Why is this Transnational
Action Research Project Needed?
Research and process review work carried out
by the project's Founding Partners to-date has shown that Corporate Academy practice
varies widely across Europe and generally provides far lower ROI than the dynamic business
led corporate academies of North American competitors.
The ECUANET project will discover the many
strategic and operational strands that make up performance best practice in Corporate
Academy design, implementation and management. It will interactively disseminate
these findings to the participating organisations through the ECUANET best practice
database, the transnational partners, national level workshops, conferences and case
research.
The project will also look to the future and
create a forum for new strategic perspectives on the rapidly changing character of
organisational learning and competitive knowledge innovation. It will, therefore, research
with all the participating organisations how they view the reform initiatives being
planned for European business education. These initiatives have the potential to redefine
a significant part of the organisational learning environment to make it more compatible
and comparable, more competitive and attractive. We will explore with all partners
how these proposals will contribute to performance improvement, smoother recognition
procedures and the quality of learning management across
different business entities.
Objectives of the Action Research Project
To build a professional pan-European
Corporate Academy Best Practice Network of private and public sector organisations
To discover World Class Performance Best
Practice and identify effective management processes and tools
To develop strategic perspectives on the
future organisational learning environment and its consequences for people, organisation
and business development.
To define competencies and qualifications
for Corporate Academy practitioner-managers
Through our professional management experience
to date, we know that a growing number of organisations are successfully designing and
implementing their corporate university and academy investments, but others are not.
ECUANET aims to discover the most successful approaches in designing, implementing and
managing these development platforms to enhance their future strategic role, thereby
contributing directly to people being in-flow and to overall business
performance and effectiveness.
From Project to Network
The
ECUANET project has secured 250,000 Euros funding from the European Commission’s
Leonardo da Vinci Programme out of a total budget of 500,000 Euros to undertake the
project. The remaining 250,000 Euros is to be funded by contributions from Corporate
Partners and the Project Partners’ own resources.
The Project will be conducted in an interactive and professional
manner which will provide progressive feedback to participating organisations over the two
year period, through the Action Research programme and the network-building activities
that are central to the Project.
Through the Project, the goal is to create a self-sustaining and
dynamic European Network for Corporate Universities and Academies. The Network will become
the reference point for best practice and operational excellence in corporate and
enterprise academy management, enabling organisations to achieve world-class performance
and results from their investment.
This new network will be a not-for-profit professional management
partnership governed by its members. It will develop, share and promote best practice,
enabling members to benefit from one another’s experience and from research and
benchmarking activities in organisational learning and development.
Focus Points for the Action Research
Our points of reference,
practical experience and research to-date on world class developments indicate that there
are certain areas in management that make a real and critical difference to corporate
academy performance.
We will establish the
individual and collective importance of the following imperatives in the management of
education, training and lifelong learning in the context of organisations:-
What will the Project Do?
The
ECUANET project will – by working with invited leading edge businesses and
institutions – build an international database of knowledge on:
i) Corporate Academy management as a contextual framework from which
companies can benchmark their particular interventions; and
ii) portfolios of organisational learning provision and future
evolutions that will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of tactical and strategic
learning at all levels.
The field research approach will be to visit case study participants
at various stages of maturity, using evaluative action research toolkits to determine the
extent and effectiveness of various practices. Accredited ECUANET researchers will
establish the strategic context of the findings and discuss specific aspects of what works
for them and what does not and why. The action research toolkits will remain with each of
the participating organisations on a self-administered basis so as to assist in their
further developmental planning and reviews.
The action research methodology will be monitored from start to
finish using a web-based real-time monitoring process that puts the participating
organisation in the key role of appraising their expectations against outcomes.
Each of the research case findings will be reported to the
participating company and reports on best practice findings will be held under supervised
access arrangements in the ECUANET database as they emerge and as specified by the
participating company.
Participating organisations can learn from the successes and
failures and gain valuable insight into future developments in creating a culture of new
learning and competitive knowledge innovation. A range of conferences and seminars will
provide further valuable networking opportunities to discuss these findings and share
experiences with others facing the same challenges.
