The Government as Learning Organization: A Cross-Cultural Model
Dr. Prem Saran, IAS
Prolegomena. Professor Peter Senge of the Sloan School of Management at MIT is justly acclaimed for his book, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization" (1990). Therein he elaborates on five key disciplines, which he has identified as being essential to create a learning organization. According to him, the crucial fifth discipline of his title is systemic thinking, which means that when one looks at an organization one sees the connection between its parts, and a process of change rather than stasis. An organization of this kind "recognizes the importance of the people within it, supports their full development and creates a context in which they learn" (O, Connor & Seymour, 1994). Indeed, Fortune magazine, recognizing the competitive edge that learning organizations would have, has identified them as likely to be the most successful corporations of the future. And with the so-called "knowledge society" being put in place apace, there can be no two opinions about the ever-increasing salience of effective learning processes, and of the kinds of organization that actively foster them. A basic flaw in Senge's model is, however, that it is too cerebral. For it does not indicate, except rather cursorily and tangentially, the praxis that is needed for his fifth discipline to be inculcated. He does of course admit, towards the end of his book, that a "sixth discipline" would in due course be needed, "a wholly new discipline that we cannot even grasp today" (p.363). Interestingly again though, it is he himself who indicates the possible shape of that new discipline, in his Foreword to Debashis Chatterjee's innovative book, "Leading Consciously: A Pilgrimage Toward Self-Mastery" ( Chatterjee:1999) In that Foreword, Senge argues that Eastern cultures like India and China constitute a "unique storehouse of practical knowledge about consciousness" [emphasis mine]. He therefore commends the author of the book for "his vision of offering ancient insights in a way that makes them understandable to contemporary managers". Given such praise, it is therefore no wonder that the Harvard Business Review included Chatterjee in its list of "fifteen thought leaders" working in the field of management studies worldwide! However, Chatterjee's work is only a highly simplified version sampled from the rich lore of Indic meditative praxis. The fundamental goal of these meditative practices is the attainment of the mystical experience, the holistic nature of which makes it cognate with the "systemic thinking" that constitutes Senge's "fifth discipline", as I indicate below. These techniques thus have the potential to enable one to systematically internalize that organizationally desirable kind of thinking. In other words, these can very well form the core of the required "sixth discipline". Unfortunately, Chatterjee's oeuvre too is somewhat flawed by the fact that it is excessively simplistic and eclectic. He cannot of course be churlishly faulted for that, given that he is basically a Professor of Management, and not an Indologist and/or Religious Anthropologist. One purpose of this article is therefore to plug those disciplinary lacunae, since I myself happen to have been trained in both of these fields, which are desiderata for a

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