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How to Get Corporate University
Curricula Ready for a Global World
Corporate Learning Officer Magazine, July 2015
Lilac Nachum

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For people working with corporate learning, it is a self-evident truth that curriculums must be
closely aligned with companies’ objectives. But in the area of globalization training, we are far
from this goal. This is both a problem and an opportunity because in my experience, there are
huge gains to be made by giving people a more global skillset. In this article, I will show why
global training is important, why corporate universities is the solution, and how we need to
rethink corporate curricula to reap the full benefits.
Companies around the world have gone global at accelerated speed. The number of multinational
companies worldwide has grown from 18,500 in 1985 to more than 80,000 in 2014, and the GDP
shares of goods, services and investment that cross national borders have doubled during this
period. Corporate training, however, has not kept pace with these developments. Neither faculty
nor curricula are sufficiently global to meet the needs of the corporations they serve.
This leaves companies ill-prepared for a world in which the biggest business opportunities often
reside outside their home countries. For US companies, 95% of world’s consumers and 75% of
its purchasing power are outside the US. The shares are higher for companies of most other
countries. In the labor market, the number of people employed outside home countries keeps
growing, and there is an apparent shift from exporting home-grown managers abroad to transfer
of talent that runs both ways. Data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that the
number of foreigners employed by US multinational companies have tripled over the last three
decades. These developments increase the challenge of managing a diverse and geographically-
spread workforce.
Most senior executives know that their companies have a problem when it comes to global
expertise. More than ¾ of 1,200 executives surveyed by PwC found the training and
development of their organizations inadequate for their global activity. Only 7% of the
executives surveyed by Ashridge Business School and the United Nations believed the global
leadership development programs of their organizations meet their needs.1
This state of affairs impedes companies’ ability to respond to the opportunities of a global world
effectively. It also leaves them unprepared for dealing with the challenges of such a world. As a
result, companies go global but fail to take advantage of these activities. They navigate in the
global market as if they are driving in fog without a GPS to guide them. In a survey of US
companies, 80% of the CEOs and HR managers interviewed expressed the belief that their global
activities will increase somewhat/a great deal if adequate expertise were available.2
Corporate Universities - the Best Agent for Global Training
Corporate Universities are uniquely positioned to develop the company-specific skills required
for successful activity in a global world. They are best situated to deliver the tailor-made training
that is responsive to companies’ distinctive strengths and weaknesses and their unique
circumstances, and is rooted in their overall developmental goals. Because of this company-
specificity, market offerings of global training are not fitting for this task. In the Ashridge/UN
1 PwC, Talent Mobility 2020; Ashridge Business School/United Nations, Developing the Global Leader of
Tomorrow.
2 Kedia et al., US Business Needs for Employees with International Expertise survey.2003.

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survey, only 8% of the executives believed that alternatives such as business school programs or
consulting services are effective in developing the knowledge and skills that global leaders need.
Corporate Universities are consistently singled-out as the most appropriate agents for this
undertaking. 80% of the executives in this survey selected them as their provider of choice for
global training.
Who is the Audience for Global Curricula?
One question that remains unanswered is: Who is the right audience for such training?
Companies often adopt too narrow an approach to this question, and to the extent that they offer
global training, they tend to restrict it to senior leaders or those directly engaged in international
assignments. The problem with this approach is that senior leaders may not be in the best
position to observe opportunities across all functions within the organization, nor to identify the
most appropriate ways to take advantage of them. This is best achieved by the employees
devoted to the demand of their tasks, who are most familiar with its subtleties.
Confining global training to people active internationally is inappropriate because global issues
have become a part of everybody's job. This includes not only those who work aboard, but also
those who stay in the home country. Increasingly, all employees within the organization interact
with people of different nationalities as part of their daily routine. To be effective, global training
programs have to include the entire organization.
At the same time, however, the training needs of employees differ, because the global content of
their jobs varies. Most companies would benefit from distinguishing among three categories of
employees, and tailoring programs to their specific needs:
 Organization-wide: to create a globally-minded organization, and instill corporate culture
that welcomes national diversity and respects differences.
 Mid-level managers/affiliates: to develop the ability to steer between the conflicting
demands of foreign markets and the HQs, and bridge the local and the global.
 Top-level Executives and global function area CEOs: to foster managerial actions from
the center that create global competitive advantage.
What Would Global Curricula Look Like?
A second question pertains to the curricula itself: what should it look like?
The specifics of the global curricula should vary across companies, in line with the nature of
their business and the way they measure success and define the ‘bottom line’. Below I outline a
few general guidelines for the design of company-specific global curricula, referring to the major
goals, processes and learning outcomes of each element of the curricula. These outlines are
deliberately flexible, so they can be delivered via a variety of means (i.e., on/off line, some
hybrids), and at varying levels of resource commitments.
Organization-wide: Creating a globally-minded organization
The goal here is to develop corporate culture that nurtures understanding of others and welcomes
respect and empathy to differences, what is commonly referred to as ‘a globally-minded
organization’.

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Following the process of global mindset development3, this training proceeds in three stages. In
the first stage participants learn frameworks for identifying national differences - in economics,
political, legal and cultural dimensions - understanding their origin, and analyzing them. This
knowledge instills the foundations for the development in the second stage of curiosity and
sensitivity to differences and the ability to see opportunities in them, such that diversity is not
perceived as a threat but rather as a source of learning and inspiration. Lastly, interest in and
aptitudes for creating relationships with people of difference are developed. This improves
employees’ ability to communicate effectively in a cross-cultural environment and engage
comfortably with people of difference, including those in sub-units located in different countries,
as well as with consumers, suppliers, and the likes.
Mid-level managers/affiliates training: Bridging the local and the global
This training is targeted to managers of foreign affiliates, who are responsible for building local
resources in foreign markets and managing the tension between the global demand of the
organization and those of foreign countries. An affiliate manager of a German company in China
described this challenging position as the one of ‘…a kid stuck between two warring parents.’
The core objective of this program is to equip participants with tools to navigate between the
often conflicting demands of corporate HQs and foreign markets and create value by bridging
their requirements.
Participants develop the ability to respond to local differences in keeping with the global
principles of the corporation and its core values. They walk away with an improved ability to
manage foreign operations as part of the global network of the corporation and to contribute to
the organization’s overarching goals.
Top-level/function area CEOs: Managing the global corporation from the center
This part of the curricula is designed for the leaders who oversee the global operation of the
organization and craft its global strategies. It evolves around the two major managerial tasks
required to capture the potential benefits of global activity: identifying areas whereby global
integration can create advantages, and creating the organizational structure that allows for these
potential advantages to materialize.
Many of the benefits of global activity require managerial action from the center. Free from the
demands of local markets, senior leaders are in a position to identify possibilities for value
creation via cross-country integration. Participants learn means for identifying areas whereby
cross-country differences could create competitive advantages, for instance via combinations of
resources and the arbitrage among them. They also learn to identify relevant similarities across
countries, which enable to treat them alike and offer advantages such as scale, scope and global
market power. They develop the skills required to tackle the complex task of accomplishing a
common goal in different countries and exercise the mental flexibility required to implement this
task via multi-country lens.
3 For the state-of-the-art knowledge in this area see Javidan et al., Making it overseas.Harvard Business Review,
2010; Unruh and Cabrera, Join the global elite. Harvard Business Review, 2013; Hammerich and Lewis, Fish Can't
See Water: How National Culture Can Make or Break Your Corporate Strategy, 2013.

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The second major focus of this training program includes the acquisition of tools required for the
introduction of structures and mechanisms that bring different sub-units together and generate
the synergies that create competitive advantages. These include means to coordinate activities,
link capabilities across national borders, and connect areas of specialization throughout the
organization.
Globally-prepared Organization as a Competitive Advantage
Properly designed and delivered, global curricula would yield significant, visible improvements
in five major organizational qualities. These are listed in the first column of the table below. The
second column specifies the advantages that each of them delivers.
Qualities of a Globally-
prepared Organization
Competitive Advantages
1. Loves diversity - Comfortable work environment for global employees
- Access to global labor markets (skills, costs)
- Leverage capabilities globally
- Global learning
2. Nurtures cultural sensitivity - Local adaptation
- Employees’ satisfaction
- Suppliers’ relationships
- Local communities’ good will
3. Leverages countries’
differences and similarities
- Advantages of scale and scope
- Cross-country arbitrage of knowledge, practices, resources
4. Creates responsive
organizational structure
- Effective interaction between HQs and affiliates
- Internal diffusion of learning, cross fertilization of ideas,
best-practices sharing
5. Recognizes global
interdependencies
- Understanding local markets
- Forecasting trends in global environment
- Advantages of competitive interdependencies
The challenge of developing an organization that is able of taking advantage of the opportunities
of a global world is vast, but so are also the rewards. My own experience, based on more than
two decades of work with thousands of executives around the world, has taught me that this can
be done. I have witnessed organizations transform themselves and improve in measurable ways,
and have seen the rewards they have gained as a result. You are well-advised to follow suit.
……..
I am a Professor of Globalization and Management of Multinational Companies at City
University New York, and hold visiting teaching positions in business schools around the world.

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I offer executives a compass to navigate their way successfully in a global world and help them
see the big opportunities in this world for their companies. To learn more on how I can assist
you go global visit my LinkedIn and follow me on Twitter
Or get in touch Lilac.Nachum@baruch.cuny.edu