The organizational world has long recognized action learning (AL) as an invaluable tool for managerial development. However, AL’s popularity among organizations did not translate into its adoption by business schools. A lack of evidence on what competencies AL fosters in students and whether these competencies transfer to practice has limited its wider acceptance. We address this issue by examining the learning outcomes of an undergraduate business program that has been using AL as a central didactical feature for the past 10 years. Based on a qualitative cross-sectional study following five alumni cohorts, results show that AL fosters the development of knowledge (theoretical and practical), skills (communication and collaboration), and attitudes (self-knowledge and self-efficacy); competencies graduates transferred to practice years after completing the program. Although management education has been continually criticized for its inability to provide undergraduates with the competencies necessary for practice, our study shows that AL contributes to narrowing this relevance gap. It also expands our understanding of the effectiveness and impact of AL beyond executive training to include undergraduate education, thus informing and inviting educators to consider AL as an alternative to expand their teaching practices.

中文翻译：

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行动学习对商科毕业生专业实践的有效性和影响

组织界早已将行动学习 (AL) 视为管理发展的宝贵工具。然而，AL 在组织中的流行并没有转化为它被商学院采用。缺乏关于 AL 培养学生的能力以及这些能力是否转化为实践的证据限制了其更广泛的接受。我们通过检查过去 10 年来一直使用 AL 作为中心教学特征的本科商业课程的学习成果来解决这个问题。基于对五个校友队列的定性横断面研究，结果表明，AL 促进知识（理论和实践）、技能（沟通和协作）和态度（自我知识和自我效能）的发展；能力毕业生在完成课程后转入实践。尽管管理教育因其无法为本科生提供实践所需的能力而不断受到批评，但我们的研究表明，AL 有助于缩小这种相关性差距。它还扩展了我们对高级管理人员培训之外的 AL 有效性和影响的理解，包括本科教育，从而通知和邀请教育工作者考虑将 AL 作为扩展教学实践的替代方案。