Organizations have historically charged their training departments to ensure that workers possessed appropriate skills to do their jobs. Over the last several decades, however, the training department has evolved as an organizational form driven by changing environmental forces, such as globalization and technological advancements. Many departments responsible for the learning development of employees now label themselves corporate universities. As a relatively new organizational form, corporate universities have been difficult to define and classify as they have varying goals, educate multiple audiences, implement different structures and operations and rely on numerous learning practices and methods. How the learning function is structured and managed impacts the effectiveness of individual employee learning.

The purpose and contributions of this study were to develop a conceptual framework for defining corporate universities and a taxonomy of the different types of corporate universities. The conceptual framework identified five key factors for defining corporate universities: strategy and execution with Human Resources, ability to develop business skills, evaluation of learning, partnerships with academia, and use of technology to support the learning function. These factors may be criteria with which corporate universities can evaluate themselves to improve their operations and efficiency and for future researchers to examine issues of performance related to corporate universities.

To develop an empirical classification of corporate universities, the protocols of taxonomy development were followed, including survey data collection from 210 unique corporate universities across fifteen different industries, and statistical analysis, employing factor analysis and Two-Step cluster analysis methods. Statistical findings revealed two types of corporate universities: those starting up/growing, and those that are established/mature. Further analysis revealed a more subtle appearance of four types of corporate universities based on their stage of development: Start Up, Growing, Established, and Mature. The taxonomy indicated that corporate universities possessed learning capabilities based on their developmental stage and there is a strong consistent pattern showing the greater the developmental stage, the higher the capabilities in support of the learning function. Practitioners need to recognize their stage of development, assess the organizational resources available, and put in place structures and processes that correspond appropriately to their stage of development.