Finally, wherever coaching or mentoring has been implemented, there are inevitably informal processes for transferring knowledge and know-how, and recognition of team- based learning among peers concerning the "tricks of the trade." The company newspaper or newsletter is also a useful institution in that regard (Bélangeret al,2004).

Furthermore, the fact that a business and its managerial staff recognize the variety of ways employees can approach an assignment or a particular job, and the fact that they acknowledge individual initiatives to interpret and improve how a prescribed task is carried out, may well translate into an encouragement of informal learning. Bélanger et al. (2004) made this observation in certain work units in the food-processing sector, which recognized the technical complexity of certain tasks such as sharpening knives and took into account the different ways of doing the work (Chatigny and Vézina, 2004). The authors observed the same phenomenon in other companies, where workers succeeded in inventing their own ways to memorize the product classification codes and manage inventories. Limiting oneself to the task required and forgetting the tension between prescribed actions and actual practice may be the most subtle but at the same time the most profound refusal of informal learning (Teiger and Montreuil, 1996). ^{Footnote 55}

What factors encourage recognition of informal learning and the organization of support for these invisible forms of learning? From the perspective of social psychology, it is possible to analyse the genesis of informal and self-directed learning behaviours that then appear to be the result of a meeting between personal and attitudinal factors relating to an individual's journey, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, events and circumstances that have occurred at specific times in the subject's social and educational environment (Meignant, 1991). However, these individual journeys, like the social environments, can be understood only in their context. What, in fact, are the conditions or factors that promote or impede the development of attitudes linked to an active educational biography or even the emergence of events that encourage self-directed learning?

In the companies studied by Bélanger et al. (2004), the authors detected various factors. First, there was the type of work organization. In sectors that were more closely linked to the knowledge economy, it is in the company's interest to support mutual learning among colleagues. The actual organization of the work, where the task itself can be performed in different ways and requires different forms of learning and innovation, facilitates the development of self-training. Does this mean that the organization of industrial production work, namely in the production units of the pharmaceutical or the food processing sector or even in most less-specialized retail businesses, impedes the development of informal learning? The answer is not necessarily, because even in those unspecialized production sectors, the authors observed some firms that supported informal learning. The contribution of the employees, even those with repetitive tasks, in terms of solving unforeseen problems and improving production protocols, is at times recognized. The same is true in some firms that, when a particular crisis occurs, have made use of more active unplanned employee participation to solve problems. The difficulties associated with planning structured training, where there are not enough employees and where the variety of timetables preclude this, lead these establishments to support self-directed learning.

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