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This paper aims to investigate the extent professionals from the vocational sector are networked individuals. The authors explore how professionals use their personal networks to engage in a wide variety of learning activities and examine what social mechanisms influence professionals’ agency to form personal informal learning networks.

This study applied a mixed-method approach to data collection. Social network data were gathered among school professionals working in the vocational sector. Ego-network analysis was performed. A total of 24 in-depth, semi-structured, qualitative interviews were analyzed.

This study found that networked individualism is not represented to its full potential in the vocational sector. However, it is important to form informal learning ties with different stakeholders because all types of informal learning ties serve different learning purposes. The extent to which social mechanisms (i.e. proximity, trust, level of expertise and homophily) influence professionals’ agency to form informal learning ties differs depending on the stakeholder with whom the informal learning ties are formed.

This study excludes the investigation of social mechanisms that shape learning through more impersonal virtual learning resources, such as social media or expert forums. Moreover, the authors only included individual- and dyadic-level social mechanisms.

By investigating the social mechanisms that shape informal learning ties, this study provides insights how professionals can be stimulated to build rich personal learning networks in the vocational sector.

The authors extend earlier research with in-depth information on the different types of learning activities professionals engage in in their personal learning networks with different stakeholders. The ego-network perspective reveals how different social mechanisms influence professionals’ agency to shape informal learning networks with different stakeholders.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of employees’ underlying implicit person theories in the relationship with innovative work climate and proactive behaviour at work. First, the authors study how an employee’s implicit person theory (IPT), or the domain-general implicit belief about the development potential of people’s attributes, relates to learning goal orientation and proactive learning and entrepreneurial behaviour at work. Second, the authors investigate how employees’ perception of their work climate is associated with this IPT.

The authors set up an exploratory study relying on survey data from a sample of 498 professionally active Flemish adults and analysed a correlational path through SEM.

The authors found that holding an incremental IPT (i.e. believing in the development potential of people’s attributes) positively relates to proactive learning and entrepreneurial behaviour. Moreover, the authors found that employees working in an innovative work climate are more likely to hold an incremental IPT.

This study offers indications that IPT is a relevant explanatory variable in the relationship between innovative work climate on the one hand and learning goal orientation, learning work behaviour and entrepreneurial work behaviour on the other hand. As such, this study suggests that IPT is a promising concept that can be actively endorsed as a relevant underlying psychological process variable for fostering learning and entrepreneurial behaviour in organizations.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Informal learning ties posses scope to play a substantial role in the development of professionals. Creating such ties with different key internal and external stakeholders provides a valuable source of learning opportunities. Different social mechanisms can influence network creation and enhance the quality of learning that emerges as a result.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This paper aims to explore predicting employee learning activity via employee characteristics and usage for two online learning tools.

Statistical analysis focused on observational data collected from user logs. Data are analyzed via regression models.

Findings are presented for over 40,000 employees’ learning activity for one year in a multinational technology company. Variables including job level and tool use yielded a predictive model for overall learning behaviors. In addition, relevant differences are found for managers and nonprofessional learning.

Importantly, how well employees learned content was not measured. This research is also limited to observational relationships: for example, the online tools were used by self-selected users, instead of randomly assigned. Future research which randomly assigns tool use to employee subgroups could explore causal relationships.

This paper presents implications for business analysts and educational technology: how predictive analytics can leverage data to plan programs, the significant challenges for the adoption and usage for online learning tools, and the distinct needs of managers engaging with these tools.

Given a growing emphasis on using employee data, it is important to explore how learning behaviors can be made visible in people analytics. While previous research has surveyed employee cultures on learning or explored the socio-psychological factors which contribute to this learning, this paper presents novel data on employee participation in learning programs which illuminates both how HR metrics can productively use this data to reify learning patterns, and how workplace technology designers can consider important factors such as internal hierarchies.