Abstract:

The professional community of organizational learning practitioners has been expanding in recent years. A growing number of organizations, realizing the importance of organizational learning among which: promoting employees' self-esteem, competencies, performance and commitment to the organization and its success (Hahn & Mathew, 2022; Mason & Brougham, 2020; Naim & Lenka, 2020). Organizational Learning is a process and a profession supporting organizational growth through knowledge and performance management. Becoming an organizational learning professional can occur in different methods formal and informal learning paths. The purpose of this study is to examine the online learning path in virtual community of practice. The study examines "Organizational Learning" Facebook group comprising about 14,000 members. This study uses the data mining methodology to examine large amounts of data and reveal activity patterns and other valuable information (Kempler & Mathews, 2017). Studies based on data mining utilize various statistical tools and processes (Hershkovitz & Alexandron, 2020; Mahdavinejad et al., 2018). The study combines statistical analysis and text mining based on data retrieved from the organizational learning Facebook group reports. Findings reveal participants' activity patterns and three main topics: Learning, Organization, and Community. The article demonstrates how the capability model of the Association for Talent Development (ATD) is reflected in this organizational learning virtual community of practice. The results imply that professional organizational learning development may occur outside of the organization in a virtual community of practice. The originality of this study in terms of methodology, text mining, as well as the unique organizational learning virtual community of practice is discussed. The research implication is to highlight the essential role of non-formal learning in organizational learning virtual community of practice and comprehend that learning occurs not only in individual organizations but also among groups of professionals from different organizations.

Keywords:

Facebook, Organizational Learning, Community of Practice.