Definition of Corporate University - Corporate University Vs Traditional Training Department

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Electric’s Crotonville

Since 1955, the world’s first corporate university which is the General Electric’s Crotonville formally established. GE Crotonville School is the training center of GE’s senior management, it has a clear mission which is to create, determine and spread the company’s knowledge, in order to promote the development of GE and improve GE’s global competitiveness (Durett 2006). In specifically, is to provide training to GE’s staff for their growth and development, and promote the best practice, the company’s initiatives, learning experiences, corporate culture and values to each company’s business department. There were around 5,000 to 6,000 senior managers to get trained in Crotonville every year, they were from the global business units of GE. And there were 50% of the Crotonville’s faculty from the senior managers of GE which included the former chairman and CEO of GE, Mr. Welch (Philippidis 1998). He often propose some important issues about contemporary American enterprise reform and management practices in the training center, and he was very happy to explore the new methods and new models of GE’s change and innovation with experts and students of training center. They were together to discuss and seek ideas to solve problems or implement new management model in order to change the current status, enhance the competitiveness of enterprises and to better fit the changing circumstances (Durett 2006). After analysis the GE’s Crotonville as its corporate university, it could be find that its achievements in personnel training are not focus on how much CEO or senior manager been trained up, but it is to build up a combination of personal development training hierarchy that from the ground staff to senior managers, talents who at different stages of career are able to receive their employment demands in Crotonville.

4.0 Analysis of Corporate University

4.1 The Reasons to Set Up Corporate University

The establishment of corporate universities has three main basic purposes which are the personnel training, promote business transformation and cultural change and to meet corporate demand for skills upgrading. As a key strategic future development of enterprises, to establish a corporate university is the necessary process that an enterprise develop to certain stage in order to develop a greater system of knowledge management and achieve sustainable competitiveness. There are few main reasons to illustrate why the enterprises establish their corporate universities.

4.1.1 The traditional university courses cannot meet the needs of current market

The traditional universities education more emphasis on theoretical education with general knowledge and technology, along with changes in the new era of talent requirements, the current market transform the talent needs from a single skill and degree to a comprehensive ability and personality talent needs, but the traditional university education model for comprehensive capacity and individualized character is clearly insufficient (Markovic and Jarc 2013).

4.1.2 Attract and retain talent

Whether to effectively recruit and retain talents is the undoubted key to business success. In addition to the salaries, talents now increasingly focus on training opportunities and potential growth that provided by the enterprises. The systematical and sustainable high quality education that provided by the corporate university become more attractive for talents due to the real connection with corporate and the potential career development (Leyda 2003).

4.1.3 The demand of enhancing new technologies and products

In the information age, the turnover rate of new technologies and products is unprecedented. An enterprise whether or not to quickly develop or acquire new technologies and introduction of new products often determines the success or failure of the enterprise. The latest technology will not only provide training for employees in the corporate university, but more importantly, in the process of ideological agitation and collision between employees may become a source of innovation. Another important function of corporate university is the development of innovation that in order to remain the competitive advantage in the information age (Rademakers 2005).

4.1.4 Improve the overall quality of the team

Corporate University is the platform of equality communication in the enterprise, the internal information, knowledge and experiences of the organization been shared through the internal fully learning and communicating with each other. These practical operation is very strong and close to the actual business’ information, knowledge or experience, and also is extremely fast to improve the overall quality of the team (Morin and Renaud 2004).

4.1.5 Cultivate and develop potential leadership

The corporate universities were established originally for the training of senior management, a series of courses were also designed for different levels of managers, therefore from the point of learning process, corporate universities would undoubtedly help companies to develop the potential leadership for employees. In addition, the corporate universities provide another platform for employees to have the opportunities of group tasks, teamwork and other learning activities to exercise their own leadership besides job position (Dealtry 2001).

4.1.6 Effective dissemination of corporate culture

The promotion of corporate culture is an important part of the corporate university training system of the enterprise. It is a place of exchange ideas, although students from different background, but all of them imperceptibly will form a common value and ideals, which is reflected in the corporate culture. The continuing, systematic and diversity dissemination of corporate culture in corporate university, but also to enhance the sustainability of corporate culture for the firm (Andresen and Lichtenberger 2007).

4.2 Disadvantages and Limitation of Corporate University

The corporate university model off course offering lots of advantages for enterprises, however, it still has its disadvantages or limitation to develop. To establish and maintain a corporate university is obviously adding huge expenses to the organization, General Electric provide about $1 billion per year to the training program of Crotonville (“Crotonville Campus” 2007). Thus, the enterprises have to take a concern about their own