Welcome to the Revans Institute and the ‘New Directions in Action Learning’ Occasional Papers series The Revans Institute for Action Learning and Research was established at the University of Salford in December 1995. It aims to encourage collaboration between professional practitioners and academics so that real problems and issues are tackled in a learning partnership. This aim links with those of the University of Salford which has a long tradition of educational work with business, industry and the community. Salford is closely attuned to the needs and problems of practitioners and is focused on the vision of becoming an ‘enterprising university’. As part of its pioneering work in the use of action learning and research in higher degrees, the Institute has been developing its work and its profile within the academic community. In the Spring of 2000, a series of formal seminars was arranged with the following purposes: • To explore new directions in action learning - especially those concerning research and higher degrees • To offer our programme participants an opportunity to hear from and debate with people outside the Institute on issues of action learning • To help raise the Institute’s research and publishing profile by forming a basis for occasional papers and/or journal articles, complementing the forthcoming launch of the journal: Action Learning: Research and Practice (launch date May 2003). In the spirit of action learning, the seminars have been designed to encourage discussion and dialogue amongst all those present. During the three hour session, over two hours is allocated to group discussion and questioning, and we have tried to capture some of this interaction in the printed text. I am delighted to introduce this record of the seminars, and would encourage you, as a reader, to continue the dialogue - by contacting us here at the Institute and by attending future events. We look forward to hearing from you. Professor David Botham Director, The Revans Institute University of Salford Greater Manchester, UK. Tel: +44 (0)161 295 4088 i

Foreword We are delighted to have a contribution to this series from John Burgoyne, who draws on his extensive experience of management learning and research to offer a discussion of critical realism and its application to action learning. With the aid of critical realism a bridge can be made between positivist and constructivist paradigms: “there is something to know about over and above the knowing process”. The strong argument for this middle ground is that: “any theory, conclusion, recommendation from research that involves denial of the real as we can best know it, is anti-emancipatory.” The paper begins with an ontological perspective on action learning with John arguing that these issues have been neglected, whilst epistemology has been emphasised, in the development of action learning theory. The potential for shifting this balance is examined via a conceptual expansion of the Kolb cycle. This paper offers the reader much in terms of theoretical, conceptual and practical insights, but it is the skilful articulation of that which is difficult to articulate which makes it such a fresh contribution to our series! Mandy Chivers The Revans Institute

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PROFESSOR JOHN G BURGOYNE B.Sc., M.Phil., Ph.D. Department of Management Learning The Management School Lancaster University Lancaster LA1 4YX tel. 01524 594026 fax. 01524 844262 email [email protected] John Burgoyne is a founding member of the Department of Management Learning in the Management School, University of Lancaster. He is a psychologist by background and has worked on the evaluation of management development, the learning process, managerial competencies and self-development, corporate management development policy, career formation, organisational learning, the knowledge managing and virtual organisation. He is currently on secondment as Policy Research Consultant to the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership, a Government sponsored independent inquiry into the development and utilization of management and leadership talent. (see http://www.managementandleadershipcouncil.org/ ) He is concerned with applying the latest ideas from research in management and behavioural studies to the practical reconstruction of contemporary organisations through management development. He is particularly interested in working with organisations that wish to use the formulation and implementation of Corporate Management Development Policy as a cornerstone of their efforts to create their futures.

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The Nature of Action Learning: What is learned about in action learning?

Introduction The argument of this paper is that in considering the rationale for theory and practice of action learning we have tended to concentrate on the nature of learning, and how action learning might facilitate it, and neglected to consider the nature of the world to be learnt about. The nature of the world to be learnt about has implications for the process of learning that will develop the ability to understand the field of action, and the capacity to act effectively in it. The Kolb (1974) learning cycle is probably the model of learning most used to understand, explain and guide the practice of action learning (see figure 1). In these terms action learning is often presented as encouraging and facilitating the learner around the familiar cycle of forming an understanding of a situation, choosing a line of action in and on it, putting this into practice, seeing the consequences, revising the understanding and so on - and in the company of others giving both cognitive and emotional support. The question here is about what happens between the action that the action learner takes on the world, and the reaction he/she gets back from it. The proposition is that there is another cycle involved - as portrayed in figure 2. The second, ‘underground’ or ‘hidden’ cycle is one of action, impact and consequences, new phenomena, results, states of affairs, and consequences and new experiences for the action learner which then feeds the process of reflective observation back in the learning cycle. The whole learning process involves both these cycles. The top, familiar, learning cycle is about how we understand and develop the capacity to act on the world, and relate to epistemological issues - how we understand things. The bottom cycle is about ‘what is the world like that it may be understood?’ ontological questions. The argument of this paper is that epistemological questions have been emphasised and ontological ones neglected in developing the theory and practice of action learning. It makes a start in examining the potential for rectifying this imbalance. In one very important respect the issue has not been totally neglected, and that is in Revan’s (1982) classic distinction between ‘p’ and ‘q’. To the extent to which the world is a regular and predictable ‘machine’ then experimenting on it a la Kolb will lead to an accumulating and increasingly accurate understanding of it, and ability to act on it to achieve known ends. To the extent to which the world 1

is not a predictable machine, containing random or chaotic events, unpredictable agentic moves by other actors, new combinations of events with hitherto unseen and unpredictable emergent properties, the ‘q’ - the use of judgement in specific situations is what is involved. However Revans and others seem not to have quite explained how the two interact. There is manifestly some predictability in the world but it appears not to be neatly sorted out into a separate domain - they seem both mixed up together and that is what we need to understand and be able to act on better. The Kolb cycle implicitly hints towards the ‘world as machine’ view - the presumably metaphorical word ‘concrete’ hints at this, as does the general nonproblematisation of the process between action and reaction. The Kolb cycle initially and primarily implies an individual process. However a large proportion of action and behaviour is social and communicative. In the specific context of management all or most of action can be argued to be in this category. This means, in Kolb terms, that on the other side of any individual’s actions and effects are one or more other ‘individuals’ doing the same thing. As one individual is trying to understand and predict one or more ‘others’ they are doing the same to them. This hints at the world of Langian ‘knots’ - he thinks that she thinks that he thinks etc., and perhaps the world portrayed in game theory in which the players try to predict and double guess the strategies of other players. The encounters with external ‘reality’ in the Kolb cycle may be primarily social encounters in which interplays of meaning and social power to maintain them are what is at stake. Figure 3 offers a portrayal of this. In the world of research and research philosophy ‘positivism’ is the terms for the approach that regards the world as a machine the rules of which are to be discovered. ‘Constructivism’ or ‘Social Constructionism’ are the terms usually associated with the view that the world as we know it and live in it is largely (or at the extreme entirely) the meanings that we form in our individual and collective consciousnesses. Neither of these approaches seems to have led to an approach to research and understanding that is straightforward and unchallengable. A new perspective, that of Critical Realism, starts from an ontological position that that are sufficient regularities in the world to justify the belief that there is something out there underlying them, but that this is an open system with emergent properties, and a dynamic process of meaning making as part of this (see Sayer 1999 for a general treatment). This appears promising in terms of addressing the issues about the ‘hidden side’ of action learning addressed above, and the remainder of this paper explains and explores these and their implications for management learning in general, including action learning. 2

Abstract Conceptualisation

Active Experimentation

Reflective Observation

Concrete Experience

Figure 1 The Kolb learning cycle

Abstract Conceptualisation

Active Experimentation

Reflective Observation

Concrete Experience Consequences and Experiences for the Actor

Action in and on the World

New Phenomena, Results, States of Affairs Impact, Reactions, Consequences

Figure2 The Kolb learning cycle and the action-consequences cycle 3

AC

RO AE AE

RO

AC

AC

AE

RO AE

RO

AC

Concrete experience as a social, meaning making and negotiating encounter

Figure 3 The Social and Communicative Varient of Kolb Cycles

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Overview Critical realism is a philosophically based orientation to research and theorising. It is based on a ‘realist’ ontology - i.e. the assertion that there is something to know about over and above the knowing process. It is critical of both strong constructivist/post modern and hard logical positivist perspectives. It is also critical of any theory or research that does not make an attempt to make reasonable inferences about reality. Furthermore it takes a critical position based on the notion that any theory, conclusion, recommendation from research that involves denial of the real, as we can best know it is anti-emancipatory. The paper will review some of the key concepts of critical realism: • The epistemological fallacy • Event regularity • Reality bites • A vertical rather than flat ontology • Emergent properties • Reality, actuality and empirical sense data • Transitive and intransitive objects • The double hermeneutic • Reality as a non deterministic but probabilistic open system • Anti reality as merely socially constructed • Epistemological relativism is good, judgmental relativism is bad • Causation influenced but not determined by structure • Powers not power • Research as detective work: reasonable inference from sense data Some implications of the critical realist perspective for management learning will be explored by considering its application to: 5

• Learning itself • The notion of management and management expertise • The debates around the management education teaching approaches of the case study and action learning, which are based, at least in part, on their ontological assertions about the nature of management. These applications will be used to assess the potential impact of critical realism on research and theory in this field. Some questions may be: 1. Does CR offer a strong synthesis of positivism and constructionism? 2. Is the image in CR of constructionism a simplified stereotype? 3. Is CR a theory in itself as well as an ontological/epistemological orientation? 4. Is CR a kind of modified positivism? 5. How directly do principles for the practice of research follow from CR?

An initial exploration of critical realism and its implications for Management Learning Management learning is an area of inquiry in management studies. It is particularly concerned with the question of what management practice, both individual and collective, is, and how it is acquired, passed on and developed. Amongst other things it has an interest in the various teaching and learning methods used in management education, training and development. The aim of this section is to give initial consideration to the application of the ideas of critical realism to the area of management learning, both in terms of clarifying some of its conceptual concerns, and in terms of the conduct of the research and learning practices associated with it. 6

The structure of the section • Introduces core concepts, issues and practices from management learning • Summarises key concepts from critical realism as encountered in an initial familiarisation • Examines management learning concepts, issues and practices in the light of critical realism

Core concepts, issues and practices from management learning: The implications of some of the ideas from critical realism will be explored for some core exemplar issues in management learning: Management: what is it, in what sense does it exist? Debates in management learning include such issues as: Is there any such thing as management? If there is, is it a universal process or a temporally and culturally located construction? Is management a neutral activity or an ideologically driven practice? Learning: how does the nature of something affect how it is learnt as a practice or a subject? Is there any such thing as learning? If there is, is it one thing or many things? Is it accessible to investigation? Expertise: what is the nature of expertise in anything, and in particular managing and facilitating the learning of managing? Is expertise real or reputational? Is its existence establishable or inevitably contested? Is it occupationally boundable? Is it stable/changing? Is its existence or presence provable? What special features does a critical approach to theory and practice have in management learning? What are the alternatives to instrumentalism in both management and management learning? How does strategy/process criticality work (criticality expressed in the method and practice of management teaching and training as well as in its content)? 7

What is an adequate basis for criticality: Marxist, feminist, post-colonial, deep ecological, emancipatory, deconstructionist, agonistic - is there any way beyond the critical relativism implied by working with all these and others? How do teaching/learning methods work, especially in relation to the nature of the learnt-about? In particular what are the implications of the ontological assertions embedded in learning approaches like the case study and action learning? For example the rationale for the case study seems to be founded on a rejection of the possibility of teaching management as a set of theory based practices and techniques. Its proponents believe in the educational benefit of having students make normative analyses of accounts of actual managerial situations, usually from a decision-maker’s perspective. What have we to say about this rationale? The action learning approach also rejects the possibility of teaching management as a set of theory-based practices and techniques. It distinguishes ‘p’: programmed knowledge from ‘q’: judgmental knowledge. It favours managers learning by taking thoughtful action in real situations, and interpreting the effects. Again, what can we make of this approach?

What Critical Realism appears to be: A philosophically based approach to social (and other?) science research that is: • Based on a ‘realist’ ontology - i.e. the assertion that there is something to know about over and above the knowing process. • Is critical of both strong constructivist/post modern and hard logical positivist perspectives. • Is critical of any theory or research that does not make an attempt to make reasonable inferences about reality. • Takes a critical position based on the notion to take any position that involves denial of the real, as we can best know it is anti-emancipatory. • Critical realism locates itself in relation to both strong positivism and strong constructivist. It is critical of both, and offers itself as a middle ground or synthesis that incorporates the ‘useful’ parts of both 8

Some key concepts of critical realism The epistemological fallacy The position that appears to be taken by strong constructionists et al (CR tends to use the term to incorporate -ivists, -ovists, pomos and probably ethnos - phenomenos may be an interesting problem) - that because we cannot know reality directly it is not there. This is a fallacy that disables all the above. It is called the epistemological fallacy because it uses an epistemological position to answer the ontological question. CR’s want to do it the other way.

Event regularity Sense experience shows convincingly many regularities in experience physical, material, chemical, biological, psychological and social behaviour. These are best accounted for by the idea of some kind of real underlying generative process, about which inferences can be drawn from a careful working with ideas to make sense of the experience.

Reality bites Although experience and its interpretation is only expressed in language, and is heavily mediated by it, none the less something comes through from the real. We meet resistance in our projects - this may be because of physical realities or socially constructed rules, but both of these, and their powers to constrain us, must be judged as real. So for example when we kick a rock we feel pain and we can safely assume that another person would feel pain also, the pain being agreed reality. There are events and practices outside the language in which we describe them. 9

A vertical rather than flat ontology The idea of generative processes ‘behind’ or ‘underlying’ experience implies the verticality referred to here. Strong positivism, strong constructionism and phenomenology are flat ontologies. Directly experienced facts, the world as the text of the world, experience is it respectively. What you see is what there is, what you see is what you make it, what you see is what you see and that is it. Emergent properties When real things interact the result of the interaction generates properties beyond the components, and these are not predictable from the properties of the individual things that interact. E.g. - possible examples as reasonable inferences: Equilibrium. Biological properties of atomic structures interacting. Consciousness, intentionality and agency from biological entities. Social structures from and in social interaction. Reality, actuality and empirical sense data some sense data is linguistically and perceptually mediated experience of actuality actualities - how things turn out in specific circumstances Underlying realities with powers, interact to produce

-----------------------PS sense data can also be of its own sense making, of the mechanisms of the real and the actual, and the flows between them. It is sometimes, but not always, possible to get glimpses ‘inside the black box’. Transitive and intransitive objects The intransitive is the focus of our inquiries. The transitive object is our own meaning making, and it is our adapting understanding of the intransitive. 10

The double hermeneutic In studying phenomena with a social element we have the likelihood that we are studying something that is also making sense of itself - ‘stone’ and ‘stoniness’ is meaning put by us, personal identity includes the personal sensemaking of the person and their position in the meaning making structures of their social settings. This is the first hermeneutic. Our sense making is the second hermeneutic. Furthermore the second hermeneutic can feed back into the first when social science theory feeds back into society. The dynamic of the double hermeneutic is part of the reality we are part of as investigators. Reality as a non deterministic but probabilistic open system The elements of reality have potentials, but whether they are exercised and with what effect depends on how they interact with other elements, and they are in an open system and with emergent properties and are hence not deterministically predictable. Keith can cook but whether he does is influenced, say, by availability of tools, kitchens, raw materials, motivation and incentive, social pressure, the state of his health. These other factors are in turn linked to other elements, more or less infinitely - so it is an open system. If Keith cooks a cake we know he can cook, at least then. If Keith never produces a cake, even when most of the other plausible conditions are in place, then we get more confident in the proposition that Keith cannot cook. PS - this is one of the two places where the Positivists loose the plot: They think reality is a closed system, hence firm causal conclusions can be drawn from direct observation of event regularity. (the other place they fall down is their flat ontology and non-problematic idea of direct observation - reality is in-your-face via direct factual observation). Anti reality as MERELY socially constructed Then the retort is: So the power properties of language are real then. 11

Power must be held in place by something real. If the world is merely socially constructed then ‘thought work’ would change it. This does not seem to be the case. If a social constructionist (in the broad sense) says that resistance to change arises from the power structures in language then see Chairman Mao: ‘Power flows from the barrel of a gun.’ - the gun is real and works on known physical properties. It really can kill you. This has power over you if you want to live. If you do, this is a real desire.

Epistemological relativism is good, judgmental relativism is bad It is reasonable to observe that different actors/stakeholders have different perceptions, interpretations and evaluations of events over which they interact. Reporting this kind of relativism as well as possible is epistemological relativism and is a good thing. Jumping to the conclusion that everyone is entitled to their opinion on fact, interpretations and values is judgmental relativism and is a bad thing. Carefully analysis of different stakeholder’s positions, and dialogue between them, can lead to logically and experienced based better understandings that are better because they are more realistic. This is the CR route to emancipation.

Causation influenced but not determined by structure The CR take on causation arises from the notion of reality as an open system of elements with powers that get exercised depending on how they interact with other elements, and that when they do, this can contribute to the creation of emergent properties. CR based theory cannot say with deterministic certainty what will happen. It can say with probabilistic certainty what will and will not happen: Pigs won’t fly. John will wear trousers to work again tomorrow. 12

Powers not power Whatever the elements of reality are, they have powers in the sense of potentials and tendencies: guns, skills, class structures. Where power relations exist between people and people, people and institutions, institutions and institutions, institutions and people, this is mediated by the powers of the underlying realities the actual manifestation of which shape the actualities of their interaction. Research as detective work: reasonable inference from sense data Reasonable inferences, that can be analytically evaluated as better or worse, can be made on the basis of both event regularities and idiosyncratic events as gathered in sense data. The detective work is iteration between sense data and possible explanatory frameworks and specific explanations. The process requires rigorous conceptual analysis of frameworks and specific explanation to allow the best use to be made of sense data. CR offers a relatively clear and applicable set of principles for carrying out this rigorous conceptual analysis.

Insights into management learning issues in the light of critical realism Management • managing can be understood as an enduring human activity that has now always been labelled as such, and a historically located social construct. CR emphasises that these two thoughts are compatible. • thoughts arising from CR suggest how a comparative study of historical and contemporary accounts of managing could be rewarding. • The ‘open system’ framework of CR appears to have potential for coping with the stability/change issue in managing. 13

Learning • CR has a ‘double take’ on learning. • Firstly CR is an, at least implied, theory of learning in itself - and could be developed more as such? • A CR perspective on learning may suggest that it can be said to exist, but to be multiple in its forms, e.g. remembering, performing. • CR offers an approach to the issue of ‘what is an entity that it may learn?:’ (person, institution, society, network etc.). Some theories of learning, particularly those that deal with emotion, values, moral and ethical development may pose some interesting challenges to the development of CR thinking.

Expertise • In CR expertise is a ‘power’. It is demonstrably acquired in some situations - therefore is learning a power to acquire powers? Learning may be an important part of the emergent properties of the biological as it provides the basis for the human and social. • Expertise is straightforward in some contexts, complex, contested and unbounded in others - of which managing is one. • The ‘double hermeneutic’ and ‘open system’ elements of CR allow some useful interpretations of management competence issues.

Criticality in management learning • CR highlights the extreme pluralism and relativism in the critical element of management and management learning thinking. • Whether it is ‘powerful’ enough to resolve this relativism is worthy of further analysis. • Management learning draws on forms of ethnography, phenomenology, constructionism, constructivism, post modernism and deconstruction that do not fit the stereotype of ‘anti-realist flat ontology’ that CR appears to put on them. 14

The case study teaching method • The case study method is strongly formed around its ontological take on the nature of management. • Management learning has primarily tried to understand the case method, as other teaching methods, in terms of implied learning theory - which is the epistemological facet of a teaching approach. • This appears to be quite an important general insight from CR for management learning. • CR offers a useful way of thinking about how students might approach the problem of generalisation from conclusions drawn from specific cases.

The action learning approach • CR suggests ways in which it would be useful to break down the rigid distinction between ‘p’ and ‘q’ in action learning. • CR provides useful ideas about how action learners might be thoughtful about their practice and how they might interpret their observations of the effects of their actions. • CR gives action learning a line of response to the accusation that it is not sufficiently critical of management practice.

Tentative conclusions • CR offers concepts that contribute significantly to thinking about management and management expertise, which are suggestive of useful specific research projects. • CR offers significant insights into some management teaching methods. • Juxtaposing CR and thinking about learning pose some interesting questions for each. • Emotionality, moral and ethical development and the actual nature of other anti-positivist research orientations raise questions for CR as currently and initially understood. 15

References Kolb D. A. (1974) On management and the learning process. in: Kolb D. A. Rubin I. M. & McIntryre J. M. (eds.) Organizational Psychology (2nd ed) Prentice Hall. 27-42. Revans R. W. (1982) The Origins and Growth of Action Learning. Sweden: Chartwell-Bratt. Sayer A. (1999) Realism and Social Science. London. Sage.

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THE REVANS INSTITUTE FOR ACTION LEARNING AND RESEARCH The Revans Institute was formally opened in 1995 by the pioneer of action learning, Professor R.W. Revans, and is the first research centre devoted to the process of action learning. The Institute holds a unique archive containing over a thousand of Revans’ research papers and books which are available to academics and members of the Institute. The Institute draws upon, and has established links with, some of the most distinguished academics within the international action learning community, and has a leading position in the development of action learning worldwide. Action learning is a process of enquiry that grew from Reg Revans' own experience of working at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in the 1920s. As a member of a group of research scientists, Revans found that the process of questioning one’s own actions both successes and failures - in a deliberate, precise way, and reflecting on them, created insight into how to proceed and act more appropriately. Thus when answers are not available from current expertise, collaborative enquiry with fellow learners, undergoing the same experience of questioning what to do next, can be effective. The success of this process rests on the creation of learning partnerships that are supportive, and at the same time, challenging; deeply caring yet questioning. Such partnerships create themselves when different people with different ideas engage wholeheartedly with each other as partners in adversity. This is a profound shift from dependence on available expertise, and pride in the steady accumulation of knowledge, to learning with and from fellow learners, honestly disclosing doubts and admitting ignorance. The Revans Institute brings together experienced people from industry, business and the public sector to work in small groups on key issues. As befits the applied and collaborative approach of action learning, the vast majority of participants combine their study with their work. The trans-disciplinary nature of the Institute has attracted a broad range of professionals including medical consultants, nurses, social workers, teachers, managers, community workers, entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists. In addition to individually focused research programmes, the Institute has also formed collaborative partnerships with a range of organisations, working with senior staff to support them in the changes they need to make in their practice and their workplace. As part of its mission, the Revans Institute has a commitment to disseminate and encourage the use of Revans' action learning. We are also keen to develop a dialogue with other scholars and practitioners and to expand the debate on this rapidly emerging field. The New Directions Seminars, and the accompanying series of Occasional Papers, will be a key means of achieving this objective. For further information, please contact: Juliette Leeks The Revans Institute University of Salford Greater Manchester, U.K. Tel: +44 (0)161 295 4088

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