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This study examines whether learning climate relates to employability competences through social informal learning (i.e. feedback, help and information seeking).

Multiple regression analyses and structural equation modeling were used to test direct and indirect effects in a sample of 372 employees working in two Dutch governmental institutes.

The analyses confirmed that learning climate has an indirect effect on employability competences through feedback, help and information seeking. More specifically, the findings suggest that learning climate is important for employees' engagement in proactive social informal learning activities. Engaging in these learning activities, in turn, relates to a higher level of employability.

This study employs an integrative approach to understanding employability by including the organization's learning climate and employees' social informal learning behavior. It contributes to the extant literature on professional development by unraveling how proactive social informal learning relates to employability competences. It also provides new insights on learning climate as a determinant for social informal learning and employability.

Ethiopia operates a large agricultural extension service system. However, access to extension-related knowledge, technologies and agricultural inputs is unequally distributed among smallholder farmers. Social learning is widely practiced by most farmers to cope with this unequal distribution though its practices have hardly been documented in passing on knowledge of agriculture and rural development or embedding it into the local system of knowledge production, transfer and use. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to identify the different methods of social learning, as well as their contribution to the adoption and diffusion of technologies within Ethiopia’s smallholder agricultural setting.

A mixed methods approach was used, comprising farmer and expert interviews, focus group discussions, informal individual discussions and key informant interviews. The data were documented, coded and later analyzed using SPSS and ATLAS.ti.

The findings showed that 55 per cent of the farmers in the studied areas fully relied on social, community-level learning to adopt agricultural technologies, while 35 per cent of them relied on social learning only partly. Farmers acquired knowledge through social networks by means of communication, observation, collective labor groups, public meetings, socio-cultural events and group socialization. Informal institutions such as iddir, debo and dado, helped farmers learn, adopt and diffuse technologies.

This study used the concept of epistemic oppression by Dotson (2014) as a conceptual framework to examine farmers’ access to extension services and to analyze how informal institutions serve as workplace learning for the smallholder farmers. The authors suggest community-level social learning serves as a coping mechanism against the prevailing limitations of the formal extension system, and at the same time, it guards against the deepening of social, political and epistemic inequalities that are inherent to the knowledge system.

The purpose of this study is to describe university students’ motivations for using Facebook as an informal learning tool and explore the key barriers that may inhibit learning on the social media platform.

A case study approach was adopted in this study. Participants were 82 university students who participated in “e-Tutor” – an informal learning activity, conducted through Facebook. Focus group interviews were conducted, and students’ interactions on Facebook were also analysed to understand their motives for using the social media platform for learning. The uses and gratifications theory was used to explore student motivations for participating in the learning activity.

Results suggest that students perceived Facebook as a potential tool for learning and identified multiple motivating factors for their participation that included information seeking, convenience, connectedness, entertainment and reward seeking. Results also show that time constraints, social anxiety and cultural issues may inhibit learners’ active participation on social media platforms such as Facebook.

This study outlines an approach to use readily available and low-cost technological tools in learning design and provides some insights for teachers to design ubiquitous and personalised learning environments for students using such technologies, particularly social media. Specifically, Facebook offered a way to engage students in informal learning which can supplement students’ formal learning trajectories at university. While the uses and gratifications students sought through Facebook had an overall positive effect on their participation in e-Tutor activity, certain barriers can impede student active participation in learning environments on social media sites such as Facebook.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how and in what ways networking served as a vehicle to informal learning among elementary school principals.

The authors used a multiple case study methodology across a ten-week period, studying six principals and conducting over 50 interviews. Six individual case studies were conducted, followed by a cross-case analysis.

This study found that a principal’s informal learning opportunities are just as important as formal ones, and often occur more frequently. Principals rely daily on a small network of other principals to informally learn about pressing challenges and situations in their schools. Informal learning allows principals to continually develop and refine their practices without the confines of formally set dates and times. Informal learning happens organically and is needs driven based on what knowledge a principal requires at a given point in time.

Although formal learning has been a focus in educational leadership research for the past 15 years, almost nothing is known about how principals informally learning. This study adds to the very limited body of research in the educational leadership field.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of informal learning behaviors in increasing the social capital of organizations. The paper provides a brief overview of social capital and informal learning and proposes to interlink them for increasing knowledge capability of organizations.

Drawing on a review of social capital theory and informal learning behaviors, this article presents a conceptual approach for practitioners to deploy informal learning behaviors to increase social capital and subsequently, the knowledge capability of their organizations.

With the fast-changing global business scenario and limited availability of capital to invest in formal training behaviors, organizations continue to face difficulties in increasing their knowledge capability. This article suggests a simple, cost-effective and easy-to-deploy method of employing informal learning behaviors to build and sustain social capital and through it the knowledge capabilities of organizations.

There is currently limited research into the applicability of using informal learning behaviors in the field of social capital and knowledge capability building.

This study investigated why employees' cyberloafing behavior is affected by their coworkers' cyberloafing behavior. By integrating social learning theory and deterrence theory, the authors developed a model to explain the role of employees' perceived certainty of formal and informal sanctions in understanding the effect of coworkers' cyberloafing behavior on employees' cyberloafing behavior.

The authors conducted a survey that involved a two-stage data collection process (including 293 respondents) to test our developed model. Mplus 7.0 was used to analyze the data.

The results revealed that employees' cyberloafing was positively affected by their coworkers' cyberloafing both directly and indirectly. The indirect effect of coworkers' cyberloafing on employees' cyberloafing was mediated by the employees' perceived certainty of formal and informal sanctions on cyberloafing. Employees' perceived certainty of formal and informal sanctions were found to mediate the relationship both separately (each type of sanctions mediates the relationship individually) and in combination (the two types of sanctions form a serial mediation effect).

The study reveals an important mechanism – employees’ perceived certainty of formal and informal sanctions – that underlies the relationship between coworkers' cyberloafing and employees' cyberloafing, thus, contributing to the cyberloafing literature. It also demonstrates the importance of negative reinforcement (perceived sanctions) in the social learning process, which contributes to the literature on social learning theory because previous studies have primarily focused on the role of positive reinforcement. Lastly, the study reveals a positive relationship between employees' perceived certainty of formal sanctions and informal sanctions, which has important implications for deterrence theory.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate social workers' processes of informal learning, through their narration of their professional experience, in order to understand how social workers learn. Informal learning is any individual practice or activity that is able to produce continuous learning; it is often non‐intentional and non‐structured learning.

The study employed qualitative research methods, according to specific epistemologies such as Grounded Theory, and Inquiry into Narrative. The tool used for data collection has been the narrative interview. The scientific software ATLAS.ti has facilitated the analysis of the contents and the narrative structure.

The data classified throughout the analysis allow for observing and explaining possible interpretations of informal learning of the social workers. The informal learning process, depending on the level of intentionality, can be random and often appears as a learning process leading to change and improvement, resulting from reflection and awareness.

The paper offers a methodological contribution for narrative data collection and analysis, through elaborating a network of all elements examined within each interview and defining some characteristics and meaning of informal learning in the workplace.

This paper aims to explore how negative emotions lead to differential relationships with informal learning. Informal learning is posited to serve as a coping mechanism and positively influence performance.

This paper provides a conceptual, process-based framework to explain the relationship between informal learning and stressful emotions of anger and anxiety.

The proposed framework in this paper suggests that informal learning in conjunction with emotion regulation can help neutralize negative emotions and promote improved cognitive functioning, better social functioning and higher task performance. From a practical perspective, the provided framework should help managers and organizational leaders better understand the emergence of negative emotion and how to constructively channel employee well-being from them.

Much of the informal learning literature has investigated dispositional and situational influences, without regard to the role that discrete emotions play in influencing cognitive, behavioral and motivational learning processes. This paper addresses this gap through a theoretical framework that explains the relationship between negative emotions and informal learning.

Recent figures show that half the world’s refugees are children, with young people now representing more than 50 percent of victims of global armed conflict and displaced persons. Increasing numbers of refugee youth are entering their host nations’ compulsory and postcompulsory educational systems having experienced frequent resettlements and disrupted education, which in turn, pose major barriers for educational and future employment. The consequences of these experiences raise pressing equity implications for educators and educational systems. However, the picture is not uniformly bleak. Employing Bourdieu’s thinking tools of habitus, field and capital, Yosso’s concepts of community cultural wealth and photovoice methods, this chapter draws on studies of refugee youth of both genders from diverse ethnic and faith backgrounds, conducted in regional Australia. It examines how everyday spaces for learning, for example, church, faith-based and sporting groups and family can play a crucial role in enabling young people to build powerful forms of social and cultural capital necessary to successfully access and negotiate formal education and training settings. Its findings suggest first that everyday spaces can act as rich sites of informal learning, which young refugee people draw upon to advance their life chances, employability, and social inclusion. Second, they suggest that how one’s gender and “race” intersect may have important implications for how refugee youth access social and cultural capital in these everyday spaces as they navigate between informal learning and formal educational settings.

The study aims to understand enterprise social media usage at work and explore its impact on employee outcomes, particularly learning behaviors. The scope of the paper is limited to organizationally facilitated enterprise social media (ESM) used internally for workplace communication and draws upon ESM affordances highlighted by the theory of communication visibility.

The study used a qualitative research design based on Miles and Huberman framework (1994) as the research question was exploratory in nature. Thematic analysis was conducted using QSR-NVivo to arrive at the dominant themes and to understand their relationship between enterprise social media use at work. Each emergent theme was generated from the behavioral indicators labelled as nodes. Drawing on qualitative data, the study explored the lived-in experiences of employees using enterprise social media for workplace interactions.

The thematic analysis using QSR-NVivo provided qualitative evidence for the phenomenon of enterprise social media use in the form of four emergent themes: patterns of enterprise social media usage by employees, employees' informal learning behaviors, employee social capital and organizational learning capability.

The study provides theoretical insights into the lived-in experiences of employees using ESM at work and unravel thematic behavioral impact on their learning, social capital and organizational learning capability. The findings of this study support recent research work on impact of ESM on knowledge sharing behaviors (see Sun et al., 2019) and other significant work on co-creation of knowledge (see Wagner et al., 2014). Thus, adding to the body of knowledge management literature.

This study provides evidence for the role of enterprise social media in developing organizational learning capability by offering support and platform for employees' informal learning and building their social capital. Thus, organizations should leverage enterprise social media not only a social networking tool but more as a strategic learning resource. Hence, organizational leaders must encourage employees to be involved on such platforms in order to promote their informal learning. Also, this study captures the role of employee social capital in explaining the enterprise social media, informal learning and organizational learning capability relationship. This shows that enterprise social media can help employees to learn informally when they have good relationships. Hence, this study provides implications for both HR and IT managers and consultants who plan to implement technology for collaborative purposes, should not undermine the importance of building employee social capital. Only then can they utilize the potential of ESM as a learning tool. Last, this research may also influence the general attitude towards social media use at work and further impact the design and implementation of organizational social media policies.

The paper is novel as the qualitative investigation offers deeper insights into the impact of ESM usage on employee and organizational learning behaviors. The paper draws on theoretical underpinnings to present useful linkages between emergent concepts and makes valuable contribution to the literature on enterprise social media use and learning at work.