Corporate Universities

Drivers of the Learning Organization

Martijn Rademakers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135106416
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Gestione delle risorse umane
• Index: Business

Organizations constantly need to adapt themselves to stay aligned with an ever-changing and increasingly complex environment. Corporate Universities puts "smart learning" at the forefront, withstrategies to secure alignment between organization and environment, whichneed both speed of learning and learning in the right direction. Across the globe, corporate universities have emerged as vehicles of such strategy-driven learning.

Corporate Universities bridges the gap between the disciplines ofstrategic management and corporate learning, combining general strategy with the concept of corporate universities, which, to date, has predominantly been an HR topic.Readers will find new concepts, as well as generic corporate university strategies to link corporate strategy to organizational learning. In-depth cases show how corporate universities are used to renew, transform, and optimize strategy and include important lessons learned by corporate university executives, from both small and global companies, as well as governmental organizations across different industries.

Written for academics in strategy, HRD, and organizational behaviour disciplines, as well as practicing managers alike, Corporate Universities is the first book that offers a consistent set of concepts, frameworks, and cases to integrate general strategy with organizational learning.

1

INTRODUCTION: CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

–Benjamin Franklin

The number of corporate universities around the world is rising. Thousands of publicly listed corporations and privately held and state-owned companies, as well as family businesses and non-profit and semi-governmental organizations, have established their own corporate universities or they are in the process of developing one.¹ The size of the organization does not matter much. Among the smallest companies with a fully-fledged corporate university is Enclos Corp, an American firm with a workforce of about 450 people,² while Russian Railways (RZD), employing about 1.3 million people, is among the largest.³

Counter-intuitively, the interest in corporate universities seems to have been on the rise since the dawn of the worldwide economic crisis in 2008. This development can be seen both in emerging and declining economies and both among companies affected by the economic downturn, as well as those taking advantage of it. The development is contrary to the dotcom crisis of 2000–2001 when, generally speaking, the corporate university concept was in its infancy.Yet, rather than being acknowledged as a strategic asset, many corporate universities were seen as a me-too or an experiment inspired by early adopters, such as General Electric.⁴ Now, 12 years down the road, companies have clear strategic reasons to establish, develop, or maintain a corporate university. A variety of the strategic reasons can be found in this book.

The next ten chapters offer a range of examples and in-depth cases about companies from different continents, countries, and industries (most of them successful, but some that are facing hardship) and the role of their corporate universities in renewing, implementing, and optimizing strategy. Moreover, the book pairs a practical, case-based approach with strategy theory and concepts, as well as providing the framework and instruments for corporate university strategy analysis and development.

FIGURE 1.1 Overview of the eleven chapters and their focus

Overview and summary of the chapters

Each chapter in this book revolves around the strategic role of corporate universities. Figure 1.1 provides a condensed overview of the chapters and their focus. As depicted in the figure, the book is divided into three parts: Part I provides concepts, theory, and instruments for the design of business strategy and strategies for corporate universities. The heart of the book, Part II, which contains six in-depth cases about different corporate universities, reveals the direct connection between strategy and organizational learning. All of the chapters in this part of the book take the strategic needs of the companies as their point of departure. Brief introductions to the companies and industries involved are provided as a context for the description of corporate university strategies, structures, practices, challenges, and lessons learned. Part III is an integrative chapter, with a discussion of the findings in this book. Attention is paid to the body of literature on corporate universities, strategic balancing acts that corporate universities have to deal with, and directions for future research and development.

Chapter 2: Strategy Development for Continuous Learning

Every organization needs to find answers to the ultimate strategic challenge of continuous adaptation to stay in tune with the environment. This chapter frames the endeavor of continuous adaptation in a sleek approach based on systems thinking. A case about the development of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from a local opera house to an international business is used to unveil how strategy and learning come together. The concepts of market system, business system, organizational system, and personal system contribute a complete overview of the most important factors in realizing continuous adjustment. The chapter also discusses the connection between strategic change and learning, introducing the concepts of learning as usual and exceptional learning. This chapter makes it clear that strategy needs learning:

Strategy development is about learning what should be done and what can be done.

Chapter 3: Corporate University Strategy

This chapter sheds light on the connections that link corporate university strategy with business strategy. The underlying logic is that corporate universities are supposed to play a significant role in the renewal, implementation, or optimization of strategy in their organizations. At the beginning of the chapter the imperative of continuous alignment, as described in Chapter 2, is combined with the fundamental strategic notion that the long-term success of organizations depends on the ability both to exploit current capabilities and to explore fundamentally new competencies (Raisch et al., 2009). Building on this exploitation–exploration strategy dichotomy (and the need for transformation to move from one to the other), then adding international research outcomes, three generic corporate university strategies are constructed and worked out to reveal their distinctive business system characteristics.⁵ The resulting School (exploitation), College (transformation), and Academy (exploration) strategies underpin the development of consistent and focused business systems for corporate universities. As is argued by the author:

The three generic corporate university strategies offer a conceptual basis on which to assess the current strategic roles of corporate universities in organizations, and to envision their future roles.

Chapter 4: Corporate University Value Creation and Learning Formats

To stay focused, it is important for corporate universities to have a general strategy, but it takes more than that to ensure that organizational learning is heading in the right direction. Corporate university strategies need to be tailored for specific learning needs and opportunities in the organization. The two key questions are: What value does the corporate university need to create? Which learning formats need to be deployed? Two instruments are introduced here to explore those questions in more detail: the Value Creation Menu and the Learning Formats Model. The Value Creation Menu covers choices pertaining to the dimensions of organizational and individual learning, and to value creation achieved by the expansion of competences and relationships. The Learning Formats Model builds upon the work of David Kolb (1984) on experiential learning, and it features an inventory of the most important learning formats seen at corporate universities. The two instruments are applied in-depth to the corporate universities of Ahold (a retail company), Heineken (known for their export beer), and TNT (postal and parcel services). Moreover, a range of international examples are used to highlight the value creation focus of corporate universities in companies such as Kenya Airways, Pertamina, VolkerWessels, IHC Merwede, RWS, CRH, Haniel, Deloitte, Mars, Disney, and Apple. One conclusion drawn in the chapter holds true for all:

Corporate universities need to make sure that learning hits organization needs. Hence, they constantly need to review their options for value creation and renew their learning formats.

Chapter 5: Mars University: Raising the Bar

The chapter on strategic renewal and transformation at Mars Inc., a private, family-owned company operating in the global food, pet food, and confectionery industries, opens the series of six cases regarding the strategic role of corporate universities. The Mars University case revolves around the interplay between corporate strategy and corporate university evolution, denoted as co-evolution in Figure 1.1.⁶ The chapter describes how Mars University has moved from an internationally decentralized ad hoc training operation to a globally unified driver of learning that fulfills the role of a key enabler of strategy. It is safe to say that, along the way, the corporate university has been successful in seizing senior management attention. Mars University is a multi-unit corporate university offering a broad range of programs. One unit that draws special attention is the Customized Learning Group – the innovation arm of the corporate university with the task to address new business challenges that go beyond the learning solutions provided by the Mars University curriculum. The momentum and leadership capability which this corporate university has been building up over almost a decade is increasingly turning organizational learning within Mars from one of support for change to that of a driver of change. Yet, the essence of corporate learning within Mars remains the same. In the words of Jon Shepherd, the former CLO of Mars University, the essence is

to get a competitive edge, using learning to meet business challenges and provide consistency around the world in an efficient manner.

Chapter 6: Deloitte University: Developing as One

Deloitte is one of the largest professional service firms in the world and it comprises 200,000 professionals working in independent firms located all around the world. Learning and leadership development are considered crucial to making the “As One Strategy” of the company work. With this in mind, Deloitte University (established in 2011 after a US$300 million investment by the US member firms) has transformed learning across the entire Deloitte organization. Virtually all thinkable learning formats are deployed to enable professionals at all levels to connect, share their thoughts, and to identify and capitalize on new ideas and approaches. The curriculum of the university is comprehensive, covering technical, industry, and professional tracks. One of the compelling characteristics of Deloitte University, as described in the chapter, is that program decisions are based on extensive collaboration with large groups of highly autonomous stakeholders throughout the company. It seems that the relatively young corporate university has just begun to realize the full potential of corporate learning for Deloitte. The words of Bill Pelster, the principal of Deloitte Consulting LLP Human Capital practice and former CLO of Deloitte, give an indication of the ambition levels of Deloitte University:

In the area of corporate learning, I believe the future isn’t necessarily about the latest gadgets – though of course technology plays a fundamental role. I think the true revolution is about a much simpler idea – nothing more, nothing less, than a new definition of “learning” itself.⁷

Chapter 7: Shell Project Academy: Developing a Learning Community

The Shell Project Academy has become a source of inspiration for a range of corporate universities within the international oil and gas industry. The lessons learned in establishing the corporate university, however, are relevant to a much broader audience. The Shell Project Academy aims to take the Shell capability in (complex) project management to a world-class level with an accredited program. Project management, a cross-disciplinary function that permeates the entire corporation, is of crucial importance to companies like Shell, as it is a determining factor in obtaining access to new oil and gas reserves in the world. The chapter on the Shell Project Academy describes, quite in detail, why the corporate university was established, the design of a comprehensive program, its costs and performance levels, and the governance structure for balanced “ownership” of the corporate university. Moreover, it is explained how a Project Management Community is built and sustained as a cornerstone of corporate learning. The community is one of the five complementary components of the Shell Project Academy program, also known as the SPA Pentagon. This Pentagon forms a tightly integrated organizational learning system with important synergy effects between the different components. As a Shell official put it:

Don’t try changing the Pentagon into a Square – it would no longer work.

Chapter 8: Canon Academy: Accelerating Transformation

The chapter on Canon Academy in Europe provides a detailed view of the vital role that a corporate university can play in strategy implementation. Canon, the Japanese company primarily known for its cameras, copiers and printers, is in the process of transforming itself into an integrated imaging hardware, software and services company. The Canon Academy is pivotal in cascading the strategy from a corporate level to further specified strategies and their implementation in regional and local markets. Examples from the Canon printing business and the consumer imaging market describe how corporate learning is used to drive strategy implementation. A common thread is that the corporate university brings the relevant people together and engages with them in a process of finding out what the people at Canon need to learn to make a given strategy work. Strategy interpretation, specification, and implementation are part of the process. The corporate university staff members have regular and direct contact with senior management to stay in close touch with the business needs and to drive organizational learning:

It is not difficult to view the Canon Academy as an instrument for senior management to lead the organization…. We meet on a regular basis to figure out how to enable the people in the organization to actually move in the right direction, and to find out what they need to know to do so.

Chapter 9: Corporate University Strategy Renewal at ING

The lifecycle of the ING Business School (later ING Bank Academy) is captured in this exemplary chapter on corporate university evolution, decline, and possible revival. Attention is paid to the effects of the worldwide financial crisis which took hold in 2008 on corporate ...