ABSTRACT
To claim that action learning is permeating management development throughout GEC operating companies would be an over-enthusiastic exaggeration, or at best premature. The most immediately recognizable benefit which the action learning programmes have brought has been an opening up of minds. Certainly the action learning programmes have proved a most successful way of revealing where communications from and to the top are not functioning properly. The ideal would be for unselfish teamwork, plus the modest willingness to question, listen and learn, to permeate all management behaviour and not just management development programmes. It has been most instructive to know what the young up-and-coming managers who have participated in the programmes believe are the directives from on high that determine the attitudes and policies of their immediate superiors. As for the future, the value of a programme which involves participants from many different GEC companies has been proved.
