This book has grown from our earlier inquiry into the theories of action which individuals bring to their interactions with one another. In Theory in Practice, we described the theories-in-use which guide our interpersonal behavior, create the behavioral worlds in which we live, and influence both our long-term effectiveness and our capacity for learning. Originally, we had planned in a chapter of that book to apply the theory of action perspective to the problem of organizational capacity for learning. But we could not write that chapter; it called for a conceptual bridge which we had not yet built-a bridge between the world of interpersonal behavior and the world of the organization. The effort we had projected for a few months has become a four-year enterprise; what began as a chapter has become a book.