The Society for Organizational Learning (SOL), founded as an MIT research center in 1991, is celebrating its first birthday as an independent organization by giving MIT a gift. SOL Chairman Peter Senge, a senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Management, recently announced the first of three $300,000 annual gifts to support research.
The Sloan School dean's office will grant the funds to faculty based on research ideas supporting SOL's mission--to discover, integrate and implement theories and practices for the interdependent development of people and their institutions.
"Our relationship with MIT is very important," Dr. Senge said. "About one-third of the individual researchers are Sloan faculty members. If SOL is successful financially, three years from now it will generate a million dollars in net income a year, and that will fund reserves that will go into research. And MIT is the top of the list in priorities where research funds should go."
SOL, begun as the Center for Organizational Learning, is now a global learning community dedicated to building knowledge about fundamental institutional change through integrating research, capacity and practice. Designed as a membership organization, corporate, research and consultant members include Fortune 100 companies such as AT&T and IBM, research universities such as MIT and Harvard, and individual researchers.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 16, 1998.
