The Fifth Discipline

The concept that the world is an interconnected web of interrelating systems is central to the book and to the fields of systems science and organizational learning. Senge argues that the world is “an indivisible whole” that is “made up of wholes within wholes” (382). Furthermore, he explains that people’s difficulty to “see the forest for the trees” in management causes many of the learning difficulties that creates problems for companies (124). Senge sees people and the world as bound together in systemic connections. He believes that Western society’s compartmentalization of people, groups, and teams in separate categories creates a short-sighted mentality that keeps people from seeing the impact of details on the whole and people’s involvement in the larger system. A contributing factor to this short-sightedness is the Western world’s use of linear thinking. Senge argues that Western society is conditioned to understand detailed complexity but not dynamic complexity. Senge believes that the Western world tends to treat situations with dynamic complexity, such as the war on terrorism, as having detailed complexity (72). This, thus, causes people to see situations as “linear cause-effect chains” rather than “interrelationships” (73). However, Senge argues that “reality is made up of circles” rather than “straight lines” (73).