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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/EUM0000000003926. When citing the article, please cite: Robert Newton, Michael J. Wilkinson, (1994), “When the Talking is Over: Using Action Learning”, Management Development Review, Vol. 7 Iss: 2, pp. 9 - 15.

Many organizations now utilize action learning, and it is applied increasingly throughout the world. Action learning appears in numerous variants, but generically it is a form of learning through experience, “by doing”, where the task environment is the classroom, and the task the vehicle. Two previous reviews of the action learning literature by Alan Mumford respectively covered the field prior to 1985 and the period 1985‐1994. Both reviews included books as well as journal articles. This current review covers the period 1994‐2000 and is limited to publicly available journal articles. Part 1 of the Review was published in an earlier issue of the Journal of Workplace Learning (Vol. 15 No. 2) and included a bibliography and comments. Part 2 extends that introduction with a schema for categorizing action learning articles and with comments on representative articles from the bibliography.

Discusses in depth mentoring and its meaning and present use, in particular with regard to Ashworth Hospital′s Management Development Programme for 80 managers. Gives the background and development of its comprehensive and sophisticated mentorship programme and the benefits which accrued.

Outlines the workings of Action Learning Sets, team‐building and cultural change, and explores the use of Action Learning methodology in the development of health‐care managers. Outlines the spin‐off benefits of the implementation of Action Learning at Ashworth Hospital, such as self‐discipline, commitment, improved morale, empowerment, etc. Concludes that it could be a powerful tool for future health‐care management.

Discusses the strategic and political issues associated with Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL) in consideration of its potential contribution to the staff, curriculum and organizational development activities of business schools. In recognizing that APL is not an autonomous process but an integral part of competence‐based assessment, political pressures exist to shift vocational curricula to an outcome‐based assessment model, with these new forms of competence‐based qualifications leading, rather than following, education and training. This means that business schools will need to develop the specificity of their curricula offering to an extent previously considered unnecessary and to respond proactively to potential benefits emerging from acceptance of, and commitment to, the ongoing structural revision of the vocational, educational and training system.

Ashworth Hospital has undertaken a management development program for 80 first‐line and middle managers, at the centre of which is the concept of empowerment. To avoid the pitfall, which many other such programs have fallen into, of paying lip‐service to the notion of empowerment, a “Project” has been established entitled “MORALE”. The project begins and ends with an evaluation emphasis on “M” for mentorship and “E” for empowerment. Sandwiched between these interdependent focuses are, “O” for ownership, “R” for responsibility, “A” for accountability, and “L” for learning, these being the accepted prerequisites for the success of empowered managers. Focusses on the delivery team′s belief that the effective development of managers, and their associated organizational benefits, can best be achieved through implementing strategies specifically designed to help empower them. Empowering managers is about helping them to take ownership of their jobs so that they can take personal and collaborative interest in improving the performance of the hospital.

There is a double crisis in modern science and in particular in physics and mechanics. Among others Einstein and Stephane Lupasco, in the 1930s, warned about this crisis. The Quantum Theory cannot be reconciled with the Relativity Theory. Specifically there is a gap (cleavage) between micro – and macro‐physics and mechanics. Parallel or beneath there is also a second crisis derived from a discontinuity (again a cleavage) between classical and modern science, that is between two previous revolutions. A new research programme of a simultaneous equilibrium versus disequilibrium approach, initially applied in economics has now been extended to include natural sciences. It is the question of a new, more comprehensive methodology which is actually a sui generis synthesis between classical and modern heritage. The rigorous application of the new research programme leads to the organisation of an Orientation Table, that is, a methodological map of all possible combinations (systems). The Table shows, without any exaggeration, a few revolutionary results. For instance, with the help of the Table, modern science or the second revolution (Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg) does not appear contradictory but rather complementary to classical science or the first revolution (Newton, Lavoisier). The Kuhnian thesis to the contrary is disproved and the second crisis is solved. With the help of the Universal Hypothesis of Duality (the basis of the Orientation Table), matter and energy, at the micro – and macro‐level, appear in a double form (the Principle of Duality): stable (equilibrium) particles and unstable (disequilibrium) waves. The strong interactions from modern physics are associated with the law of gravitation (attraction) or stable equilibrium which governs stable matter and energy. The weak interactions are associated with the law of disgravitation (dispersion or repulsion) including entropy or unstable equilibrium which governs unstable matter and energy. In this way the first crisis is also solved.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

This paper analyzes the connection between black political protest and mobilization, and the rise and fall of a black urban regime. The case of Oakland is instructive because by the mid-1960s the ideology of “black power” was important in mobilizing two significant elements of the historically disparaged black community: (1) supporters of the Black Panthers and, (2) neighborhood organizations concentrated in West Oakland. Additionally, Oakland like the city of Atlanta also developed a substantial black middle class that was able to mobilize along the lines of its own “racialized” class interests. Collectively, these factors were important elements in molding class-stratified “black power” and coalitional activism into the institutional politics of a black urban regime in Oakland. Ultimately, reversal factors would undermine the black urban regime in Oakland. These included changes in the race and class composition of the local population: black out-migration, the “new immigration,” increasing (predominantly white) gentrification, and the continued lack of opportunity for poor and working-class blacks, who served as the unrequited base of the black urban regime. These factors would change the fortunes of black political life in Oakland during the turbulent neoliberal era.

The paper aims to describe research undertaken in two post‐1992 universities into staff perceptions of and reactions to the rhetoric of the national quality agenda in the UK as expressed by bodies such as the Quality Assurance Agency and the discourse about quality implicit in that agenda. The research examined how academic staff engaged with the discourse and the extent to which the rhetoric of quality is reflected in the day‐to‐day realities of post‐1992 universities.

The research involved a qualitative investigation of the personal experiences of six academics employed in two post‐1992 universities and comprised in‐depth interviews around three themes which were undertaken during 2005 and 2006. The data from the interviews are summarised and paraphrased in a way which faithfully and accurately captures the sense and spirit of each of the interviews as validated by the interviewees.

The paper concludes that from the point of view of the academic staff who formed part of this research there is a considerable mismatch between the rhetoric of the official paragons of quality represented by the Quality Assurance Agency and the experience of quality by academic staff embroiled in the quality systems that the two universities involved in this research had developed as a consequence of the requirements of government and government agencies.

This paper will be of interest to academics and academic managers with responsibilities for quality assurance not only in universities with mature quality assurance systems but also in those in which such systems are being introduced or developed.