Customer Reviews

Corporate Universities: Lessons in Building a World-Class Work Force, Revised Edition

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Jeanne Meister's book on corporate universities is a review of the key success factors and motives in developing a high level corporate training organization. The majority of the information in the book is taken from Fortune 500 companies who are developing their own 'umbrella' learning organizations. The information was gathered through questionnaires, consulting, and trade shows held by Corporate University X-change, a company who publishing one of the leading industry magazines. The trend for corporate universities seems to be driven by two main factors:

1. Upper-management's need to build a flexible learning organization. A good example of this trend is illustrated in a Shell Oil study on changes in the firms appearing on the Fortune 500 list . This study showed that one-third of the companies listed on the Fortune 500 list in 1970 had vanished by 1983. In fact, the study estimated that the lifetime of the largest industrial firm was less than half the average lifetime of a person in an industrial society. The bright spot of this study was that those who survived 75 years or longer made a point of continually experimenting and exploring new businesses and creating new sources of growth.

2. Technologies that more effectively facilitate the collection and management of key information on the organizations intellectual capital.

I was impressed by the names and company references that this book contains. It appears as if the author has established relationships with these companies and makes the information seem more credible because it appears to be first hand and can be backed up by contacting the individual or company.

I found this book quite helpful to me in setting up a corporate university within my company. Meister's book was a great resource to see how the large companies have set up their universities. The general guidelines of "how to do it", gave me some insight as to how to go about setting one up for my company. Visiting the web sites of some of the 50 companies referenced, was also very helpful. A good resource/reference book.

This is the revised and updated edition of Jeanne Meister's classic 1994 work. Countless corporate universities (CUs) are now designed based on Meister's guidance. This is "must" reading if you plan to start or improve your own corporate university.

Meister emphasizes the strategic importance of the corporate university and its role as the "umbrella" for all organizational learning activities.

Meister gives very detailed guidance on how to design the CU, implement best practices, forge partnerships, and build a world-class work force.

I highly recommend it.

Michael Beitler
Author of "Strategic Organizational Learning"