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The purpose of this paper is to examine learning strategies for competence development at the enterprise level, and how these can be actualised in practice. The authors focus on three influential aspects, namely: the highest valued employee skills, main triggers for learning and investment in learning, as well as the most successful types of learning.

The empirical research was designed according to abductive reasoning. The data draw on research we undertook between 2013 and 2015, including semi-structured interviews with management, human resources and union representatives, as well as questionnaire responses from a total of 31 EU and 163 EU-competitors, across 53 industries and 22 countries.

Competence development requires flexible, learner-centred strategies for initiatives that respond to immediate business needs. Additionally, despite soft competences being so highly valued and sought after, investment (financial and other) by enterprises in developing them is low, relative to the investments poured into hard competences. Also, there is a clear employee demand gap for learning that develops soft competences.

Findings and recommendations are based on a large-scale empirical study, providing state-of-the-art knowledge, upon which we can renew our current learning strategies in workplaces.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how enterprises are to arrange its learning processes in order to optimise the integration and creation of sustainable organisational learning. The paper describes a lite learning evaluation technology that makes processual real-time evaluation of implementation of new knowledge and competences in practice context.

The research is based on a case study that is designed and planned as a mixed method inquiry. The empirical case study is based on data from a large Danish enterprise from the telecommunication industry conducting a leadership and sales training programme. Case study analysis uses data drawn from the implemented pulse survey followed up with qualitative interviews with the course participants.

The authors show results on two levels. On the individual level, processual real-time lite learning evaluation tools create transparency and adaptability. On the organisational level, tool shapes the organisational capacity to improve routines and practices for how to work with organisational learning and learning data in general. Instead of treating learning and development as something that happens “automatically”, organisations now have a tool for informed decisions aimed at creating sustainable organisational learning processes and results.

The paper prompts insights that call for enterprises to enhance focus and dialogue on how to work in new and smart ways with learning at a multi-stakeholder level in organisations. The design and deployment of a real-time lite evaluation tool in organisations are key to bolster learning and competence development, so that organisations and societies can become more responsive in responding to the challenges posed by today’s knowledge economy.

With the purpose of promoting cross-field dialogue, this paper aims to review workplace learning (WPL) and human resource (HR) literature. The authors endeavour a conceptual examination and discussion of the bridges that link both research fields in relation to learning, in an effort to establish an integrated understanding of learning in workplaces.

This paper uses a scoping review focused on how learning is approached in WPL and HR studies. An analysis of the selected literature reveals fundamental themes and dimensions that further our understanding of learning in the context of work.

Overall, there are three learning dimensions where WPL and HR conceptually interrelate, namely, skills, incentives and work design. The scoping review also shows that HR is output-oriented and looks to learning as capital for enterprises, especially in light of enterprise performance for competence development. WPL centres more upon socio-cultural and practice-based configurations and the individual. It encompasses the human dimension of learning as something enriching the whole of life, including work life.

This paper contributes with a unique inquiry into the interrelations between WPL and HR approaches to learning, highlighting the complementarity between WPL theoretical features and HR practices. At the core of our findings is that WPL becomes analytically visible through how HR learning strategies are designed and deployed in the forms of skill development, incentive structures and work design, referring to both workplace structure and cultural features.

The main purpose of this paper is to construct a conceptual model that addresses one of the most urgent matters for contemporary organizations, which is how organizations are to learn and integrate sustainability in its’ working processes. The guiding research question reverberates around how organizational learning (OL) and corporate entrepreneurship (CE) can promote and facilitate sustainability practices in organizations.

This paper uses knowledge from OL and CE theories representing tools to think with for an exploration of how to actualize sustainability practices in organizations.

This paper construes and presents a four-phase multilevel conceptual model for the analysis and creation of sustainability practices using insights from OL and CE. OL contributes with vital parts for creating sustainability practices in organizations delineated by continuous feedback and feedforward loops on individual, group, organizational and societal levels. CE prompts essential process and concrete working elements accentuating the importance of acquiring sustainability in all phases of the change process.

The outlined conceptual model is general and need to address the deeper complexities and context dependencies of sustainable practice in organizations in a more elaborate form. Thus, the proposed model calls for empirical scrutiny and further theoretical development.

Derived from two interrelated fields of research, this paper contributes with a novel model addressing how sustainability practices can be conceptualized and facilitated in organizations. By using OL theory in combination with CE studies, the proposed model seeks to capture key elements to guide new understandings of and transitions to sustainable practices in organizations.

This contribution highlights opportunities for new insights into organizational learning processes through the use of practice-based innovative organizational learning technologies (iOLTs). The article explores the varied possibilities and application of learning technologies in terms of organizational learning perspectives.

Given this is a relatively new field of practice and research, the three organizational learning theoretical perspectives – behavioural, action and practice – form a base upon which we can conceptualise learning as mediated through iOLTs and how we can leverage these technologies, particularly for practice-based organizational learning, which focuses more on the intangibles of learning.

Due to the pervasive and ubiquitous potential of organizational learning technologies, new avenues for analysing the mediating effect of technologies on learning enable our research and practice attention to shift from formal learning to the informal; from top-down learning management to bottom-up learning creation; from cognitive and behavioural approaches to social, spontaneous and contextual learning – helping us decipher the “language” of learning in concrete ways.

The iOLTs are emerging and at an ever-increasing pace. Practice-based iOLTs can help trace and decipher the “language” of learning in concrete ways, which is a key aspect in our being able to leverage our organizational learning capacities.