Effectiveness of certificate-based executive education programs for Fortune 1000 companies.

摘要

This study evaluated the effectiveness of certificate-based executive education programs. Data was obtained by using a self-administered survey and personal interviews with Fortune 1000 executives. The 5 research questions addressed using 1 or both of these methodologies were (a) How do organizations identify the need for executive education? (b) How do organizations select both the education program and the attendees for the program? (c) How do organizations measure the effectiveness of these programs to justify the investment being made? (d) Over what time period do the metrics need to be monitored to accurately measure the impact of the executive education? and (e) What do provider organizations need to do to sustain the industry and remain competitive with other providers? The results showed that 82% of the respondents reported a perceived value of these programs as very important or somewhat important but could not establish a return on investment similar to what would be required by capital investments of similar size and impact to the organization. Benefits on both personal and organizational levels were also realized. The conclusions of the research were that organizations conduct a comprehensive assessment of both organizational and individual needs, develop and fund a comprehensive learning and development program that includes executive development as a component of organizational growth, deliver these programs with vigor and commitment in the same manner that it would implement a new technology or operations process, and use trend analysis and components of the financial statements as the basis of the metrics for evaluation. The basic premise of this approach is that organizations use the knowledge base of the organization as a collective pool of knowledge that creates the performance of the organization and develop event-based objectives to evaluate the impact of individual events. Future research on the use of new technology such as business intelligence software to evaluate the impact of executive education programs is recommended along with a more in-depth study of provider organizations.