Abstract
Enterprises in the era of change are facing the severe challenge of knowledge management upgrading. Building corporate universities (CUs) has become the key strategic path for enterprises to cope with the challenge of knowledge management. This study takes 13 of China’s CUs as cases, adopts qualitative and quantitative research methods to analyze the path mechanism of CUs enabling enterprise development, and explores how to connect multiple subjects, integrate multidimensional elements, improve organizational capacity, and obtain sustainable competitive advantages. Therefore, based on organizational learning theory, organizational capital theory, and knowledge-based view, this study proposes a path model of CUs’ enabling behaviors in the context of China.
The research conclusions are as follows: (1) With the help of coding methods, this study identifies how CUs enable organizations and establishes a path model of CUs enabling enterprise development, including “linking strategy”, “connecting businesses”, “cultivating teams”, “shaping organizations” and “inheriting culture”. (2) This study proposes that CUs promote the development of organizational capabilities mainly reflected in the effective promotion of strategic capabilities, business capabilities, team motivation, organizational synergy capabilities, corporate cultural capabilities, and other five key elements, and with the help of qualitative analysis results and empirical analysis results to verify. (3) this study combines the path model and trend model into the integration model and analyzes the trend of CUs. Hence, by opening the black box of CUs’ enabling path and trend, this study can further enrich the existing literature on CUs. Moreover, our conclusions can enlighten significance for the guiding practice of enterprises and CUs’ managers.