Conference Agenda

Onboarding processes are a central mechanism through which workplace organizations integrate new members and regulate knowledge transfer. Depending on how onboarding is structured, knowledge can be actively remembered and transferred, or it may be lost when routines, documentation or stable responsibilities are missing. While onboarding in large corporate environments has become increasingly formalized (Huchler 2023; Caldwell/Peters 2018), onboarding in many small and medium-sized organizations remains informal, experience-based and shaped by local constraints. These dynamics become visible in the context of dual study programs.

Dual study programs (German: duales Studium) combine academic studies at a university with structured periods of work-based learning in a workplace organization. Students are simultaneously enrolled in higher education and employed in a company. This dual status makes onboarding a pedagogically and organizationally significant interface: students must learn to navigate organizational expectations, implicit norms, and situated work practices while also fulfilling academic requirements. At the same time, workplace organizations must integrate newcomers who are both learners and employees.

The broader aim of the research project is to understand how dual students learn within workplace organizations as part of their dual study programs and how these learning processes connect to academic learning (Kessler/König 2025; Kessler/König 2026, forthcoming). Although onboarding was not the initial focus, it emerged from the empirical material as a crucial entry point into the learning environments of workplace organizations. The way organizations structure—or fail to structure—this early phase shapes students’ access to tasks, knowledge and social relations, and thus their subsequent learning trajectories.

Against this background, two analytical questions guided the present contribution:

1. How do dual students experience onboarding in their workplace organizations?

2. How is knowledge transfer during onboarding structured and enacted by the workplace organizations themselves?

Building on these perspectives, the study abstracts toward a broader analytical question: How is knowledge transfer organizationally structured during onboarding, and how is this structuring perceived, interpreted and enacted by new members?

The theoretical framework draws on organizational education and organizational learning research. Concepts of organizational memory (Walsh/Ungson 1991; Casey 1997) frame onboarding as a process in which knowledge is stabilized through routines, documentation and formal structures, but also lost through turnover, informal practices or lack of institutionalization. The knowing–doing gap (Argyris/Schön 1996; Pfeffer/Sutton 2000) highlights discrepancies between formal claims and actual practices—an aspect that becomes visible when organizations present structured onboarding concepts but rely on ad-hoc learning in everyday work.

The study also engages with theories of tacit and explicit knowledge (Polanyi 1966; Nonaka/Takeuchi 1995). Onboarding is not merely the transfer of codified information but a process of embodied, situational learning. Dual students often learn through observation, collegial interaction, and self-directed tasks, positioning them as agents of organizational knowledge creation rather than passive recipients. This resonates with findings from organizational case studies showing that experiential knowledge is often left to chance and individual appropriation when organizations lack systematic knowledge management structures (Kapfer/Heckl/Sailer 2024).

From an organizational education perspective, onboarding cultures can be understood as ambivalent practices of remembering and forgetting. Formal structures support knowledge retention as conscious memory work, whereas informal entry processes foster organizational forgetting, as experiential knowledge is frequently not documented or systematically shared. The contrast between formal onboarding concepts and informal onboarding practices—shaped by pragmatic constraints such as staff shortages or time pressure—reveals how workplace organizations oscillate between explicit knowledge transfer and tacit, situational learning.

By examining onboarding as a cultural and organizational practice, the study contributes to broader debates on work-based learning, learning venue partnerships, and the role of students as co-creators of organizational knowing and acting.

Although emotions are increasingly acknowledged as integral to workplace learning, few empirical instruments have been developed to systematically assess the emotional practices that either facilitate or hinder learning processes. This gap is particularly salient in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where formal learning infrastructures are limited and emotional dynamics are shaped by unique structural and cultural factors. In Korea, where SMEs account for the vast majority of employment, these dynamics are further influenced by hierarchical organizational cultures and collectivist social norms that frame emotional expression and regulation.

This study seeks to develop and validate a psychometrically robust measurement instrument designed to assess learning emotion practices within Korean SME contexts. Learning emotion practices are conceptualized as the ways in which emotions are elicited, enacted, and embedded within learning-related activities and interactions. The aim is to produce a culturally grounded and practically applicable tool for both research and human resource development (HRD) applications.

The study is guided by the following research questions:

What are the core domains and dimensions of learning emotion practices in Korean SME workplaces?

How can these domains be operationalized into a valid and reliable measurement instrument?

To what extent does the instrument demonstrate psychometric validity across diverse SME settings?

The theoretical framework integrates three strands of literature: Pekrun’s (2006) control-value theory, which emphasizes the motivational and cognitive dimensions of achievement emotions and conceptualized the antecedents of learning emotions by distinguishing the agents that elicit these emotions as the self, others, and the situation or task.; affective practice theory(Wetherell, 2012), which highlights affect or emotion is understood not as an internal psychological state but as a form of practice that is repeatedly performed within social discourses and relational interactions. Gherardi (2001) conceptualizes organizational learning as a social and material phenomenon that unfolds in a field of practice where knowing and doing are not separable but mutually constitutive. Learning does not occur through the transmission of abstract knowledge alone but through participation in ongoing practices that are embedded in specific material arrangements, power relations, and social interactions. Within this framework, emotion functions as a form of practical sensibility, often described as sensuous knowing, that attunes learners to how they participate in practice and enables particular learning activities while constraining others. ; and Dirkx’s (2001) affective perspective on adult learning foregrounds emotion as a central source of meaning making and identity development, emphasizing that adult learning involves not only cognitive reflection but also deep engagement with feelings, imagination, and the construction of the self. From this standpoint, emotions are integral to how adults interpret experience, negotiate personal and professional identities, and transform their understanding of themselves and the world. Learning is thus viewed as an affectively charged process in which emotions guide attention, shape interpretation, and sustain or disrupt commitment to learning trajectories.

Drawing on these perspectives, learning emotion practices can be analytically structured across two axes. The first axis differentiates the locus of emotion, ranging from internally oriented processes related to the self, such as self efficacy, agency, and identity work, to relationally and contextually oriented processes embedded in interactions with others, tasks, and organizational or cultural environments. The second axis distinguishes the functional orientation of emotion, spanning from enabling practices that mobilize engagement, meaning making, and participation in learning, to constraining practices that inhibit involvement, narrow interpretive possibilities, or discourage sustained learning. Together, these axes provide a conceptual framework for examining how learning emotions are not merely experienced but enacted as practices that shape what kinds of learning become possible, for whom, and under what conditions.