Includes bibliographical references (pages 391-409) and index.

Pt 1. How actions create our reality ... and how we can change it. 'Give me a lever long enough ... and single-handed I can move the world' -- Does your organization have a learning disability? -- Prisoners of the system, or prisoners of our own thinking? -- Pt 2. The fifth discipline : the cornerstone of the learning organization. The laws of the fifth discipline -- A shift of mind -- Nature's templates : identifying the patterns that control events -- The principle of leverage -- The art of seeing the forest and the trees -- Pt 3. The core disciplines : building the learning organization. Personal mastery -- Mental models -- Shared vision -- Team learning -- Pt 4. Prototypes. Openness -- Localness -- A manager's time -- Ending the war between work and family -- Microworlds : the technology of the learning organization -- The leader's new work -- Pt 5. Coda. A sixth discipline? -- Rewriting the code -- The indivisible whole -- Appendixes. The learning disciplines -- Systems archetypes. An MIT Professor's pathbreaking book on building "learning organizations"--Corporations that overcome inherent obstacles to learning and develop dynamic ways to pinpoint the threats that face them and to recognize new opportunities. Not only is the learning organization a new source of competitive advantage, it also offers a marvelously empowering approach to work, one which promises that, as Archimedes put it, "with a lever long enough ... single-handed I can move the world."