A new triad: quality leadership, the learning organization and systems engineering

This paper examines the relationships between three areas of quality management that have developed independently, namely, quality leadership. The learning organization and systems engineering. First, thirteen rank-ordered attributes of a quality leader are cited, including the critical attributes of empowering, having a vision, team building and renewing. Then the five disciplines of Senge´s Learning Organization are recapitulated as: personal mastery, mental models, building shared visions, team learning and the “Fifth Discipline”, systems thinking. A brief description of Eisner´s thirty elements of systems engineering follows. It is demonstrated that these three areas are complementary and require mutual interaction and support in order to maximize the likelihood of achieving quality management. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for implementation in an ever-changing corporate and management environment