Corporate university edification in knowledge society

In recent years the number and visibility of training and development initiatives within multinational corporations have increased, yet empirical analyses of corporate universities remain rare. In this paper, through existing literature survey and contextual analysis, an attempt is made to understand role of corporate universities edification in knowledge society. In 40 years, the learning and development function within corporations based in the USA, Japan and Europe has become increasingly mission-critical, sophisticated and centralised. This trend is now accelerating in the rest of Asia and the Middle East. Corporations such as Infosys in India, Huawei in China, Singapore Airlines in Singapore and Etisalat in the United Arab Emirates have well-established corporate universities. Corporate university initiatives are located within the organisational world that has generated them, and in particular recent managerial discourses of human resource management, knowledge management and the ‘learning organisation’. Lastly, corporate universities’ potential future is also debated upon.