Abstract
The popularity of Corporate Universities (CUs) has grown considerably over the last decades, gaining both scholars and practitioners’ interest. This exploratory study contributes to the CU-related research field adding empirical evidence to the scant literature that examines how the CU configuration is operationalized in the Italian context. Our findings reveal that different features exist with varied prominence among the selected CUs, revealing a great heterogeneity that cannot be explained uniquely by their stage of life cycle. Nevertheless, it is worth noting some common features across the selected cases. First of all, these CUs devote most of their activities exclusively or prominently to their internal audiences. Moreover, although they have relationships with universities and business schools, the level of involvement of external partners is still modest. Together these two aspects denote a low level of openness of these entities that may be explained by institutional and cultural factors characterizing the Italian context.
Highlights
The popularity of Corporate Universities (CUs) has grown considerably over the last decades (Meister, 1998)
Our results show that the CUs scope is still very focused on training and development activities
This exploratory study contributes to the CU-related research field adding empirical evidence to the scant literature that examines how the CU configuration is operationalized in the Italian context
Summary
The popularity of Corporate Universities (CUs) has grown considerably over the last decades (Meister, 1998). A key task for both scholars and practitioners has been to understand the CU rising phenomenon. This attempt has been so far problematic because CUs vary to a great extent from organization to organization. Several authors argue that this is partly due to the fact that existing CUs may fall in different stages of their life cycle. According to Lui Abel and Li (2012), as any other organization, the CUs life cycle model reveals different stages of development: (i) start-up, (ii) growth, and (iii) maturity (Greiner, 1972; Quinn & Cameron, 1983), each of them characterized by different processes, infrastructures and capabilities. In the maturity stage, CUs are experts with external industry recognition
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