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This paper aims to provide an overview of the development of learning organization concepts from the perspectives of Dr Victoria Marsick and Dr Karen Watkins and presents an interesting evolution of their work together spanning over three decades.

Through a conversation with thought-leading scholars Dr Victoria Marsick and Dr Karen Watkins, this paper discussed serval topics pertaining to the evolution of the learning organization debate and provides their unique perspective on the development of their theories.

The learning organization debate has many foundations that today have led to differing perspectives, which Dr Marsick and Dr Watkins advocate. They developed their learning organization concepts from their particular background, which varies from others. To these thought leaders, cultural aspects are the critical focus of the learning organization.

The discussion with Victoria Marsick and Karen Watkins reveals their understanding of the evolution of the contested discussion around learning organization definition and implications. The understanding of this evolution, in their words, provides context for researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this Guest Editorial is to introduce the papers in this special issue and outline how they help us to better understand the theory and practice of informal learning.

The Guest Editorial provides an overview of the topics discussed in the special issue, focusing on teachers and schools, social workers, and knowledge management in academic and business settings.

In practice informal and formal learning are often inextricably intertwined.

The papers in this issue contribute to the search for a unifying framework to support theory, research and practice.

The authors describe learning strategies that are being used successfully to benefit both individuals and organizations. They also speak about the shadow side: a culture of fear, the negative impact of constant change, and inappropriate exploitation of employee knowledge. They elaborate on what can happen when an idea as powerful as the learning organization ends up being used for purposes that were not originally intended.

Employees are increasingly expected to organize their own human resource development activities. To what extent and how exactly employees in various organizational contexts manage to shape their individual learning paths however remains largely unclear. The purpose of this present study is to explore, leaning on the empirical Learning-Network Theory (LNT) research and its findings, how employees in different occupations create learning paths that are attuned to their specific work context.

The paper reviews 23 MSc theses based on 14 distinct data sets collected between 2005 and 2015, containing approximately 1,484 employees from some 45 organizations and across various professions. The teachers, nurses, postal, software, telecom, railway and logistics company employees were mostly based in the Netherlands. The analysis focuses on learning-path types and learning-path strategies found in the 23 studies.

Motives, themes, activities, social contexts and facilities were found to be instrumental in explaining differences among individual learning paths. A total of 34 original learning-path types and strategies were found to cluster under 12 higher-order labels. Some of these were based on learning motive, some on learning theme, some on core learning activities, some on social learning context and a few on a combination of these elements. Overall, the socially oriented learning-path strategy was the most prevalent, as it was found among nurses, employees of software/postal/telecom, railway and logistics company employees, as well as teachers in two schools.

The paper presents the first overview of empirical studies on employee learning path(s) (strategies). In addition, it strengthens the empirical basis of the LNT.

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.

Many organizations now utilize action learning, and it is applied increasingly throughout the world. Action learning appears in numerous variants, but generically it is a form of learning through experience, “by doing”, where the task environment is the classroom, and the task the vehicle. Two previous reviews of the action learning literature by Alan Mumford respectively covered the field prior to 1985 and the period 1985‐1994. Both reviews included books as well as journal articles. This current review covers the period 1994‐2000 and is limited to publicly available journal articles. Part 1 of the Review was published in an earlier issue of the Journal of Workplace Learning (Vol. 15 No. 2) and included a bibliography and comments. Part 2 extends that introduction with a schema for categorizing action learning articles and with comments on representative articles from the bibliography.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how knowledge management systems have been used by the studied organizations to improve knowledge accessibility and knowledge sharing in order to increase workplace learning.

The study relies on a qualitative multisite case study method. Data were obtained from five organizations at a southern state in the USA. Multiple interviews, onsite observation, and documentation analyses were conducted at each studied organization. Data analysis used open coding and thematic analysis. Results were triangulated based on multiple data sources.

The findings revealed that the learning environment of an organization is important for workplace learning. All studied organizations share a need for a conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge in order to facilitate effective informal learning in the workplace. This research concludes that engineering the learning environment through effective knowledge management should be a cohesive effort of the entire organization and demands congruent support from all levels of the organization.

The study expands the understanding of issues related to workplace learning through knowledge accessibility in both business and academic settings. To improve workplace learning, one should not just stipulate technology interventions; other factors, such as the organization's design, work design, and the culture/vision of the organization, all play important roles in the creation of a learning organization that will induce informal learning in the workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to explore in detail how teachers' perceptions of workplace conditions for learning are related to their informal workplace learning activities and learning outcomes.

From a sample of 32 teachers, a purposeful sampling technique of maximal variation was used to select two cases described in this paper. In a mixed methods design quantitative data are used to position the two teachers in relation to their peers. Qualitative data are used to describe the two cases in depth.

The findings show how the diverging ways in which the two teachers perceive and actively shape their workplace conditions help to explain differences in the teachers' learning activities and learning outcomes.

Scholars have argued that informal workplace learning is embedded in interdependent practices that arise from the interaction between social practices and individual agency. The case studies provide insight into how workplace conditions for learning are shaped in this interaction and how perceptions of these conditions enable or constrain teachers' informal workplace learning.