CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES AS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR COMPANIES: THE CASE OF ITALY

In companies there are capacities that do not materialize in plants, buildings and products, but which are intangible. For example, the knowledge acquired on the market and on consumers, technological knowledge, relationships with suppliers and the distribution system, management skills, the diffusion of corporate culture and relational capital. Today, the weight that these resources have on the total assets of the company has changed: in fact, knowledge and skills have a heavy impact not only on production methods, but also on the strategies of companies and on the relations of competition and cooperation between them. Therefore, intangible resources and intellectual capital are increasingly the foundation of the competitive power of companies. However, in the current context, it is absolutely necessary not only to develop distinctive skills and abilities, such as "knowledge" and "know-how", but also to make them visible, making them explicit in the social-economic system of belonging. The term "knowledge" therefore refers not only to its more abstract dimension (a set of notions), but also to the capacity to use and the enhancement, by the organizations, of all the resources available. In particular, referring to the economic dimension, knowledge is the fundamental element for the creation of value. The concept of value and that of knowledge are intrinsically linked to the point that they, although different in epistemological and factual terms, are almost indistinguishable from the economic point of view. This strong synergy and the continuous and growing interdependence between economics and knowledge necessarily lead us to consider the latter as a key factor to explain the differences between companies, between regions and between countries; the flywheel that every year feeds the growth of the product and productivity, proposing new techniques, new solutions and new needs. If knowledge is ultimately an intangible "asset", how is it managed by a company? And further: in the current globalized and highly competitive market, troubled by the crisis of recent years, why should companies invest in "human resource"? In essence, the "knowledge" within the company context would mean a long-term training of personnel, a long-term investment in human resources. Knowledge passes through training and therefore through communication, the exchange of ideas, of thought, of culture, the passage of contents and skills. Consequently, if this concept becomes essential "raw material", it needs a structure or at least of an environment that values it, protects it, discloses it, invests on it in order to derive maximum benefit from it. Basically, the know-how of a company, understood as an intangible asset, represents a decisive strategic factor in order to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage. The corporate universities are therefore the organizational tool for the implementation and management of investments in "human capital". They represent the competitive realities that companies have in order to maximize the incremental value of their human capital, which for the reasons mentioned above is a strategic element. After an introduction on knowledge management, the paper will discuss the concept of corporate universities referring to Italy. Further, in the last part an interesting case will be presented: an Italian company quoted at stock exchange, that offers a wide range of gas systems for converting vehicles to LPG and natural gas.