An Investigation of the Effect and Economic Utility of Corporate‐wide Training

This study describes a 4 year effort to investigate the effect and utility of managerial and sales/technical training. The effort relied upon quasi‐experimental designs to investigate the effect of training programs, meta‐analysis to summarize the effect of different types of training, and utility analysis to estimate the economic impact of training. The utilized multi‐attribute utility analysis model, based on Raju, Burke, and Normand's 1990 (RBN) model, was modified and approved by the senior management of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company; it included a measure of criterion deficiency and corrected for differences due to alternative methods of calculating effect sizes (e.g., repeated measures ANOVA vs. ANCOVA). Results of 18 training program evaluations (range of N = 10 to 216), which were conducted in one company on the basis of supervisor, subordinate, or peer ratings, are reported. Great variation existed between the effectiveness of the programs (range of d = ‐.09 to 1.11), and managerial training was found to have less effect (d = .31) and utility (mean ROI = 45%) than sales/technical training (d = .64, mean ROI = 418%). In addition, the use of a 2‐point performance scale in application of the RBN utility model as well as the role of management pre‐approval of utility analysis are investigated.