Peter Michael Senge (born 1947) is an American systems scientist who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute, and the founder of the Society for Organizational Learning.

[3][4][5] An engineer by training, Peter was a protégé of John H. Hopkins and has followed closely the works of Michael Peters and Robert Fritz and based his books on pioneering work with the five disciplines at Ford, Chrysler, Shell, AT&T Corporation, Hanover Insurance, and Harley-Davidson, since the 1970s.

In 1997, Harvard Business Review identified The Fifth Discipline as one of the seminal management books of the previous 75 years.

"[7] The book's premise is that too many businesses are engaged in endless search for a heroic leader who can inspire people to change.

Most efforts to change are hampered by resistance created by the cultural habits of the prevailing system.

It's essential to develop reflection and inquiry skills so that the real problems can be discussed.

According to Senge 'learning organizations' are those 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 to see the whole together.

Senge also believed in the theory of systems thinking which has sometimes been referred to as the 'Cornerstone' of the learning organization.