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The purpose of this study is to explore how digital technologies at work serve as environments for informal workplace learning in knowledge work.

Digital ethnography was used to investigate the digital environments of one public sector workplace. The data included observations, interviews and participant diaries.

The digital work environment consisted of a complex network of technologies and people connected to them. The ethnographic accounts revealed both expansive and restrictive features of the digital environment. Digital technology extended learning opportunities by providing flexible possibilities for interaction, collaboration and access to a wealth of information. On the contrary, digitally mediated presence could restrict learning if the attendance and learning remained superficial. The complexity and constant change in digital workplace environments presented challenges that could potentially restrict learning. Information overload, constant interruptions and changes were burdens that required employees’ skills to manage these challenges.

The authors take a novel approach to view the workplace as a phygital environment in which social, physical and digital environments are combined. Because digital environments are becoming increasingly essential parts of the workplace, it is important to understand how they can support learning.

This study aims to explore vocational teachers' perceptions regarding workplace learning that align with students' training models and collaborative teaching involving specialised professionals within the context of industry-university collaboration.

Using a qualitative approach, the study conducted nine semi-structured interviews from three subject areas to better understand how vocational teachers’ work-based learning enhances their pedagogical practice in guiding students’ professional training. Thematic analysis was adopted to identify patterns that emerged from concepts and theories related to coding categories.

The authors identified three key components: vocational teachers’ workplace learning in connection with students’ training models, collaborative teaching with specialised professionals and teachers’ regular interactions with enterprises. The findings demonstrate that vocational teachers’ engagement in workplace learning pertaining to specific subjects provides a valuable avenue for enhancing curriculum design with collaboration with industry experts. This is key for supporting vocational students’ transitions into the workplace and ensuring their knowledge and skills are tailored to the industry-standard practice.

The data are limited to the review of interviews from three vocational subject areas as the representative sector in the study. However, this research implies effective knowledge transfer between workplace settings and vocational institutions, and vocational teachers need to integrate work-based vocational knowledge and skills in a relevant and applicable way across diverse classroom settings.

Fostering collaborative partnerships with local industries and professionals can be a primary way to facilitate authentic learning experiences that are linked to a specific vocational field and bridge the gap between diverse classroom learning and real-world work scenarios.

This study combines contemporary workplace learning theories with the conceptual understanding of vocational teachers’ involvement with industry-specific practice. Connecting teachers’ knowledge to the industry extends the input and collaboration from professionals and field experts to the diverse vocational classrooms.

The study aims to examine how organizational socialization occurs for interns transitioning from onsite to telecommuting work, particularly in a context where traditional supports have been reduced due to the pandemic.

Drawing from interviews (n = 22) of undergraduates interning at advertorial and marketing firms, the study conducted a thematic analysis of workplace learning experiences of undergraduate interns─newcomers at the workplace when disruption of traditional ways of performing work activities occurred. In particular, the enforced telecommuting work-from-home arrangements due to the pandemic provided a unique setting for this study of internship learning in changing contexts. The analyses reveal differences in undergraduate interns’ experiences of organizational socialization when they were at the physical workplace as compared to when they had to work remotely.

Interns reported benefitting from structured onboarding, supportive peer systems, and regular face-to-face meetings with supervisors, which facilitated their socialization and understanding of workplace culture before the pandemic. However, as telecommuting became the norm during the pandemic, these experiences shifted. Interns adapted by engaging in digital interactions to mirror office dynamics, extending work hours due to blurred work-life boundaries, and independently seeking information in the absence of direct guidance. When adapting to digital communication and independent learning, interns faced challenges like longer working hours and reduced spontaneous interactions, indicating a preference for the traditional, in-person socialization methods of the pre-pandemic workplace.

This study provides insight into interns’ experiences during the global shift to hybrid work as a result of the pandemic, contributing fresh insights into organizational socialization processes amidst workplace disruptions. The conclusions offer valuable implications for future adaptive onboarding practices in educational and professional settings.

The purpose of this study is to review literature on the relationship between leadership and workplace learning, to critically analyze and discuss findings and to suggest future research paths based on the synthesis.

This study applied a refined literature review process leading to a selection of 40 articles, which originated from 14 internationally acclaimed journals.

When explaining leadership influence regarding individual and team learning, the concepts of role modeling behavior, relational support and negotiation of meaning is significant. If leaders provide support, show exemplary behavior and negotiate individual arrangements with employees, workplace learning development is positively affected.

Future studies should focus on empirical cases further illustrating how the leader–employee relationship is formed in practice, to further understand differences in leadership influence on employee workplace learning.

The gathered knowledge implicates that carefully designed leadership training programs and personalized work arrangements between leader and employees are beneficial for leader’s ability to influence employee workplace learning.

The reviewed studies were solely published in top management journals, which resulted in an original literature selection. This study also discusses implicit or articulated assumptions about the view of learning in the selected studies, offering additional understanding about the underlying learning views in leadership–workplace learning research.

Work-study programmes aim to support young adults transitioning from tertiary education to work and contribute to enhancing their employability. The purpose of this study is to provide a detailed analysis of the learning experiences of trainees in work-study programmes within the broad field of engineering.

The data gathering procedures used interviews with participants of a specific work-study programme and conducting thematic analyses to identify and understand the motivations of these adults for enrolling in work-study programmes and their associated workplace learning experiences. Fifty-two alumni of electrical and logistics engineering programmes completed 12 months of a separate work-study programme and consented to participate in an hour-long interview. They elaborated upon their work-learn experiences to explicate their work-learn needs and challenges in those interviews.

Findings include workplaces facilitated skills development through providing combinations of work tasks comprising both routine and novel work assignments; challenging circumstances at the workplace provided trainees with opportunities to develop adaptive capacities; and engaging in non-routine work processes fosters integration into the engineering workplace community.

The findings contribute to the existing literature by exemplifying how routine engineering activities are practical affordances through which engineering trainees construct knowledge and dispositions for engaging in challenging, non-routine engineering work. Such experiences are crucial in preparing trainees for advanced roles in logistics or electronic sectors.

The purpose of this study is to explore the process of initial sensemaking that organizational members activate when they reflect on AI adoption in their work settings, and how the perceived features of AI technologies trigger sensemaking processes which in turn have the potential to influence workplace learning modes and trajectories.

We adopted an explorative qualitative and interactive approach to capture free fantasies and imaginative ideas of AI among people within the industry. We adopt a conceptual perspective that combines theories on initial sensemaking and workplace learning as a theoretical lens to analyze data collected during 23 focus groups held at four large Swedish manufacturing companies. The data were analyzed using the Gioia method.

Two aggregated dimensions were defined and led to the development of an integrated conceptualization of the initial sensemaking of AI technology adoption. Specifically, sensemaking triggered by abstract features of AI technology mainly pointed to an exploitative learning path. Sensemaking triggered by concrete features of the technology mainly pointed to explorative paths, where socio-technical processes appear to be crucial in the process of AI adoption.

This is one of the first studies that attempts to explore and conceptualize how organizations make sense of prospective workplace learning in the context of AI adoption.

Fast-changing global environment, hybrid and virtual work, today’s workplace is confronted to an unprecedented level of complexity. This conceptual paper aims to explore ways to re-think and adapt informal workplace learning to those recent changes and important dimensions to consider when designing successful learning strategies in the future.

To let emerge interesting tensions and explore new ways to approach informal workplace learning, the authors first look at recent trends in the workplace environment, then go back to some key concepts and ideas from the literature on informal learning. The authors then present two real-life cases they experimented with as scholar-practitioners that demonstrate the importance of a relational learning environment that encompasses virtuality, adaptive challenges and vertical development.

The new environment calls for new ways to think about informal workplace learning and how to support it. More than ever, organisations should support a culture that promotes collaboration and interactions across areas of expertise, a key condition for finding solutions to complex problems. In this complex environment, where there is no one right solution, organisations will need to rely on leaders who can become role models and show others how to overcome the silo mentality, engage into collaborative reflections, generate alternatives, experiment and learn quickly from what does or does not work.

This study contributes to the literature about workplace learning. It extends the understanding of some benefits that informal workplace learning provides to employees in an attempt to become agile practitioners as the work environment quickly changes and becomes more complex.

Over the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in incivility within the higher education sector, potentially due to mounting pressure and demands on academics, both collectively and individually. The effects on various aspects of academia, such as knowledge and learning, however, remain largely unexplored. The purpose of this research is to fill the gap by performing a theoretical trend analysis and subsequently empirically investigating the impact of workplace incivility on research scholars’ learning engagement and knowledge sharing intentions, including the mediating role of self-esteem.

This study uses a three-stage methodological process: first, a thorough theoretical (bibliographic) analysis of scientific publications, using Biblioshiny, to identify the trends of workplace incivility; second, an empirical, qualitative exploration of the emergent themes and subthemes based on 102 in-depth interviews with research scholars, using NVivo 12 Plus; and third, quantitative testing, using 154 responses and structural equation modeling.

The authors verify a visible negative association between incivility and learning engagement, incivility and knowledge sharing intentions as well as self-esteem’s mediating effect on this relationship. Also, the thematic analysis revealed three distinct themes: the type of incivility; reasons for such incidences; and the impact of such incidences on research scholars.

The research bears implications both to theory and practice. Regarding the former, the gravity and graveness of incivility versus knowledge and learning, within the academic workplace environment, are not simply highlighted, but analyzed and refined, with explicit findings of both scholarly and practicable worth; that also provide solid foundations and avenues for future research.

Further to its primary findings, the research contributes to extant knowledge by elucidating and explicating the topic, both theoretically and empirically, as well as by presenting implications for theory and practice. Regarding practical implications, this research sheds light on how to develop an appropriate organizational culture that facilitates learning engagement and increases knowledge sharing intentions, by nurturing the identified explicit and underlying motivators of civility.

Utilizing datasets of Ecuador, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico and Peru from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies survey from 2017 to 2018, this study aimed to develop and validate a profile indicating core workplace skills in developing countries.

DeVellis' guide of scale development navigated the development of the profile. Multiple techniques including item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis were used on a sample of 7,166 participants to validate the profile of core workplace skills in developing countries.

A resultant five-dimensional profile with 18 items was developed: oral communication skills, reading skills, math skills, information and communication technology skills and learning skills. The estimates of composite reliability showed the profile was reliable. The validity estimates of the profile were obtained from several sources including content, convergent, discriminative and construct validity. The measurement invariance was also held for the profile.

Based on the researcher's knowledge, the study is the first attempt to develop a profile to indicate core workplace skills in developing countries. The profile theoretically framed the core workplace skills in developing countries and provides a new measure for identifying, evaluating and thus improving core workplace skills in developing countries for different stakeholders in the era of Education 4.0.

Employers increasingly require students to possess competences that go beyond theoretical knowledge and academic expertise, such as lifelong learning skills. To equip students with these competences, higher education institutes have introduced coaching as part of their teaching programs. The present study qualitatively evaluates a career coaching practice in higher education.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with graduates who had participated in career coaching activities at a Dutch university (N = 12). The interviews were conducted between February and May 2022. Atlas.ti version 9 was used to analyse the interviews.

Results revealed that graduates believed that career coaching helped them to adjust to the workplace. They indicated that the coaching practice helped them to acquire reflection skills, which was considered the main mechanism for adjustment to the workplace.

These results add to the transition-related literature by identifying one way that graduates successfully adjust to the workplace.

The results also provide insight into how higher education can best prepare students for their transition to the workplace.

As the education-to-work transition does not end upon graduation, this research focusses on graduate employees’ work adjustment as an important phase in the transition process.