Action learning in an SME: appetite comes with eating

Abstract

This account describes action learning in a small to medium-size enterprise (SME) that operates as a local power utility on an established market that is currently going through a process of radical transformation. The task of the action learning set was to improve the flow of information to employees about the evolving framework in which the company operates. The set was made up of participants from a number of different SMEs and from a holding company who had taken part in a management development programme run and offered to its investments by the holding company as a minority shareholder. The account relates how the set gradually relinquished its habitual mental structures to become a change agent for the transformation of the SME.

Keywords:

• action learning
• reflection
• cross-company set
• culture change
• resistance
• participation