This paper seeks to bridge the existing knowledge gap between workplace learning and life course studies by investigating how young adults in the retail industry identify, pursue, and actualise learning opportunities in their workplaces. It considers the elements from their life course that either facilitate or impede these learning opportunities.…

Purpose: This study aims to empirically examine the relationship between the leader characteristic of humility and the informal learning of team members. It also evaluates the role of leader authenticity in mediating that relationship. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected on 518 salespeople reporting to 66 managers in a time-lagged…

Context: Active engagement and participation in professional practices are an important requirement for expertise development in vocational domains. However, not much is known about how work contexts foster or hinder such expertise development. To further fill this research gap, this study investigates two vocational domains, namely sales…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how instructional videos produced by retail employers and tech companies have modelled cashier roles and skills in service encounters over time, providing insights into cashier training and job responsibility evolution across different retail eras. Design/methodology/approach: Online video research is used, with…

The paper investigates how learning and processes of becoming are shaped and enacted in retail apprenticeship in Norway. The analysis draws upon a qualitative study of managers and apprentices in different retail sub-sectors. The empirical point of departure is managers who, more or less deliberately, throw apprentices into tasks from day one.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare, and identify both similarities and differences in, affordances for vocational learning in two contrasting education systems, for construction worker and shop salesperson apprentices, in Swedish contexts. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected through interviews and observations in two…

While learning is commonly conceptualised as a social, collaborative process in organisations, online courses often provide limited opportunities for communication between people. How do students engage with content-based courses? How do they find answers to their questions? How do they achieve the learning outcomes? This paper aims to answer…

Most learning in the workplace occurs while pursuing working rather than learning goals. The studies at hand aimed to identify task characteristics that foster learning in the workplace. Task characteristics are supposed to exert a major effect on the learning potential. However, the fact that learning is more often than not a rather unconscious…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to document the ways pharmaceutical representatives learn for work and report attributes of (in)formality and other characteristics of ways of learning perceived as effective and frequently used. Design/methodology/approach: A total of agents 20 from 11 pharmaceutical manufacturers across Canada participated…