Employee learning path strategies

This special issue on learning path strategies appears during a time of widespread disruption in corporate, governmental, and non-governmental organizations that reaches across nearly every sector of the global economy. Examples abound, from the rise of the internet giants and the demise of brick-and-mortar retail, to shifts in the manufacture and distribution of consumer and durable goods, to changes in energy production and transportation systems. In the wake of these shifts, ironic inconsistencies have proliferated: social networks empower individual and community agency (Arab Spring; Black Lives Matter; Me Too) while at the same time amplifying fragmentation and dissension (trolling, doxxing, bullying). In this mix of uncertainty and irony, the papers included here argue that workplace learning is undergoing similarly drastic shifts in both its conceptualization and operationalization. From the perspective of Learning Network Theory (LNT), these shifts and the organizational mechanisms that sustain them are rooted in long-standing relationships between learning systems and work systems. These relationships must be negotiated, managed, and ultimately, kept in balance-a challenging proposition for workers, managers, and HRD professionals. A common theme among these papers is that LNT presents an opportunity to explore and understand the nuances that connect researchers and practitioners in that goal.