tailieunhanh - E-Human Resource Management 19

E-Human Resource Management 19. This book is presented in four sections — the first intended to be more general in nature, the following three devoted to specific aspects of the HRM field in the new information era. Section I, The Cutting-Edge in HRM, presents an overview of how ITCs are modifying general HRM processes and functions. This is the aim of the first three contributions. | 148 Sherer Shea The next two definitions broaden these definitions by addressing corporate universities critical role in knowledge management and in leading and supporting a corporate learning system A corporate university is an educational entity that is a strategic tool designed to assist its parent organization in achieving its mission by conducting activities that cultivate individual and organizational learning knowledge and wisdom. Allen 2002 p. 9 A corporate university is a company-run post-secondary educational entity that focuses on enhancing the knowledge and skills of its workforce members by strategically intertwining learning with work. Whether it exists as a physical campus or a virtual one the focus has shifted from providing a classroom to developing a learning process where networking the entire organization s knowledge becomes the priority. National Alliance of Business 2002 Together these definitions describe the potential breadth of corporate universities today and highlight some differences in their goals foci and emphasis depending on the organization. In addition the last definition reminds us again that at this point in the evolution ofcorporate universities a key challenge is to closely align the corporate university mission and structure with an organization s strategic objectives. Recent research efforts have begun to develop frameworks that detail the various components ofthe corporate university Argote McEvily Reagans 2003 Prince Stewart 2002 . Differing Foci of Corporate Universities A commonly raised issue is whether corporate universities are simply human resource training departments with a new name. The literature suggests this is not the case. In fact six possible foci have been identified for corporate universities. These foci are not mutually exclusive. From Table 1 it is apparent that corporate universities differ from each other even though some have elements of all the foci under their corporate university umbrella. Table 2 .