From 2000 onward, peter-senge's work expanded in scope from corporate management to broader questions of social transformation. schools-that-learn-2000 applied the five-disciplines framework to education — arguing that schools face the same learning organization challenges as corporations and that systems thinking tools can help educators understand and address the structural dynamics driving student failure, teacher burnout, and institutional rigidity. The book was a major extension of the learning organization concept beyond the business context in which it had been primarily understood.
presence-2004, co-authored with otto-scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers, marked a deeper shift in direction. Based on 150 interviews with leaders, scientists, and social innovators, the book moved from the behavioral and structural focus of fifth-discipline-1990 toward questions of consciousness, inner transformation, and collective awareness. The concept of "presencing" — the capacity to sense and act from an emerging future rather than from the patterns of the past — introduced a contemplative and phenomenological dimension to the organizational learning tradition that Scharmer subsequently developed into Theory U. The revised edition of fifth-discipline-revised-2006 provided Senge's own retrospective on sixteen years of learning organization practice.
innovating-our-way-smr-2001, published in MIT Sloan Management Review in 2001, was an early statement of this broadened agenda, examining the conditions under which organizations generate genuine innovation. necessary-revolution-2008 represented a full engagement with sustainability as the defining challenge of the era. Co-authored with bryan-smith and others, the book argued that the tools of systems-thinking-fifth-discipline — causal-loop-diagrams, systems-archetypes, and leverage-points — are essential for understanding the complex feedback dynamics of environmental, social, and economic interdependence. Senge has continued this trajectory, working with the society-for-organizational-learning and the Academy for Systemic Change to develop the capacity for "system leaders" who can catalyze transformation in complex social systems. The phase represents a broadening from organizational learning to systemic change at civilizational scale.