Turning to case studies as a mechanism for learning in action learning

Abstract

Case studies are a useful means of capturing and sharing experiential knowledge by allowing researchers to explore the social, organisational and political contexts of a specific case. Although accounts of action learning are often reported using a case study approach, it is not common to see individual case studies being used as a learning practice within action learning sets. Drawing on a network action learning (NAL) project, this paper explores how the process of coaching, articulating, authoring, sharing and editing case studies provided a vehicle for learning and research within a NAL set. The intended contribution of this paper to the theory of action learning is to extend the range of learning practices to include the case study within the NAL set. It discusses how case studies act as boundary objects, which are artefacts that can be used to cross boundaries between groups in order to facilitate learning that might not otherwise occur.

KEYWORDS:

• Network action learning
• case study
• boundary object
• boundary spanning
• learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Note on contributors

Dr Denise O’Leary is the Assistant Head of School of Hospitality Management and Tourism at Dublin Institute of Technology. She has over 20 years of international experience in research and consulting and has worked with numerous public and private sector organisations on aspects of organisational change, teamwork and interorganisational collaboration. She is particularly interested in action research and action learning as research approaches.

Prof. Paul Coughlan is Professor of Operations Management at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. His research interests include continuous improvement of manufacturing and product development practices, services innovation, action learning, action research, and commercialisation of university research. He and David Coghlan are co-authors of Collaborative Strategic Improvement through Network Action Learning: The Path to Sustainability (Edward Elgar, 2011).

Dr Clare Rigg is senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool School of Management, where she supervises doctoral practitioners for the DBA.

Prof. David Coghlan is a Professor Emeritus and Fellow Emeritus at the Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He specializes in organization development and action research and is active in both communities internationally. He is the author of several books and over 150 articles and book chapters. He and Paul Coughlan are authors of Collaborative Strategic Improvement through Network Action Learning (Edward Elgar, 2011). His most recent book is Inside Organizations: Exploring Organizational Experiences (Sage, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission under [grant number 613776].