The Application of Action Learning and Action Research in Collaborative Improvement within the Extended Manufacturing Enterprise

Increasingly organizations have to identify and implement improvement initiatives in an inter-organizational context. Implementing collaborative improvement is fraught with difficulties that encompass a wide array of intra- and inter-organizational change issues and working practices. In order to overcome these difficulties, explicit attention should be paid to the accumulation and development of knowledge and to the long-term development of a capability for learning and continuous improvement between organizations. This paper describes the application of an Action Learning and Action Research approach in collaborative improvement within an Extended Manufacturing Enterprise in the Netherlands.

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