Action Learning and Related Modalities

In this chapter, I hope to first locate action learning within the range of prevailing “action modalities” in management development that conceive of practice as having its own epistemology. They all more or less emphasize the value of concurrent reflection on experience to expand and create new knowledge while improving practice itself. I will then succinctly describe action learning both in theory and practice, highlighting and illustrating its prospective outcomes, its project orientation, and its reliance on learning teams. Next, I will survey other selected action modalities, namely: action research, action science, developmental action inquiry, and cooperative inquiry. In the last sections, I will take up three contemporary topics, the emergence of critical theory within the action dimension, which bounds action learning’s humanistic aspirations; the global application and resulting cross-cultural implications of the use of action learning; and the challenge to the action modalities of their not yet having widespread adoption in the field