Guest editorial

Citation

Stewart, J. and Shaw, S. (2005), "Guest editorial", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 29 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeit.2005.00329aaa.001

Guest editorial

About the Guest Editors Jim Stewart is Professor of Human Resource Development at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, where he is Joint Course Leader of the Doctorate in Business Administration, which he launched in 1998. He previously led the design and development of the NBS MSc in HRD for which he was Course Leader for six years. Jim has worked in universities since 1986 following careers in operational management in the retail industry and as a development professional in local government. An active researcher and writer during his career as an academic, Jim is the author, editor and co-editor of ten books on HRD, including the groundbreaking text edited with Jim McGoldrick (1996), HRD: Perspectives, Principles and Practice; the single authored (1999) Employee Development Practice and four co-edited texts published between 2002 and 2004 in the Routledge Studies in Human Resource Development Series. Two of those four texts are the result of Jim’s joint award with Professor Jean Woodall and Professor Monica Lee of an ESRC Research Seminar Series on Human Resource Development: The Emerging Theoretical Agenda and Empirical Research. Jim has guest edited special issues of Personnel Review, Journal of Strategic Change and Journal of European Industrial Training. E-mail: jim.stewart@ntu.ac.uk

Sue Shaw is Executive Head of Postgraduate Programmes at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School. She teaches and researches in the area of HRM and prior to joining MMU she worked in both manufacturing and wholesaling. Her areas of specialism are HRM in China, Gender and Performance and the HR function and she has a number of publications in these areas. She is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and was recently awarded the CIPD’s Distinguished Badge of Merit in recognition of her services to the profession. E-mail: S.Shaw@mmu.ac.uk

The idea of a corporate university has taken root and is beginning to flourish. Whether that continues remains to be seen, as does the impact on the practice of HRD in work organisations and on the role of public, or traditional, as we term them here, universities. Two things though are clear. The number of organisations claiming to operate a corporate university has risen significantly over the last ten years or so. Second, and no doubt associated with that rise in number, interest in corporate universities on the part of professional practitioners and academic researchers has also increased. Hence this special edition of JEIT.

We are both active members of the University Forum for HRD (details at www.ufhrd.com) and we had both noticed growing interest among Forum members in the spread of corporate universities. We had also done separate work ourselves, and with other colleagues, researching the phenomenon. Both of those experiences suggested a degree of uncertainty, perhaps even confusion, surrounding the concept. It was that shared perception of a need to “take stock” that prompted us to propose the idea of a collection of articles on the subject. Our aim and intention was not to settle debates or overcome uncertainty or confusion. It was rather to produce a “snapshot” of current perspectives and knowledge in order to perhaps better focus the lines of difference and debate which are emerging out of recent and ongoing research. This aim was our guiding principle in selecting articles from the proposals we received. So, what and where are these lines? It seems to us that there are at least seven areas where debate continues.

The first area is simply that of understanding the defining characteristics of a corporate university. In other words, how does a corporate university differ from a central HRD department and function? Nearly all of the contributions address this question to some degree. Those by Walton, Shaw and by Jansink and colleagues, for example, attempt to base their answers on empirical research and material. Others provide or draw on purely conceptual analyses. While there are some commonalities in definitions and descriptions offered in this collection it is equally clear that differences remain evident in meanings attached to the concept. Some of these differences provide other areas of and for debate. The first of these is the primary focus and purpose of corporate universities. The work of Blass and of Jansink suggests a common focus and purpose related to knowledge management. However, the latter also identify the continuing importance of providing training and development through corporate universities. Certainly, this can be an important and ongoing consideration in countries where labour market skills are notably underdeveloped as Shaw’s study illustrates. Therefore there might well be tensions between the “strategic” role in relation to creating competitive advantage through knowledge creation and the operational focus of maintaining the current skill set. This also raises the issue of organisational performance and return on investment, and how the latter can be achieved. Homan and Macpherson address this most directly but the question is implicit in all of the work here. Is investment in a corporate university a means of increasing revenue through competitive advantage, or a means of reducing costs through centralising and controlling expenditure on learning and development?

The third and fourth areas of debate are also connected to how a corporate university is conceptualised. The first of these is whether or not corporate universities pass through recognisable stages of development. Our contributors seem to take different positions on this question. Two additional questions also arise. If indeed corporate universities have and do develop over time through recognisable stages, are such development paths inevitable? And, what exactly are the necessary stages? These are of course very big questions. What is interesting here is that there is variety in answers in this collection. One particular feature of an argued “final stage” is addressed directly by Homan and Macpherson, and that is the incorporation and use of e-learning in the offerings of “advanced” corporate universities. This provides our fifth area of debate, which itself has at least two threads. The first is the extent to which significant use of e-learning and other “modern” approaches to learning and development is a feature of corporate universities. The second is related to the value and most effective use of such approaches within the context of a corporate university.

Our fifth area of debate is the degree to which the concept and practical application of corporate universities is culturally specific. It is clear that the notion is American in origin and that current understanding and application is Anglo/American in bias. It is true that the notion has and is spreading across Europe and in other parts of the world. However, as Homan and Macpherson point out and as Shaw illustrates, this geographic spread is in the main directly associated with global or multi-national companies with their roots in North America or the UK. At the same time, as Shaw suggests, it is likely that country context and culture mediate practice as they have been shown to do in other aspects of HRM. Questions to do with the transferability of the concept to non-Anglo-Saxon cultures therefore remain open and provide an important component of future research required in the phenomenon of corporate universities. This is a point we will return to at the end of this introduction.

The sixth area of debate is the future relationship between corporate and traditional universities. An important part of this debate is the impact and implications of the former on and for the latter, perhaps specifically schools of business and management. The work of Walton in this collection makes an interesting contribution with his comparative analysis, and with his cross-country focus. The article by Blass sets out the scope of the debate most directly, particularly in relation to the “corporatisation” of traditional universities alongside the creation of “universities” by corporations. While Blass takes a primarily UK perspective in her work, the debate has relevance across the globe. This is in part evidenced by the geographic spread of corporate universities through global and multi-national corporations. The same process also suggests that the debate is of as much interest and relevance to professional practitioners as it is to academics employed in traditional universities. Corporate universities may be a threat or opportunity to academics. They present a similar challenge to practitioners both independently of and in relation to their current or potential partnerships with traditional universities.

So far we have suggested six areas that form the lines of debate on corporate universities, both currently and in the immediate future. The suggestions are drawn from and are supported by the articles in this special edition, and they also provide our seventh and final area. It seems to us that the six areas identified so far can usefully be seen as an important research agenda requiring close attention by academics interested in corporate universities. The final area for debate may well be about how that agenda is to be addressed. This collection consists of a mix of conceptual and empirical approaches. Those that adopt the latter approach represent a range of methodologies and methods. Walton for example adopts a very different research perspective to that of Jansink and colleagues. Methods also vary between surveys (Jansink et al.) and single case study (Shaw). Our own view is that such eclectic variation is healthy and to be welcomed and valued. Others though may have different views and may wish to privilege some approaches over others. Establishing research agendas can create as much debate over process as over content.

As indicated earlier, our aim in producing this special edition was to “take stock” of current academic work on corporate universities. We hope readers find value in reading the collection we have selected and find that our aim has, in part at least, been met. A secondary aim was to provoke debate and we look forward to reading other contributions in the pages of future issues of this journal.

Jim Stewart, Sue ShawGuest Editors