Student guide Facoltà di Economia A.A. 2005/06 Lauree Triennali

 Over the recent years building Learning Organizations has become a challenging priority for a continuously growing community of management practitioners, consultants and scholars. The vision of a Learning Organization endeavours organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together (Senge, 1990).

The course is aimed to analyse, under theoretical, methodological and practical point of view, the main managerial disciplines suggested in the recent literature in management.

The core of learning organization work is based upon five learning disciplines:

 

-          Personal Mastery – learning to expand our personal capacity to create the results we most desire, and creating an organizational environment which encourages all its members to develop themselves toward the goals and purposes they choose;

-          Mental Models - reflecting upon, continually clarifying, and improving our internal pictures of the world, and seeing how they shape our actions and decisions;

-          Shared Vision – building a sense of commitment in a group, by developing shared images of the future we seek to create, and the principles and guiding practices by which we hope to get there;

-          Team/Strategic Learning – transforming conversational and collective thinking skills in terms of open Dialogue, so that groups of people can reliably develop intelligence and ability greater than the sum of the individual members' talents;

-          Systems Thinking – a way of thinking about and a language for describing and understanding, the forces and interrelationships that shape the behaviour of systems. This discipline helps us to change systems more effectively, and to act more in tune with the larger processes of the natural and economic world.

Concerning the general part, the examination will take place on written basis. The participant's evaluation will depend also on a specific "theme" previously agreed with the teacher.

 

Senge P., The fifth discipline, New York: Doubleday. Last edition available

 

Senge P., La quinta disciplina, Milano: Sperling, ultima edizione disponibile.