Action Learning for Organization Development in South Korea

Action learning is a fast-growing management innovation tool in South Korea, mostly for leadership development and in rare cases for organization development because most action learning programmes are handled by the human resources (HR) function in the organization. In this chapter, we reviewe the landscape of action learning practices in South Korea with respect to two distinctive types of action learning: action learning for leadership development and action learning for organization development. Although organization development is a road less travelled in the use of action learning in organizations, due to its organization-wide impact and performance improvement, we primarily focused on action learning for organization development. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to conduct a case study of South Korean action learning practices to examine how two companies successfully achieved organization development (that is, management innovation and a learning organization) through action learning.