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The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the position of employees in the organizational hierarchy is important in explaining their feedback seeking behaviour.

This study takes a social network perspective by using an ego-centric network survey to investigate employees ' feedback seeking behaviour within their professional networks. Data were collected from an online questionnaire among 243 employees working in a large multinational organization located in The Netherlands.

Results indicate that employees frequently seek feedback from colleagues within the same department. However, managers or leaders seek significantly less feedback from colleagues in the same department and from coaches, as compared to others. Furthermore, employees perceive the feedback they receive from managers/leaders, coaches, and colleagues in the same department as useful.

The study findings extend the existing literature on the dynamics of feedback seeking of employees across different hierarchical levels. Methodologically, an egocentric network survey was used to investigate the employees ' relationships within their professional network. The findings suggest that this approach, novel in research on feedback seeking, is valuable and promising.

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 article aims to understand conditions under which personal development plans (PDPs) can effectively be implemented for professional learning. Both the organization's manner of supporting the PDP practice as well as the individual employee's motivation is taken into account.

A questionnaire was distributed among employees of a Dutch governmental office, measuring perceived effectiveness of the tool (undertaking learning activities and performance), perceptions of PDP practices in the organization, and individual motivation. Regression analysis revealed that learning and reflection practices in the organization are positively related to number of learning activities undertaken by employees and to perceived performance.

A significant moderating effect of motivation was found, supporting the idea that the tool's perceived effectiveness depends both on the organization's efforts as well as the individual's motivation.

In this study, the authors were limited by a low response rate, a single setting, as well as a lack of causal evidence due to the cross‐sectional set‐up. They therefore encourage the validation of their hypotheses in different settings, and in an experimental/longitudinal manner.

Implications for practice include the importance for organizations to implement PDPs in an on‐going cycle of learning, combined with opportunities for formal and informal learning, while supervisors carry great responsibility for providing feedback and encouragement based on the employee's motivation for learning.

This combination of company practices with individual supporting conditions such as employees' motivation to understand when PDPs work best is a novel approach to understanding PDP effectiveness and hopes to add to both theoretical and practical understanding.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of chronological age and formal and informal learning activities on employability. Furthermore, indirect effects of age on employability via learning activities were tested.

The authors conducted quantitative, cross-sectional survey research (n=780) in three Dutch and Austrian organizations to study the relationship between chronological age, formal and informal learning activities, and employability using structural equation modeling.

The authors find that both formal and informal learning increase employees’ employability. However, each type of learning contributes to different components of employability. Additionally, the authors find indirect effects of chronological age on employability via formal learning.

The results question the focus on chronological age in organizational and political decision making and contribute new insights for the management of an increasingly older workforce.

The findings question the predominant use of chronological age as decisive criterion in organizational and national policies and call for closer examination of stereotypes against older employees. Employees should be supported in pursuing learning activities – irrespective of their chronological age. The implications of limiting employees’ access to formal learning activities may limit their future employability. Individual employees, however, are in control of their informal learning activities, and this is a very important lever to maintain and develop employability.

Given the increasing dependency of social welfare systems on older people's active participation in the labor market, this study stresses that it is not chronological age per se that affects people's employability. This diverges from the way of how chronological age is used in policy making.

This study contributes further evidence for the relationships of age and formal and informal learning on employability. Additionally, it extends previous literature by examining different effects on different facets of employability, criticizing the prevalent use of chronological age, and investigating potential mediation effects.

This study aims to examine the effects of using a personal development plan (PDP) on the undertaking of learning activities and the employee's job competencies.

Data from Dutch pharmacy assistants was collected (n=2,271). Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) as well as regression analyses were conducted on this dataset.

The results indicate that PDP users undertook more learning activities in the past than non‐users, but using a PDP does not stimulate users to plan more learning activities in the future. Furthermore, PDP users do not score themselves significantly higher on job competencies than non‐PDP users.

Future research should investigate the effectiveness of PDPs for the undertaking of learning activities and job competencies in a broader sample, involving multiple‐raters and focusing more closely on one essential feature of the PDP practice: the feedback given by a supervisor and/or colleague or coach when discussing the PDP.

The results stress the value of a PDP as a feedback tool. The tool could add significant value to the learning and development process of the pharmacy assistant, however, if it would be used as a feed‐forward instrument as well. In other words, the tool should more often be used to get an overview of desired future plans, plan future careers, and the undertaking of learning activities in order to reach these future goals.

In order to promote employees' learning and development, more and more companies are starting to implement PDPs. Empirical studies researching the effectiveness of PDPs in the workplace are scarce, however.

The demographic shift and the rapid rate of innovations put age and employability high on policy makers’ and human resource managers’ agenda. However, the authors do not sufficiently understand the link between these concepts. The authors set out to investigate the relationship between age and employability and aim to identify motivational mediators of this relationship. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the roles of future time perspective and goal orientation.

The authors conducted quantitative, cross-sectional survey research (n=282) in three Dutch and Austrian organizations. The authors used structural equation modeling to investigate the relationships between chronological age, future time perspective, goal orientations, and employability.

Future time perspective and goal orientation strongly relate to employability. The authors found indirect relationships between age and employability via perceived remaining opportunities.

The results question the often simplistic use of chronological age in employability and human resource management research. Therefore, the authors call for more research to investigate the relationship between age and employability more deeply.

The findings contribute new insights for the career development issues of an increasingly older workforce. This shifts the focus from age, a factor outside our control, to motivation.

This study contributes evidence for the relationships of chronological age, future time perspective, and goal orientation with employability. It extends literature by criticizing the prevalent use of chronological age and investigating mediation effects.

This study aims to examine which variables at the level of the individual employee and at the company level are predictors of self‐directed learning in low‐qualified employees.

Results were obtained from a sample of 408 low‐qualified employees from 35 different companies. The companies were selected from the energy sector, the chemical industry and the food industry. Multilevel analysis was applied to examine which variables are significant predictors of perceived self‐directed learning.

At the company level, the economic sector in which the employee is employed in particular played a striking role in the prediction of self‐directedness, as did presence of a participatory staff policy. At the level of the individual employee, a proactive personality (a disposition to take personal initiative in a broad range of activities and situations), striving for knowledge work, past learning initiative, task variety and the growth potential of the job were significant predictors of self‐directed learning.

Research on the predictors of self‐directed learning has primarily focused on correlational studies examining the relation between individual variables and level of self‐directedness. There is little research available that systematically traces the extent to which individual as well as company factors play a role in level of self‐directed learning. Nor is it clear which category of variables should be considered as the most critical. In addition, earlier research on this subject has mainly focused on a higher‐qualified group of workers (employees with at least a diploma of secondary education). Factors that are predictors of self‐directed learning and their relative weight might differ for certain groups of employees. This issue has hardly been addressed up to now.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the training and development (T & D) of middle-level managers in the financial institutions of a sub-Saharan African country make any difference in the performances of the managers and the institutions in general.

An empirical analysis of managers’ opinions based on a quantitative survey of 140 middle-level managers from four banking institutions in Ghana is conducted.

Findings showed that there is a significant relationship between T & D of middle-level managers and their performance and, consequently, performance of the banks. The findings also showed that managers become savvier in personal initiatives and responsive to customer care leading to enhanced service delivery. The paper proposes that T & D should focus on the significant relationship between the outcomes and programme objectives of organisations in emerging economies if these organisations want to be counted in this competitive global world.

The paper provides valuable information on the important role of middle-level managers as custodians of “tacit knowledge” that can turn around organisations, particularly in developing economies, if the needed T & D are given to them.

Empirical literature on T & D and on middle-level managers’ development in developing countries is limited. The contribution of this paper identifies the roles that middle management can play in the performances of organisations and especially in emerging economies.