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The purpose of this study is to explore Swedish police education teachers’ informal workplace learning and its perceived value for their professional development. Two categories of teachers, police teachers and university teachers, with different professional knowledge and experience, work together at the police education unit.

The method used was in-depth interviews with teachers working at a Swedish police education unit.

Informal workplace learning was perceived by both teacher groups to be of great value for gaining knowledge about the local practice and for their professional development. Their learning emerged in discussions, observations and practically oriented activities in their daily work. Four conclusions: firstly, the teachers’ informal workplace learning was socially and practice-oriented and learning emerged in a collaborative, reciprocal and active process. Secondly, the embodied nature of the learning is evident in the teachers’ joint activities in the teaching practice. Thirdly, it takes time and active involvement in the local practice to become a professional teacher in this kind of education. Fourthly, an educational structure where academic knowledge and experience can be integrated with police knowledge and experience constitutes an important basis for teachers’ professional development in police education and training.

The study’s focus on police education and the professional development of teachers in this specific practice contributes to increased knowledge of the social, practice-oriented and embodied nature of informal workplace learning.

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.

This study aims to explore the use of technology-based strategies by Yemeni undergraduate students to develop their English as a foreign language skills in informal learning settings.

A mixed methods research design was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data from 110 undergraduate students enrolled at the English Departments in two universities in Yemen. In the first phase of the study, 10 students were interviewed to obtain information about their use of technology to develop their English language skills and subsystems in informal settings. Following the analysis of the interview data, a questionnaire was built to collect quantitative data, and the second phase of the study was carried out with 100 undergraduate students.

The findings revealed that students developed four technology-based strategies that they used in informal settings. These strategies included using social media, being inspired by someone, accessing social networks and websites. Students reported that these strategies helped them develop their listening, speaking and reading skills, while they also reported that their vocabulary was enhanced over grammar and pronunciation.

The study findings can be of benefit not only for helping to raise students’ awareness of informal learning strategies to develop their English skills outside the classroom but also for teachers to rethink the importance of integrating technology tools and digital resources in their teaching practice. The results could also guide curriculum designers to augment textbook materials by integrating technology-based informal learning strategies.

This is the first study on this topic conducted in the context of higher education in Yemen and offers unique insights into informal learning practices of Yemeni students. In addition, the findings of the study open new dimensions for rethinking the classification of language learning strategies to include those that are technology-based and mainly useful for independent informal learning.

Competence development is a prerequisite for successfully meeting existing and future challenges in the retail sector. However, current human resource development practices are often limited in their scope and offerings. This study sets out to investigate and bring to light informal learning among retail professionals.

This research consists of two exploratory studies focused on store managers and procurement officers, respectively. Based on a typology of learning mechanisms, the authors conducted eleven in-depth interviews, generating a rich body of empirical data centred on how informal learning takes place at work.

The research points out key learning mechanisms for each occupation and offers detailed narratives of how they are embedded in everyday learning. In addition, the findings provide a synthesis of the complex nature of learning mechanisms and their variations in form and orientation.

By generating tangible and explicit knowledge on the topic of informal learning, the results contribute to both professionals, who may actively engage in useful learning mechanisms, and managers, who may develop processes and structures based on key learning mechanisms.

This paper helps to demystify the tacit and often unnoticed learning that takes place at work. In doing so, it broadens the perspective on competence development and facilitates future discussions of human resource development practices in the retail industry and the research community.

This study aims to investigate the impact of technologies on the knowledge transfer process. In particular, the authors aim to analyze the topic of knowledge brokers and the relationship between broker and digital tools in the knowledge transfer process in the sport context. The study developed, therefore, aims to investigate the creating of this environment for knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing between man and machine, looking to improve the planning of technical sports projects of the clubs.

This paper presents a qualitative approach aimed at analyzing how platforms and the players’ agents can be useful tools in the knowledge transfer process. The research was conducted through a survey with a structured questionnaire via e-mail to 64 managers at the head of clubs playing in the Italian Series B basketball in the 2021–2022 championship. The total number of questions administered is 21.

The results demonstrate how sports directors, for the construction of a technical sports project, in addition to learning off the pitch by interactions with media, fans, pressure management, leadership skills, positive attitude, tolerance, understanding of other opinions, background and cultures, see the athletes’ agents as the main stakeholder of the managers. The research resulted, by the clubs’ managers, in both formal learning and informal-type learning. Informal learning, by far the most frequently used and most important in the general learning process of executives, is identified in the use that executives make of information available on digital platforms and of the fiduciary relationships that management has with players’ agents.

The results demonstrate the valuable opportunities for executives, coaches, managers and clubs to strategically manage learning and knowledge sharing. Improving and managing knowledge-sharing strategies would help increase knowledge, not only of the sports directors but also of the entire club, thus improving the absolute quality of the game within the Italian basketball divisions. The authors have developed an innovative framework regarding the construction of a “typed sports technical project”, and the authors have identified a series of crucial phases capable of determining the creation of a new roster of athletes.

The birth and survival rate of youth-owned businesses has been a major concern for policymakers, industry and academics alike. Learning and innovation play important roles and more critical is the mediating factors and how it impacts the enterprise competitiveness of youth-owned businesses and hence worth studying. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of mediating factors such as government support, informal network society and external knowledge infrastructure on learning and innovation in youth-owned small businesses in Lagos, Nigeria, from a cross-sectional perspective.

Leveraging the sectoral system of innovation theory, we use a primary research method and data obtained from a structured questionnaire administered among a sample of 1,000 registered youth-owned small businesses in Lagos, while 30 in-depth interviews were also conducted. The exploratory factor analysis was used for data examination.

The findings show that even though government support, informal network society and external knowledge all have a positive relationship with learning and innovation in youth-owned small businesses, government support has the most impactful impact. The informal network society via a trade association, professional network and social media are also critical in knowledge transfer in youth-owned businesses.

The significance of learning and innovation is more important as many small businesses do not have the privilege of standard human resource management (HRM) systems. This paper looks at the mediating factors affecting the introduction of innovative practices in youth-owned and managed small businesses and how productivity is enabled in a developing county context.

This paper aims to depart from the premise that human capital investments and human capital outcomes are often tacit – an aspect, which is often neglected in the current literature on entrepreneurial human capital. The idea of this conceptual paper is to shed light on the social process of how human capital investments and human capital outcomes can be valued and made visible through the validation of prior learning. Thus, this study conceptualises the validation of prior learning as a post hoc, the reflective process through which an aspiring entrepreneur is guided.

This paper is conceptual and introduces a process model.

Findings indicate that the process of the validation of prior learning is well-suitable to inform aspiring entrepreneurs of their investments into human capital and their human capital outcomes. The process results in a (partial) certified qualification that provides entrepreneurial legitimacy.

Thus far, the model is conceptual and should be validated via interviews and further empirical studies in the field.

Literature in the field of entrepreneurial human capital suggests that human capital outcomes are more important for success than inputs. Furthermore, context-specific knowledge, skills and abilities are more important than generalised outcomes. These findings have implications for the design of validation procedures.

Human capital has only been recently conceptualised as consisting of human capital investments and outcomes of human capital investment. However, thus far the literature falls short in acknowledging the tacit nature of human capital investments and human capital outcomes. This paper contributes a structured process of how human capital investments and human capital outcomes are linked and assessed. In so doing, this study extends a recent model of human capital investments and outputs (Marvel et al., 2016, p. 616).

This literature review explores the potential of gamification in workplace learning beyond formal training. The study also highlights research gaps and opportunities for scholars to develop new theories and methodologies to enhance the understanding and application of gamification in workplace learning. It provides guidance for managers to use gamification to enhance learning and engagement. Ultimately, this review presents gamification as a promising field of study to increase individual and organizational performance.

Literature review of 6625 papers in the timeframe 1990–2020, with an update to include papers published in 2023.

This article examines the impact of gamification beyond formal learning and its potential to enhance employee productivity and well-being in the workplace. While there has been extensive research on gamification in formal learning contexts, little is known about its impact on informal learning. The study argues that the context of gamification is crucial to extending its effects and discusses the role, antecedents and consequences of game design elements in the workplace. The article also explores how the learning context relates to employee learning during work. Further research is necessary to investigate the impact of individual characteristics on work experience and performance.

Intended contribution of the present study is the development of a theoretical framework exploring the benefits of gamification in a work context.

For practicing managers, this paper shows how to use gamification to increase workplace learning and employee engagement, not just in the context of formal learning—as some companies already do today—but also systematically, in the context of informal learning.

This study explores the impact of gamification on informal workplace learning and emphasizes the significance of the context of gamification in extending its effects to improve individual and organizational performance.

In distinguishing the education of adults from the education of children, a gray area lies on where to classify gifted and honors students. The purpose of this study was to determine if the attitudes of students at an honors STEM summer camp paralleled the educational needs of adults, namely self-directed learning.

Researchers analyzed survey responses through an exploratory factor analysis and five t tests.

The interpretation of the effect sizes showed that after engaging in a self-directed learning experience, students expressed more positive self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation, experienced reduced extrinsic motivation and anxiety, and were less task-completion oriented.

The results suggest that gifted and honors students may have a propensity to learn that is more similar to that of adults rather than their same-age peers.

This paper aims to investigate the in-company training according to the technologically demanding and safety-critical feature of the aircraft industry. This study addresses to the tension between the structured and the more incidental part of in-company learning in their training and learning environment.

Against the background of concepts of workplace learning from vocational training research and concepts of the safety management system from safety research, aircraft companies from England and Germany were visited. Data from interviews with training managers and trainees as well as non-participant observations are analysed.

The findings show that workplace vocational learning in this industry is guided by different measures to design the learning environment to prevent purely incidental and informal knowledge acquisition. However, the formalisation of informal learning process leads to a high expenditure of material, personnel and time resources. The findings show that trainers and training managers working together internationally creatively manage different training systems. The training activities are designed to convey the values of safety culture like responsibility, accuracy, transparent communication and reporting. The requirements of the safety management system are also met through the training.

Challenges and tensions in the actual implementation of the training activities could not be identified. The people interviewed were selected by the companies, so there is a risk that certain perceptions are over-represented.

The results show that the safety-critical industry needs its own pedagogical approach to workplace learning, which is not based on independent work processes in the workplace. Insights can be drawn for in-company training in other safety-critical industries too. However, to enable effective in-company learning, which at the same time strengthens the safety culture of the company, many resources must be used. The companies must consider all dimensions of work from the individual level to the work structure level.

This paper discusses the tension between formal and informal learning and shows the specific design of this tension on the basis of a concrete industry for the specific needs of this industry. The results lead to the realisation that the general discussion about workplace learning must be viewed in a differentiated way depending on the industry.