To a large extent, business schools and corporate universities fish in the same pool when it comes to executive education. Both tailor courses aimed at executives wishing to enhance their educational portfolio.

However, while business schools have a wealth of academics and up-to-the-minute research at their finger tips, especially if they are linked to a much larger university, is this the case for corporate universities?

Without the same ready access to either of these avenues, can they really offer the cutting edge education their employees would like?

When corporate universities were in their infancy, this scenario was very much the case. Corporate universities were an optional extra, bolted on to the company, run by staff who had to shoe-horn the educational element of their job into other managerial duties.

But today, with almost 2,000 corporate universities in the US alone, the argument no longer holds true. During the past few years, corporate universities have become sophisticated machines, many with their own budgets and dedicated buildings, offering a broad range of programmes.

Furthermore, neither corporate universities nor business schools now consider themselves to be rivals. In fact, many corporate universities are clients of business schools, working in close co-operation with the schools to develop programmes for their employees. Some even carry out research work together, creating their own up-to-the-minute data.

The Lufthansa School of Business in Germany, for example, has worked closely with several leading business schools across the world, although it has refrained from too strong a dependence on a single academic partner. The corporate university has worked with London Business School, Insead in France, McGill in Canada and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.

The scope of its work has extended far beyond management programmes to embrace, for example, the development of organisational learning processes accompanied by research projects.

At Unisys University, which has five physical campuses worldwide, Steve Trehern, the university's vice-president, says it will work with business schools throughout the world - as long as the business school is aligned with Unisys's learning strategy.

Far from accepting that a corporate university lags behind a business school in accessing new trends and research, Mr Trehern points out that, in many cases, corporate universities can react more swiftly.

Corporate universities, he explains, not only have access to the business schools with which they work, but also can tap into the wealth of experience and knowledge inside the corporation - knowledge which is up to the minute and relevant.

At Lufthansa, Michael Heuser, head of the company's school of business, agrees. Business schools, he says, have "big research rucksacks" on their backs, while corporations, faced with the challenges of the business world, have to be fleet of foot and react swiftly to any change in their environment.

A good relationship between a business school and a corporate university is not dependent on size. At BAE Systems' virtual university in the UK, one of the smaller corporate universi ties, Dudley Clark, head of programmes (managerial), describes business schools as "collaborators and suppliers", rather than rivals. "We would see ourselves accessing some of their [business schools] products alongside products we are developing ourselves," he says.

The university has developed a strategic leaders programme to develop global leaders in conjunction with Lancaster University Management School. It has also worked with Cranfield School of Management and Warwick Business School.

But can the BAE Systems university, which is a small, dedicated team rather than the vast organisation of some corporate universities, respond quickly to new trends?

Mr Clark accepts that, because of its size, it does not have the wherewithal of a business school, but then it does not aim to be a business school either, he says. It relies on its relationships with these schools to keep it up-to-date.

On the other side of the fence, both US and UK business schools appear to welcome their relationships with corporate universities, stressing the synergies rather than any rivalries between the two.

At Duke Corporate Education, which was spun off from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in the US, Blair Sheppard, chief executive of the for-profit company, says that the relationship between business schools and corporate universities is a complimentary one.

"What corporate universities have done is to raise the level and value of education in companies," he says. As a consequence, he adds, there is now an increased demand within companies for education and, of course, corporate universities need a source of content, methodology, technology and business expertise. "When you take this rising demand, then it is increasing our opportunities," he says.

Leo Murray, director of Cranfield in the UK, also cites these opportunities. "The role of business schools is in the professional area and corporate universities are a massive opportunity for us. Corporations are our laboratory. If the organisation creates a vehicle such as a corporate university, it is surely in our interests to work with it," he says.