Participation in Corporate University Training: Its Effect on Individual Job Performance

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Dec 2004 by Morin, Lucie, Renaud, Stéphane

second, the fact that we were evaluating an approach rather than a single training program resulted in a long timeframe between training and evaluation for some participants in the study. This may have attenuated the effect of corporate university training on performance. Future research has to rethink the way we measure training effectiveness in such a case. A third limit lies in the fact that even if our statistical analyses were based on a quasi-experimental design, we used only performance data from one year while controlling for pretraining performance. No causal inference can be drawn from such design. However, the fact that our measures were temporally sequenced so that participation was assessed before job performance lends some support to the directional nature of our results. Future research would benefit from using longitudinal data.

Future empirical research should also include other effectiveness criteria both at the individual and organizational levels. Martel (2001) noted that many organizations see corporate university training as a good tool to retain top talent and create a better climate. Wexley and Latham (2002) suggested that future research should go beyond these cost-related measures because "although these measures usually serve as excellent indicators of an organization's effectiveness ... [they] are affected positively as well as adversely by factors beyond the trainee's control" (p. 145). For instance, researchers could assess satisfaction. Anecdotal data from Boeing's annual survey have shown that executives and managers who have participated in corporate university programs delivered at Boeing's Leadership Center expressed a higher level of satisfaction with their jobs than those who had not yet attended the programs (Vitiello, 2001). Researchers could also investigate the impact of investment in corporate university training with measures of opportunity to perform new skills, self-efficacy regarding new skills, and perceived barriers and enablers of transfer. This broad evaluation approach would provide critical insights for addressing questions of training effectiveness (Kraiger, 2002).

The relative effectiveness of various categories of corporate university could also be examined in future research. Does a leadership development driven corporate university have more effect on key organizational outcomes than an initiative driven one? This information would be key to decision-making regarding investment in the corporate university. Finally, another interesting research question lies in the involvement of the CEO. Literature suggests that this is the most critical factor in the implementation of a corporate university (Meister, 1996). Using data from multiple organizations with comparable contexts (e.g., same university category, same organization size, same country), the relationship between the CEO's degree of involvement and various training effectiveness criteria as well as other organizational variables (e.g., retention) could be examined.