Action Learning最新文献

{"title":"Critical incident technique and action learning to enable organizational learning","authors":"Hanne O. Finnestrand, Ola Edvin Vie, George Boak","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2255839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2255839","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper focuses on a two-year program with a Norwegian public sector project-based construction company, where action learning groups and critical incident technique were combined to enhance organizational learning. Project-based organizations typically face difficulties of ‘project amnesia’, as they fail to integrate learning from experience into organizational memory. In drawing lessons from experience, employees often focus on solving short-term problems with individual projects rather than contributing to medium- and longer-term organizational learning. The program that is the focus of this paper engaged newly-appointed engineers in action learning groups and trained them to use critical incident technique to gather and analyze information about recent projects undertaken by the company. The groups reported back their findings to colleagues in the program and to managers and senior executives in the company. Originally designed as an alternative to the traditional induction training for new employees, the program generated useful practical learning across the whole organization about project success factors. This paper explains how action learning and critical incident technique combined in this program to enhance individual, team and organizational learning, and argues that the synergies between these three processes should be explored in other contexts.","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45019116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Shut down the Business School: What’s Wrong with Management Education","authors":"Chris Blantern","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2218133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2218133","url":null,"abstract":"In this book, Martin Parker inquires into the established discourses of organising and managing, and the way they are propagated, and finds them wanting. His basic thesis is that what business schools teach, and what they stand for, are very narrow, politically selective and presented as a form of naturalised truth (Jenkins 2007, 104) – rendering them unaccountable when it comes to their influence on society at large.","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47363860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How to facilitate critical action learning","authors":"Bernhard Hauser, C. Rigg, K. Trehan, R. Vince","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2206994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2206994","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Critical Action Learning (CAL) is a well-established approach to action learning. However, it has not necessarily been clear to action learning practitioners what makes CAL ‘critical’ and what are the implications in practice. In CAL, the facilitator has a key role in helping the set to engage with underlying emotions and power relations that are inevitably embedded in learning sets, and that both promote and prevent learning. The paper explains the main ideas of critical action learning, why facilitation is important, and how to facilitate CAL. Examples are provided from the authors’ practice and eight key components are presented as a guide to facilitating CAL. The aim of the paper is to improve the action learning community’s knowledge of how to facilitate critical action learning and when it is appropriate to utilize this approach.","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42109108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Guidelines for action learning as professional development to transform Physical Education in low resourced primary schools in South Africa","authors":"S. Kahts-Kramer, L. Wood","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2211936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2211936","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Continuing professional development (CPD) within a low resourced education environment necessitates context specific and needs-driven learning, particularly in Physical Education (PE) where personal and systemic barriers impede negatively on teachers and children’s educational experiences. This paper provides evidence-based guidelines as to how an action learning approach to CPD for PE might empower teachers to direct their own learning within low resource environments. A participatory action learning and action research design, using qualitative data generation methods, guided the inquiry. Ten teachers from two low resourced schools in South Africa, through participation in an action learning process, ultimately deduced five guidelines from their reflective enquiry to guide teachers to collaborate to transform their teaching of PE. The action learning approach to CPD supports teachers to take ownership of and responsibility for their CPD within the subject of PE. Ultimately, learning how to learn, enables teachers to champion sustainable change through establishing ongoing communities of practice.","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44919833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Action learning aiding innovation","authors":"George Boak","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2218136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2218136","url":null,"abstract":"As we have said on these pages before, action learning and innovation are linked processes, implicit in Revans’ calls for action learning to produce fresh thinking, fresh questions, and questioning insight (Boak 2022; Pedler and Brook 2017). The 8th International Action Learning Conference took place in April 2023, with the theme of action learning and innovation. It was hosted by York St John University in York, England, and organised by this journal and York Business School, in association with the International Foundation for Action Learning, and support from the publisher, Taylor and Francis. It attracted 65 delegates from the UK, Ireland, Canada, the US, South Africa, Spain, Germany, Norway, and France. There were 25 presentations of papers, a symposium with six speakers, and nine interactive workshops. The theme of innovation was represented in papers featuring examples of action learning enabling new processes, practices, products, and services in a wide variety of organisations and communities. Workshops explored the use of, and possibilities for, action learning for new purposes, and action learning conducted in new ways. Keynote speaker Professor Kiran Trehan challenged the delegates to imagine how action learning can bring about revolutions in thinking and practice within the next 10 years. Fellow keynote speaker Yury Boshyk noted the many different varieties of action learning that are practised today and called for a global alliance of practitioners of these different varieties, to work together to tackle wicked problems and to bring about valuable changes. Complex innovation projects often require collaboration between different professional groups, different organisations, and different communities, and these differences, whilst valuable, can give rise to barriers to communication. In the symposium, speakers presented five complex projects that called for joint working and communication across group boundaries and explained how action learning processes had enabled successful collaboration. Innovation was also evident in the conference in discussions of the development and use of new action learning practices, including virtual action learning, using Zoom or Teams or similar platforms, which has become so much more common in the past three years. In this issue of the journal, the theme of action learning and innovation continues, with papers focusing on action learning in new contexts and on the practice of critical action learning, relatively recent development of action learning. A paper by Samantha Kahts-Kramer and Lesley Wood provides guidelines, based on their research, for how an action learning approach to continuing professional development can empower teachers to achieve their own learning and development within low-resource environments. The paper describes how teachers of physical education (PE) in two lowresourced schools in South Africa took part in a participative action learning and action research process to enable ","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43896685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Finding innovation opportunities in SMEs through futures and foresight learning: an action learning approach","authors":"J. Gold, Ollie Jones","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2217085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2217085","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been particularly challenged by the Covid pandemic, the climate crisis, war and political tensions including the fuel price crisis. Strategic responses to crisis including cost-cutting as retrenchment in the short run, debt financing to preserve the status quo and exit. However, perhaps the most positive is to innovate for renewal. The paper considers how working with an approach to futures and foresight learning, three different SMEs during the Covid pandemic and beyond formed action learning groups and were able to find future opportunities from which innovation ideas for action in the present could be undertaken. The paper considers the meaning of innovation including what Revans saw as an ‘Innovation Paradox’ as a gap between invention and innovation. In SMEs, the importance of informal innovation and an innovation orientation are identified. The meaning futures and foresight learning is considered and the focus on the identification of new opportunities for products and services, delivered by a process of action learning. Findings from three SMEs are presented from meetings that took place during 2021 to 2022, when Covid restrictions were partly in place. They show how each programme begins with opportunity questions for the future which then lead to ideas after a consideration of trends and patterns. Further methods of futures thinking are presented which allow further ideas to be developed for innovation. In each case, ideas are selected for business planning after approval. Discussion of the findings considers the importance of futures and foresight learning combined with action learning for SMEs to become more strategic, future-oriented and creative in seeking opportunities for innovation.","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49429549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Making action learning our own: a story from the Basque Country","authors":"Olatz Errazquin, Ana Agirre, Amaia Miner, A. Murphy","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2218128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2218128","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This account of practice describes how elected representatives, politically appointed managers and career officers of the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council have adopted action learning as a way of learning how to transform their institution, an important aspect of which has been to find locally situated ways of establishing and consolidating the approach. The article provides pen portraits to illustrate what has been learned and achieved so far and in conclusion draws attention to the importance of shifting the balance of learning and challenge from a focus on individuals towards a collective effort which tackles deep rooted organisational problems.","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45661544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In memoriam – Professor John Burgoyne","authors":"Cheryl Brook","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2218137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2218137","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44187271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Writing creatively about action learning: insights from practitioners","authors":"J. Creaton, C. Abbott, Genevieve Cother, C. Sanyal","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2218127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2218127","url":null,"abstract":"The accounts of practice in this edition explore a diverse range of perspectives on action learning from the UK, Germany and the Basque Country and raise issues relating to facilitation, organisational learning and self-reflection. However, they are also notable for their use of literary devices to illustrate and illuminate the stories that they tell. The first account is Thinking in Colour from Neal-Smith, Bishop and Townley, three academics at a UK Business School. Their account is prompted by the review of a postgraduate module that had aimed to develop critical reflection and reflexivity skills among students through the use of self-directed action learning sets. The module had not been as successful as expected and the academics decided to set up their own action learning set to address the issues of student engagement and improve their own proficiency in teaching reflective skills. Through the action learning sets, they shared their personal stories and experiences, discussed imposter syndrome and the challenges students face in developing critical reflection skills. These reflections led to the introduction of trained facilitators into the module, leading to improved student participation and engagement. A distinctive feature of this account is the development of a visual metaphor called a mandala to explain the process of reflection and to represent the complex dimensions of ongoing personal development. The second account, Making action learning our own: A story from the Basque Country, by Errazquin, Agirre, Miner & Murphy reports on an initiative in the province of Gipuzkoa, where action learning has been used to underpin a new collaborative model of political governance. The initiative aims to transform the way politics is practised and foster community capacity to address contemporary challenges. This account of practice highlights the successful adoption and adaptation of action learning within the council by drawing on the authors’ experiences as participants and facilitators, and on three pen portraits – composite narratives based on qualitative interviews – to identify success factors and barriers to implementation. The key success factors are identified as: the involvement of multiple participants and perspectives to provide challenge and generate transformation; the creation of pockets of optimism; and the development of internal facilitators. However, tensions related to confidentiality, reflection and addressing institutional barriers were also encountered. The final account of practice from Thomas Radke is Sentimental Education – Learning from action to become an action learning facilitator. Radke shares his personal journey and the experiences he encountered while developing as a facilitator. Echoing Gustave Flaubert’s novel, the narrator starts the story with grand aspirations and ambitions, but encounters a number of harsh realities which result in some disillusionment and loss of innocence. He notes the scarcity of empiri","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46040157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The big con: how the consulting industry weakens our businesses, infantilises our governments and warps our economies","authors":"J. Edmonstone","doi":"10.1080/14767333.2023.2218134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2023.2218134","url":null,"abstract":"This timely book is focused on the use of large national and international management con-sultancies, often o ff ering one-size-fi ts-all, o ff -the-peg packages or ‘ pre-cooked ’ approaches, even though previous research has revealed that, in the public services at least, have made little or no signi fi cant impact (Kirkpatrick et al. 2018). One estimate quoted in the book suggests that the UK public sector alone awarded £2.8 billion in consulting contracts in 2022 – up some 75% on 2019 spending. Revans (2011), was typically scathing about: The undue intervention of experts carrying no personal responsibility for real life actions. It is at best, ambiguous, in general opinionative, and at worst, reactionary.","PeriodicalId":44898,"journal":{"name":"Action Learning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48426330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}