Philine Betz-Werner

Corporations increasingly use customised inhouse trainings to support the realisation of their corporate strategy. However, many corporations still have lots of room for improvement in developing effective training programmes. Furthermore, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the effectiveness of such trainings. In order to close this research gap the measurement construct of customising as well as of relevant success indicators is defined, specified and operationalised by drawing on literature and analysing proposals for customised inhouse trainings. In addition, detailed research hypotheses concerning training effectiveness are being developed. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of three case studies that deal with the realisation of differentiation strategies in business-to-business-companies confirm that customising consists of two dimensions, namely strategic customising and conceptual customising. Results from variance structure analysis provide empirical evidence that customising increases participants’ performance as well as team performance. In addition, results show that trainings support strategy realisation and participants are likewise better at performing tasks related to corporate strategy. Based on the results and on additional expert interviews practical recommendations are developed how customised inhouse trainings should be used and designed in order to effectively support strategy realisation.