FdP Weblog

The first medieval universities were created when, with the revival of mercantilism and the increasing growth of cities and their middle class, the most important corporations recognized their responsibility to foster their own communities sustained success through their members’ education and fulfill the increasing social demand for lawyers, educated priests, clerks for business, administrators and physicians.

The most interesting model was the students controlled one, well represented by the University of Bologna. At the Bologna university students used to run everything, they hired themselves their teachers and the emphasis was mostly put on secular studies (like law) rather than canon law, classics and Bible which were the favorite curricula of the northern universities (Paris and Oxford for instance) run by teachers who in turn were sponsored and  controlled by either the Church or the crown.

I believe that after ages the students’ governance medieval model is the perfect expression of what Universities should be for! The University of Bologna arose from an audience with specific learning needs, was governed and sponsored by this audience and had a clearly defined set of strategic goals.

This model is successfully replicated nowadays by the so called Corporate Universities, which are a growing trend increasingly moving from leading American organizations to European ones.

Companies like Motorola, MCDonald, Walt Disney, Boeing – just to cite a few examples  – have created their own degree granting branches with the initial purpose to deliver specific company’s training to their own managerial staff in order to stay competitive in the global marketplace. While providing hands-on and directly applicable learning, these projects have contributed to 1) reinforce the staff’s sense of belonging to their companies, 2) help staff to keep up with changing business needs, 3) start and support strategic change[Education in the Workplace: An Examination of Corporate University Models ©2001 Denise R. Hearn]

Now if these companies have perceived the need to create their own academies, this is the signal that traditional universities and business schools have lost their way!

As Henry Mintzberg and Warren G. Bennis with  James O’Toole pointed out respectively in 2004 [Managers not MBAs]  and  in 2005 [How Business Schools lost their way], although many business schools claim to provide programs focused on practice they keep adopting the scientific model and hiring research-oriented professors.

But Business is not an academic discipline like chemistry or biology. According Warren and O’Toole business is a profession like law or medicine. Business schools should be therefore professional schools that deliberately engage with the outside world.  According Mintzberg management is not science neither a profession. Management certainly applies and uses science, but is ultimately a blend of art (intuition, vision, insight) and craft (learning on the Job) that only corporate universities – but this is my opinion - can allow in practice.

Now setting up a corporate university is not easy at all. It requires funds, technologies, ability to deploy resources, deal with suppliers, assess learning needs, align business strategies,  measure performance…something that small-medium sized companies (which in Italy represent the highest part of our economic system) can not easily afford or do not have the skills to plan and implement by their own.

So why don’t we give social networks the task and the opportunity to express the emerging training needs of the Italian companies and family businesses? What is your opinion?