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In recent years the use of formal, centralised training courses to promote the development of managers has been criticised by people such as Alistair Mant, Reginald Revans and Hawdon Hague. Mant calls for a drastic reappraisal of management education and training. He argues that, unless a coherent theory of management action and learning is developed, little real progress can be made. Revans advocates project‐based or action learning as an alternative to training courses, whilst Hague sees the individual coaching of managers as another possible solution to the problem of management training.

Action learning is presented by its originator, Reg Revans, as an ancient idea. But for those who encounter it for the first time it may be difficult to grasp for several reasons. In this article the author describes the reactions to a visit to Sri Lanka by Revans, and identifies several issues which seemed to emerge as he talked about action learning to a variety of managers and management teachers. These issues may be barriers to understanding its concepts and potential. The author makes several suggestions for minimising these barriers.

The latest in our series of Management Classics features an article by the founding father of action learning. Professor Reg Revans. It originally appeared in the Malaysian Management Review.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the learnings from prior interviews with thought leaders in learning organization conceptual development. Prior interviews with Karen Watkins, Victoria Marsick, Michael Marquardt, Bob Garratt and Peter Senge are included in the summary, which is an interim step as The Learning Organization continues to explore the learning organization history and evolution.

The paper summarizes prior interviews to uncover commonalities and differences in the development and evolution of the learning organization concepts as described by thought leaders.

Both commonalities and differences exist in definition, development of theory and resilience since original publication. Common threads in concept develop appear across the authors mainly in influences by Revans, Argyris and Schön. Differences also exist in how each author developed learning organization constructs.

The synthesis reveals that although the learning organization may have differing definitions, there are commonalities that tie some concepts together. Additional interviews will be continued in the exploration of the learning organization evolution.

Mine host Action learning—an approach to education that emphasises the distinctions between doing things oneself and talking about things getting done by others in general—has celebrated its silver jubilee. For it was in 1952 that the writer, having given up his post with the National Coal Board through lack of confidence in traditional methods of management education, persuaded the National Association of Colliery Managers to try action learning. 22 members formed themselves into a consortium, chose management apprentices to work with them, exchanged underofficials for the collective study of four prevailing operational problems, and voted for one of their fellow members to be seconded to work full‐time with the writer; our task was to build out of this miscellany a network of mutual advice, criticism and support. The theory was that each mine formed so individual and complex an organism that only those presently working in it could hope to improve the way it functioned, and only those themselves trying to change their own systems could understand the inner resistances to offering and receiving usable advice, even in a market of comrades trying to deal with identical troubles. Action learning is intended therefore to ensure that managers shall learn better to manage with and from each other in the course of tackling the very problems that it is their proper business to tackle; it has no truck with academic simulations of any kind.

Reflecting on 25 years of collaborating in action learning research initiatives in interorganizational settings, the authors have framed three key theoretical contributions: (1) a formula for action learning in networks, (2) the notion of action learning research, and (3) the application of action learning research in networks. This chapter reviews how each of these three key theoretical contributions emerged as insights and were developed over time through three large-scale funded interorganizational action learning projects. The chapter provides insights into the process of theorizing as the authors show how these frameworks emerged through inquiry into experience and were consolidated through collaborative action as practice-based research, research as practice, and practice as research toward designed-in impact.

It was in 1952 that the first experiments were made in this country with an ancient idea. The Apostle James, in his Epistle (chap 1 v 22), says:

From so vast a repository of dialectic we may draw what samples we please, and we may fashion these samples snugly over any period of time we may have at our disposal. We may, indeed, compose our syllabus with a variety of our heart's content; over forty years ago I used to meet a young lady at the University of Michigan who was reading chemistry, office methods and polar exploration; and no doubt the progress of technology has afforded even that mixture some new richness. The material point is the infinite elasticity of the theoretical syllabus, combined with an illimitable particularity; in a real world cramped and twisted by the miserable inadequacies of God's Creation, we are made happy by escaping through the doors of our libraries and of our staff colleges into the Empyrean of programme and theory. Here we may cast off the fetters of responsibility and lay on such bills of entertainment as we please, like drudges on Saturday night at the music hall after labouring all week in the pit of toil. For what is the derivation of the very word theory? It is from the Greek for spectacle, and has the same root as theatre.

Addresses the need to interrelate academic and workplace domains from the perspective of management development. To address either domain in relative exclusion from the other risks creating a workplace context where learners are able to grasp real‐world problems but lack the underlying academic knowledge to solve them. Outlines how action learning can be used to bridge the two domains and provides actual examples from the USA, Australia and the UK. Provides an overview of action learning as a methodology.

A recent issue of The Behavioral Sciences Newsletter referred to action learning as the latest management buzzwords in Europe. It is, on the contrary, a codification of the oldest activities of Mankind, since we became the social animals we are only by each learning with and from the other by common responses in the face of threat. Action learning asks whether managers learn anything useful in their tasks of managing by being cloistered with experts in the traditional programmes; it prefers real managers to tackle real problems in real time, so that by asking each other how they deal with today's troubles, and by observing the outcomes, they may succeed in dealing more effectively with tomorrow's.