This article sheds light on employee wellbeing. We reveal how an 'adapted' action learning intervention (a change laboratory) introduced prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, enabled learning and action to emerge within an educational programme. We utilise the theoretical lens of activity theory to illustrate the challenges and tensions of…

This account of practice focuses on using action learning (AL) from both the facilitator and student experience during the dissertation stage of a postgraduate degree to resolve wicked workplace problems. The action learning process was used to explore and create a catalyst for change through research that explored the wicked problem of…

This account of practice offers an example of the use of action learning within the undergraduate Degree Apprenticeship Curriculum of a UK university, specifically the Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship. This programme is aimed at an age-diverse group who are supported by their employers through the levy to improve their knowledge, skills and…

Action learning has evolved over a period of time when managerialism and performativity, which are aspects of neoliberalism, have become stronger and this explains, in part, the emergence of Critical Action Learning (CAL). Performativity, in particular, has increasingly become internalised by people at work. CAL seems to be limited to power…

This paper considers the logic of practice of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in relation to critical action learning: in particular "habitus" which is co-created with field and the interplay amongst the two in the form of misrecognition and risk. We draw on interviews with participants who have experienced action learning as part…

This account of practice presents two cases of the application of Action Learning (AL) communication methodology as described by Marquardt [2004. "Optimising the power of action learning". Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing]. The teams were Czech and international top management teams. The AL methodology was used to improve…

Becoming a "winning organization" when one currently is an "ugly ducking" can be a difficult and strenuous task. BAT Niemeyer in the Netherlands succeeded in making such a transformation over the course of four years. Action learning was used, among other methods, to steer part of this transformation, in which employee…

This article describes an example of how action learning was used as a framework for an organisational intervention to fundamentally change the organisational culture over a period of time. It also identifies our learning over that period of time and what worked well (and not so well) in an International Non-Governmental Organisation in Nepal.

Systems thinking underpins "lean" management and is best understood through action-learning as the ideas are counter-intuitive. The Toyota Production System is just that--a system; the failure to appreciate that starting-place and the advocacy of "tools" leads many to fail to grasp what is, without doubt, a significant…

Action learning is being increasingly utilised as a strategy to underpin practitioner focused development and research projects in healthcare generally and nursing in particular. Whilst facilitators of and participants in action learning have a variety of resource materials to guide their practice and participation, there continue to be few…

Advanced clinical practice roles are now an integral feature of many healthcare services and have been adopted in a diversity of areas. However, mentoring of these roles is not well documented in the literature and formal mechanisms of support are limited. An action learning set (ALS) was developed to provide support for consultants currently in…

The challenge of tackling the problem of coping with work related stress in a National Health Service (NHS) Trust was undertaken. Ideas were developed within the context of two different action learning sets and led to actions resulting in a large therapy Taster Session event and the establishment of a centre offering alternative therapies and…