Student accounts of action learning on a DBA programme: learning inaction

This account of practice sets out the action learning experience of three doctoral students on the same Doctoral Programme in Business Administration at a UK university. It also include the sense-making of a fourth member of the set. It explores the tension between their area of work and their engagement in the action learning process and, in so doing, contributes to the ongoing debate about the relative priority of learning and problem-solving in action learning. The account narrates the students’ personal accounts of their involvement with the action learning set (ALS), what they felt worked and what did not before reflecting on their personal contributions as hybrid practitioner-learners. Insights into the experience are offered up to illuminate the function and purpose of the ALS within a management education programme.