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To quantitatively assess a Senge learning organization (LO) intervention to determine if it would result in improved employee satisfaction.

A Senge LO intervention in Division 123 of Company ABC was undertaken in 2000. Three employee surveys using likert‐scale questions over five years and correlation analysis were used to compare the impacts in the division, and with the company.

Employees in Division 123 accepted Senge's concepts more and had improved employee job satisfaction over those five years demonstrated by statistically significant gain scores and positive correlation results. However, the division's gain scores were not statistically better than the bank, and correlation analysis did not show a positive relationship between the intervention and job satisfaction compared to no intervention.

This research was limited by the survey questions used by the bank, by the difficult conditions in Division 123, and by the implementation approach. Additional research is needed to quantitatively assess another organization undergoing a Senge LO intervention.

Aspects of a Senge LO intervention such as team learning, systems thinking, and shared vision were valuable as part of a change effort in an organization. Senge's disciplines appeared insufficient as a total change methodology.

This research meets the need for comprehensive empirical testing of Senge's disciplines which has been lacking here‐to‐fore. It also helps leaders better understand, from a leader's perspective, the tools to use in creating a learning organization.

The purpose of this research is to examine leadership in an intermediary organization whose mission is to facilitate collaboration between large corporations and their smaller suppliers, a bridging organization.

A qualitative approach using a single case revelatory method was adopted. Data were collected from a bridge leader as well as 20 executives of companies involved in the collaboration.

The analysis revealed that the successful bridge leader tended: to build personal relations and goodwill as a way of creating personal obligations on the part of the stakeholders he led; championed the cause of the stakeholders and made their mission his/her own; created opportunities for individual and collective goal achievement; relied on symbolic behavior and ceremonies to reify the bridge mission; and engaged in frequent communication with a liberal use of humor and playfulness to make goals embraceable by the stakeholders in the collaboration.

This is a single case study and that limits the generalization of these findings. However, the findings provide some preliminary evidence to show that a lack of control of resources need not be a reason for leader non‐performance.

A bridge leader may substitute other influence strategies to compensate for the lack of direct positional power.

This study is one of the few that explicitly examines leadership in bridging organizations. The paper's understanding of this phenomenon is important because of the importance of bridging organizations to business and social innovation.