The notion of the learning organization, championed by Peter Senge, has garnered significant acclaim for its transformative impact on organizational development. While acknowledging the success of Senge's contributions, this paper contends that his portrayal of the systemic perspective as a 'fifth discipline' may have inadvertently constrained the broader potential inherent in adopting a systemic approach to understanding organizational dynamics. Our argument posits that Senge's utilization of the systemic perspective, while invaluable, may have unintentionally limited the exploration of this approach as a fundamentally distinct paradigm for comprehending organizational phenomena. In this paper, we present a series of seven theoretical and methodological propositions aimed at revitalizing the concept of the learning organization by embracing a more foundational and expansive systemic perspective. By reassessing and reinterpreting the learning organization through a fundamentally different lens, we seek to uncover previously overlooked dimensions and possibilities within this conceptual framework. Our research endeavors to contribute novel insights that challenge existing paradigms, offering a pathway to reenchant the concept of the learning organization and unlock its untapped potential through a more comprehensive systemic understanding.
To remain competitive in today’s dynamic business environment, organizations are constantly required to develop strategic use of sensible information, which is the role of competitive intelligence. In line with a growing openness trend of strategy making, we question, if competitive intelligence has experienced the same trend of being more open over the years. To the best of our knowledge, there exists no systematic literature review (SLR) addressing competitive intelligence practices through the prism of openness. Through analyzing 53 papers, this paper attempts to explore to what extent the three facets of competitive intelligence—monitoring, lobbying, and information protection—opened up to the external and internal environment of the company. Therefore, a four-dimensional framework of openness has been developed. It considers content-oriented and people-oriented openness along with outward-facing and inward-facing openness which highlight the flows of openness within the organizational boundary and the one related to the management team. Our findings reveal that competitive intelligence practices are both content- and people-oriented when it comes to assessing their openness, with a particular emphasis on monitoring practices. This SLR offers valuable insights on the way researchers have identified with the openness characteristics and competitive intelligence and provides new avenues for further research.
