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The purpose of this paper is to review social identity theory and its implications for learning in organizations.

This article is a conceptual paper based on a multidisciplinary review of the literature on social identity theory. This article explains the theoretical concepts, constructs, and findings of an identity‐based view of learning in organizations. The article describes the theoretical foundations of social identity theory and its elaboration as self‐categorization theory, along with some of the limitations of the theory. Important implications for workplace learning are presented.

Although multiple factors influence how people work, social identity theory portends to be a unifying theory of organizational behavior because what and how people think as members of social groups influences subsequent behavior and attitudes in social systems. This influence has important implications for workplace learning..

The social identities in organizations serve as important drivers of performance. How people think as members of groups affects the outcomes of learning interventions. Therefore, social identity is a key input to or driver of learning and performance in organizations.

Training and development have focused primarily on the individual and occasionally the organizational levels with little attention to the identity‐based dynamics of group behavior in organizational settings. This paper offers insights from social identity theory for training and development.

The aims of this paper is to reviews the latest management development across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The paper finds that, despite being overlooked in the literature on training and development, social identity is a critical factor influencing learning and performance in organizations. Social identity is important because it provides insights about individual behavior in groups and the group dynamics that affect individual learning and performance. There is a gap in human resources development to provide training at a group level. Although the individual is usually placed at the centre of the organization, it is essential to recognize identity‐related constraints beyond the individual level to ensure continuous individual learning. This article reviews social identity theory and looks at its potential implications for training and development.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of engineering student interns, as well as the perceptions of internship supervisors.

The study was designed to investigate internships as a complex social phenomenon in the field, through the use of an inductive qualitative design grounded in a naturalistic paradigm guided by theories of learning and socialisation. The researchers used semistructured interviews of 24 engineering student interns and 10 internship supervisors at various organisations.

Students reported varying levels of learning about how a company works and how to work with others in a professional environment as the results of their internships. The researchers found that students did not look for connections between the classroom and the workplace, making it difficult to apply skills from one setting to the other. Supervisors received very little training, if any, prior to supervising interns. They were unsure how much work students could handle during an internship and perceived that making sure students had a positive experience was part of their role. In addition, internship goals for companies and educational institutions did not necessarily align.

Both students and supervisors would benefit from more formal preparation or training prior to the start of an internship. Educational institutions and companies would also benefit by collaborating to better understand each other's goals and coordinating student experiences to foster learning and positive outcomes.

This paper emphasises the importance of helping students understand the nature of work and the importance of developing relationships in the workplace.

The purpose of this study was to better understand the more complex social, technical and personal socialization experiences of engineers when they started new jobs in Taiwan. Much of the research and practice on the socialization of newly hired employees is narrowly focused on newcomer learning.

The study is a qualitative, case study approach designed to collect in-depth data about the socialization experiences of engineers in Taiwan. Thirteen participants reported their experiences from when they began new jobs, and the researchers collected and analyzed data from semi-structured interviews. The analysis followed qualitative analysis methods for content analysis.

The findings indicated that interpersonal relationships are critical to successful socialization, and the relational structures encountered by newcomers reflect the broader culture of Confucianism and the social interactions of guanxi in the Taiwanese workplace. Three main dimensions of socialization emerged from the data referring to social, technical and personal learning experiences.

The findings identify what is working (mentoring) and what is not working well (training). Human Resource managers and supervisors of newcomers can take actions to better manage the multiple dimensions of socialization.

Unlike most studies of socialization in Asia, this study took an in-depth, qualitative look into the experiences of newcomers. What emerged from the analysis of the data was a framework composed of three interdependent dimensions of socialization experiences. The findings inform both managers and newly hired employees about socialization experiences and how they can be improved.

This research highlights the scenarios that might serve as a strategic vision to describe a future beyond the current library, one which both guides provosts and creates a map for the transformation of human resources and technology in the university research libraries. The scenarios offer managerial leaders an opportunity to envision new roles for librarians and staff which brings a much needed focus on the development of human resources as well as a thought-stream to understand decisions which effectively and systematically move the organization toward a strategic vision.

These scenarios also outline possible future directions research libraries could take by focusing on perspectives from library directors, provosts, and administrators for human resources. The four case study scenarios introduce potential future roles for librarians and highlight the unsustainability of the current scholarly communications model as well as uncertain factors related to the political, social, technical, and demographic issues facing campuses. Given the changes institutions face, scenarios allow directors to include more uncertainty when developing and articulating a vision. These scenarios may start a discussion, before a strategic planning process, to sharpen the evaluations and measures necessary to monitor achievements that define the value of the library.

Persistent change has placed considerable pressure on organizations to keep up or fade into obscurity. Firms that remain viable, or even thrive, are staffed with decision-makers who capably steer organizations toward opportunities and away from threats. Accordingly, leadership development has never been more critical. In this chapter, the authors propose that leader development is an inherently dyadic process initiated to communicate formal and informal expectations. The authors focus on the informal component, in the form of organizational politics, as an element of leadership that is critical to employee and company success. The authors advocate that superiors represent the most salient information source for leader development, especially as it relates to political dynamics embedded in work systems. The authors discuss research associated with our conceptualization of dyadic political leader development (DPLD). Specifically, the authors develop DPLD by exploring its conceptual underpinnings as they relate to sensemaking, identity, and social learning theories. Once established, the authors provide a refined discussion of the construct, illustrating its scholarly mechanisms that better explain leader development processes and outcomes. The authors then expand research in the areas of political skill, political will, political knowledge, and political phronesis by embedding our conceptualization of DPLD into a political leadership model. The authors conclude by discussing methodological issues and avenues of future research stemming from the development of DPLD.

Diversity education and training have been a standard in higher education for decades now. While it is widely accepted that they can have significant value and impact, there is much uncertainty in how to build programs that deliver in positive ways for increasingly diverse college campuses. The need for contextual application of diversity education makes it difficult to develop a general framework for building such a program. Still, research shows essential theoretical components of diversity education programs that can be critical to the success of these initiatives. How do we take these larger theoretical concepts and ground them within unique higher education environments in ways that meet specific campus needs – needs that exist in the context of the campus, as well as within the larger social, cultural, and political landscape? The model has to be agile enough to respond to both the internal and external factors that shape the campus climate while being true to its theoretical roots. This chapter presents a programmatic framework for building a diversity education certificate program to enhance progress toward achieving institutional change goals, as well as a case study snapshot that demonstrates the practical implications of implementing the framework. The program can drive campus change supporting diversity and inclusion – change that may have been dormant, not supported, or not articulated in ways that result in effective outcomes.

This study aims to explore and classify the fragmentary findings of previous studies and improve understanding of the overall roles of supervisors in newcomer organizational socialization (NOS) and their relationships to NOS outcomes.

The study chiefly involves undertaking a literature review, with an emphasis on the perspective of human resource development (HRD). A structured literature review was conducted to identify and select articles through the Web of Science database.

Five important roles of supervisors during NOS – supporting training transfer, providing information, clarifying newcomers’ roles, facilitating sensemaking and providing feedback – were revealed from an examination of extant work. These roles markedly influence five different components of newcomers’ adjustment: task mastery, role clarification, organizational knowledge, social identification and social integration.

Although the concept of NOS used in this paper did not include all meanings of organizational socialization, the findings proposed key areas that require further study to enhance the understanding of supervisors’ roles for NOS.

The literature review suggests key efforts that supervisors should pursue to enhance the efficacy of newcomers’ adjustment. HRD professionals can use this information to design supervisor training programs aimed at enhancing supervisors’ knowledge and skills for successful NOS.

Studies have reported that supervisors markedly impact NOS and ultimately a newcomer’s success or failure. Relatively little work, however, has investigated how supervisors’ roles in the NOS process can enhance newcomers’ successful NOS outcomes.