Corporate universities: a catalyst for strategic human resource development?

The corporate university has become a major area of research and debate in the field of strategic human resource development. At the centre of this debate, is whether it is a simple relabelling of the functional area of training or a paradigm shift in the development of organisational human capital. This paper explores this issue through an in-depth single case study of Australia's largest private sector employer, Coles Myer Limited, which has recently developed a corporate university. A typology developed by Taylor and Paton (2002), is used to analyse the role and integration of the corporate university within CMLs strategic human resource management (HRM) agenda. The analysis indicates that the corporate university is clearly linked to the strategic objectives of the organisation.