Action learning in action - The teaching company scheme

The approach to management education taken in our universities is often criticized for being divorced from the realities of current management practice: too 'academic' in the least complimentary sense of the word. The concept of action learning appeared to offer management educators a way forward, by encouraging them to bring their analytical skills and structured approach into companies, to allow managers to practise and learn about management, more or less simultaneously. The stumbling block to the development of action learning is that it does not fit easily into the way academic institutions are organized. For the academics, the companies and the learners involved, it appears to be a relatively radical learning approach to adopt. The general perception about action learning is that it has so far been restricted to relatively isolated, although often successful, initiatives. This article examines the phenomenon of the Teaching Company Scheme, which involves 70 percent of higher education institutions; a scheme which has introduced thousands of graduates, academics and company managers to an experience which could be equated to an action learning process. By drawing on the experience of four teaching company programmes, the article attempts to explore the opportunities and limitations that the scheme presents to apply and study the process of action learning.