e-Learning Strategies of Italian Companies

The chapter gives a contribution at understanding country specific e-learning models, focusing on the e-learning experience of Italian companies in the pharmaceutical and banking industries. The chapter analyses the antecedents of a company e-learning adoption process, asking whether it is forced by the rational search for economic benefit, or by institutional or competitive pressures, whereby companies are more interested in their reputations and success. The chapter also focuses to understanding how companies are implementing e-learning, analyzing the most important features of the e-learning strategies: users, contents, infrastructure and service&support. After having discussed the result of the research conducted on a document analysis, a survey, some interviews and two in-depth case studies, the emerging B2E e-learning strategy is explained. In the conclusions the main issues related to the e-learning processes in the Italian companies are summarized and the research methodology and the possible future research lines are discussed.