Corporate university in two registers: human capital strategy and critique of the academy- a systematic literature review (2010–2026)

Abstract

Corporate universities have become a recurrent reference point in debates about how organizations build human capital, yet the term carries two largely disconnected meanings: a firm-operated learning-and-development (L&D) institution and a critical shorthand for the corporatized, managerialist transformation of higher education. This ambiguity fragments the evidence base on which human resource management (HRM) and human resource development (HRD) scholars rely. This review asks how scholarly output on corporate universities evolved from 2010 to 2026, what conceptual meanings coexist in the literature, and what themes, theories, and methods characterize each. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a single Scopus search (June 8, 2026) identified 69 journal articles, of which 59 met the eligibility criteria and were synthesized. Bibliometric mapping in Biblioshiny and VOSviewer complemented the thematic synthesis. The corpus grew at an average annual rate of 9.05%, was highly dispersed across 62 sources with no dominant outlet, and was citationally skewed (mean, 13.3; median, 4 citations). Two strands emerged: Strand A frames the corporate university as an instrument of strategic human capital development (n = 22), whereas Strand B treats it as an object of critique within higher education (n = 37). These two strands rarely cite each other and rest on different theoretical foundations. By naming and mapping this conceptual split, the review clarifies which evidence is usable for HRM/HRD theory building and argues that the L&D strand, though smaller and less cited, is where the field's most actionable contributions are concentrated. Keywords: corporate learning; corporate academy; learning organization; talent development; bibliometric analysis; PRISMA