of Management Studies, 36(3), 353-377.

Jashapara, A. (1993). The competitive learning organization: A quest for the Holy Grail. Management Decision, 31(8), 52-62.

Jones, A. M., & Hendry, C. (1994). The learning organization: Adult learning and organizationaltransformation. British Journal of Management, 5, 153-62.

Keys, J., Fulmer, R. M., & Stumpf, S. A. ( 1996). Micro worlds and simuworlds: Practice fields for the learning organization. Organizational Dynamics, 24(4), 36-50.

Kofman, F , & Senge, P ( 1993). Communities of commitment: The heart of learning organizations. Organizational Dynamics, 32(5), 5-23.

Lessem, R. (1991). Top quality learning: Building a learning organization. London: Basil Blackwell. Meen, D. E., & Keough, M. (1992, Winter). Creating the learning organization. McKinley Quarterly, 1, 58-78.

Micklethwait, J., 8c Wooldridge, A. (1996). The witchdoctors. London: Heinemann.

Pedler, M., Burgoyne, J., & Boydell, T. (1997). The learning company. New York: McGraw-Hill. Peters, T. J. (1987). Thriving on chaos. New York: Knopf.

Peters, T. J., & Waterman, R. H. ( 1982). In search of excellence: lessons from America's best run companies. New York: Harper & Row.

Revans, R. W. (1979). Action learning: New techniques for management. London: Blond & Briggs. Senge, P M. (1990a). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday Currency.

Senge, P M. ( 1990b). The leader's new work: Building learning organizations. Sloan Management Review, 32(1), 7-23.

Senge, P M. (1992). Building learning organizations. Journal for Quality and Participation,15(2), 30-38. Senge, P M. (1995a). Robert Greenleaf's legacy: A new foundation for twenty-first century institutions. In L. C. Spears (Ed.), Reflections on leadership (pp. 217-240). New York: John Wiley.

Senge, P M. ( 19956). Making a better world. Executive Excellence, 12(8), 18-19.

Senge, P M. (1996a). Rethinking leadership in the learning organization. Systems Thinker, 7(1), 1-8. Senge, P M. (1996b). Leading learning organizations. Executive Excellence, 13(4), 10-12.

Senge, P M., de Geus, A., & Carstedt, G. (1998). SoL International. [Online]. Available: http://learning. mit.edu/in/981etter.html (accessed August 3, 1999).

Senge, P M., & Fulmer, R. M. ( 1993). Simulations, systems thinking and anticipatory learning. Journal of Management Development, 12(6), 21-33.

Senge, P. M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Roth, G., & Ross, R. ( 1999). The dance of change: The challenges of sustaining momentum in learning organizations. New York: Doubleday Currency.

Senge, P. M., Roberts, C., Ross, R. B., Smith, B. J., 8c Kleiner, A. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook. New York: Doubleday Currency.

Starkey, K. (Ed.). (1996). How organizations learn. London: International Thomson Business Press. Torbert, W. R. (1994). Managerial learning, organizational learning: A potentially powerful redundancy. Management learning, l, 57-70.

Tsang, E. (1997). Organizational learning and the learning organization: A dichotomy between descriptive and prescriptive research. Human Relations, 50(1), 73-90.

Victor, B., & Stephens, C. 1994. The dark side of the new organizational forms: An editorial essay. Organization Science, S(4), 479-481.

Watkins, K. E., & Marsick, V. J. (1994). Sculpting the learning organization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bradley G. Jackson

Victoria University of Wellington

Bradley G. Jackson is a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.