Impact of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on Employee Competencies and Innovation

Sammanfattning: Globalisation has redefined the rules of competition, and skilled labour is a deciding factor. Especially in fast-paced knowledge-based economies, there is greater dependence on knowledge, information and high skill levels, which also play a key role in innovation. It is therefore in the interest not only of corporations but also of individual persons to not only retain existing knowledge, but continuously enhance it, by expanding it and utilizing it more efficiently - in other words to expand their competencies. Competent people are the key to future success and offer organizations their only sustainable competitive advantage. Among the plethora of available tools to enhance employee competencies, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are an emerging phenomenon. They have taken the world by storm the last years, and very recently they also started penetrating the corporate environments. As MOOCs are still at a very early stage,mostly the last two years their models and impact are starting to be analysed in scientific articles. Our efforts in this work focus exactly on this white-spot area i.e. the usage of MOOCs on modern enterprises within the scope of employee competency enhancement. The purpose of this work is to understand the exact impact that MOOCs can have on the workforce and especially to innovation which is a key competitive advantage for any corporation is of paramount importance in knowledge economies. To achieve our goal, we initially discuss and provide evidence on the theoretical positive contribution of the key competencies via more traditional means and their link to innovation. Subsequently we formulate hypotheses which we then evaluate following a quantitative methodology. Via a survey we gather empirical data and analyse them via structural equation modelling. The result is the empirical validation of some of our initial hypotheses. More specifically all key employee MOOC-empowered competencies under the factors of Knowledge, Technology, Cost, Communication and Culture have a considerable impact on innovation. Although also Leadership, Strategy and People have a positive impact, it is not seen as being significant. Our hope is that the results of this work will spark further and deeper investigations on the role that MOOCs can play for the employees in modern enterprises and how all stakeholders can benefit.