The impact of the Employee Scholar Program on United Technologies Corporation.

摘要

Developing and maintaining an educated, high-performance workforce in today's global economy is increasingly challenging. This practical study of particular job exigencies was in response to an importunate request by the director of the United Technologies Corporation (UTC) Employee Scholar Program (ESP).; UTC is a Fortune 500 aerospace company based in Hartford, Connecticut. The ESP is UTC's continuing education program offered to all of its employees. The intent of this study was to provide UTC management with an objective overview of the ESP program and to assist UTC in making efficient budgeting and resource allocation decisions. A significant block of research literature exists in the field of workforce development; however, this was the first study of its kind specific to UTC.; The review of literature was concentrated in seven areas, namely: (1) adjustment to globalization in the United States; (2) constructivism in continuing education; (3) corporate continuing education programs; (4) personnel and personal motivation; (5) human capital; (6) the knowledge imperative; and (7) corporate vision.; The single qualitative case study was the method chosen to query the dynamic interplay of critical situational factors. Thirty-three instances of data were delimited under eight categories, namely: (1) ESP participation by year; (2) ESP participation by course type; (3) ESP participation by degree type; (4) ESP participation by degree field; (5) ESP participation by gender; (6) ESP participation by retention; (7) ESP participation by diversity; and (8) ESP participation by ethnicity.; Based on the findings of this study, a conceptual basis for corporate continuing education programs and the ESP was provided. This framework was descriptive in nature and proposed no specific modifications to the current ESP progam. However, the researcher did posit four suggestions for future research, namely: (1) what was the actual Return on Investment (ROI) of the ESP program to UTC; (2) what was the impact of UTC's ESP on the number of UTC patents; (3) what was the relationship between the instances of data enveloped in this study to the overall employee population of UTC; and (4) why don't more UTC employees take advantage of the outstanding opportunities offered by the ESP?