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This paper will argue that whilst situated learning and community of practice theories have greatly enhanced our understanding of learning in organisations, the absence of emotion in these theories is a major omission. The paper draws on an empirical study of middle managers in a major engineering corporation, as well as drawing on Lave and Wenger’s own case study discussions to argue that emotion is a crucial and missing factor in our understanding of working knowledge, and specifically our understanding of how communities of practice construct shared meaning and develop knowledge. In parallel with the rise in popularity of situated learning theory has been the growing interest in the underacknowledged, but crucial role played by emotion in organisations. The very existence of emotions in organisations has commonly been denied by theorists following the Taylorist tradition, and even with the rise of humanist thought in its various guises, emotions have been seen as belonging to the private domain, to be harnessed by managers for motivational or performance reasons, but having little bearing on other aspects of organisation life such as learning, knowing and innovating. Situated learning theory still apparently prefers to omit emotion from consideration. This paper argues that the absence of emotion in the theory of situated learning is a major oversight and suggests that emotions do play a major role in the creation of knowledge in communities of practice. It concludes that a fuller understanding about how emotion affects the social elements of learning is now needed, and argues that more research into the interconnectedness between emotion and cognition will throw fresh light on the theory of situated learning.