In many organisations it is a separate unit with names like DHV University, or Corporate Learning Centre. Such an entity is often the centre of company-specific employee, management and leadership development programs.
More advanced corporate universities act as vehicles for strategy transformation (focusing on organisational development) or drive the continual renewal of the business (focusing on knowledge innovation).
Essentially, corporate universities provide the mechanism to view complex business problems from a systems perspective. They are well positioned to take an enterprise-wide view of strategic issues of the day and assist with their resolution through the development of tailored and structured learning programs.
The outcome from the work of a corporate university facilitates all of the elements of Senge’s notion of a learning organisation and, as a result, delivers the competitive advantage referred to by Stata (above).
In a book to be published in February 2014, carrying the same name (Corporate Universities), author Martijn Rademakers describes how world-class organisations have built and benefited from their corporate universities.
It is shown how they contribute to an organisation’s capability to constantly adapt to, and stay aligned with, the ever-changing and increasingly complex external environment referred to previously.
Alignment boils down to adaptation, and adaptation takes organisational learning. It doesn’t get any better than that. At the same time, the philosophy of a learning organisation doesn’t necessarily have to be applied on the same scale as the companies whose case studies are explored in his book. These include Deloitte University, Mars University, Shell Project Academy, Canon Academy, ING Bank Academy, and short cases about Ducati, IKEA and FrieslandCampina.
Companies with more limited resources than those discussed in Rademakers’ book can still benefit from the adoption of the philosophy and practice of a corporate university in some way.
The Strategic Management institute (SMI) with whom I am associated for example and the Centre for Strategy and Leadership (C4SL) based in Rotterdam (with whom Rademakers is the managing director) is increasingly running external and internal executive development programs in strategy and leadership.
There are also many other external providers who specialise in the development of both functional and management development capabilities. The SMI’s purpose in particular is to provide professional accreditation – awarding appropriately qualified and experienced individuals as Certified Strategy Practitioners (CSP).
As part of our facilitated executive development service, the SMI is hosting a seminar where Rademakers will be our guest speaker. The seminar is being held on the December 2, 2013 in Melbourne, and the topic of Rademakers’ presentation plus Q&A session is ‘Making strategy work: combining strengths in strategy, leadership and organisational learning’.
