The Emotional Landscape of Action Learning MBA Teams

Abstract

This paper is based on empirical studies carried out in the UK and in New Zealand on over 130 MBAs in action learning teams of between 4 and six people on average. The paper’s topic concerns the review and interpretive analysis of a form of action learning in the tacit domain. The study particularly focused on mapping MBA teams’ learning and emotional regimes that they developed. These landscapes were framed within a commitment index based on axes of trust and anxiety. A typology of team’s emotional regimes and an embodied multi-spiral model of individual and collective learning were observed. The emotional regimes and learning in the teams were exhibited in various ways during their engagement in live consulting projects in years 1997-1999, 2000 and 2004. Their semester-long projects ranged across a variety of organisational types from start-up SMEs to major corporations and across functional areas from HR/OB to marketing, strategy, production and quality systems. The industry sectors covered include both public and private sector and the MBAs were both full- and part-time students. The methods used in data gathering and analysis included a triangulation of participant reflections in individual diaries and meeting logs as well as textual analyses of the latter, allied to observer and host organisation managers’ notes plus sample ‘exit’ interviews. A complexity-based frame of analysis within an enactive constructivist paradigm was employed to analyse data. I discuss some questions concerning potential or actual critiques of action learning forms of inquiry as both a management methodology and an academic learning/teaching tool. I also make some suggestions for practical approaches that might be employed to constructively utilise some of these learning maps of this self-organised MBA action learning project in other organisational and/or educational contexts. Thus, the paper begins with a brief review of the importance of teams and some definitions, followed by definition of tacit knowledge and emotions. This leads into some description of the research and methods employed in my work. The research results are then described. Next the emergent model of teams’ emotional regimes and learning is considered. I then conclude with reference to some potential organisational applications and future research development.