Virtual worlds

Games, role‐playing, and simulations as developmental tools have been used in education since the 1800s. An emerging form of collaborative game play is virtual worlds; however, the use of virtual worlds in leadership education has not been fully investigated. The purpose of this article is to (a) demonstrate how virtual worlds are a viable venue for leadership education, and (b) present a hierarchy of skills sets that can be developed in virtual world settings. In doing so, this article provides evidence that virtual worlds can be used as a new instructional delivery environment for leadership education as the appeal and intrinsic nature of virtual environments aligns well with the experiential framework of leadership education.     

The teacher as leader: The relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness,commitment, and satisfaction

Emotional intelligence has emerged in the past decade as one of the crucial components of leadership effectiveness in many different contexts. The present study aimed at examining the relationships among emotional intelligence, leadership effectiveness, commitment, and satisfaction in education. Three hundred thirty‐two primary education teachers participated in the study conducted in Greece. Results, using structural equation modeling, showed that emotional intelligence, especially the intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions, has a positive effect on leadership roles, explaining 51% of variance. A strong positive effect was also apparent on teachers' commitment and effectiveness, as measured by teachers' perception. Leadership roles such as performance evaluation, motivation support, and development improvement had a strong influence on effectiveness. The findings could have implications for the selection and training of future educators.     

The Internal Conflicts of Undergraduate Students Regarding Effective Leadership Practices

The current study explored the internal conflicts of a diverse group of undergraduate students as leadership development experiences challenge students’ pre‐existing attitudes and beliefs of what comprises effective leadership. Interviews with 23 undergraduate students uncovered two consistent conflicts within the minds of emerging leaders, often experienced unconsciously: (a) the recognition of the need to serve the group while also exhibiting command over followers and (b) the desire to adapt to changing circumstances while also remaining resolute in personal chosen courses of action. The particular internal contradictions, common to students in the study across gender and racial lines, imply a structure of predictable cognitive transition as emerging leaders work toward internalizing group‐inclusive concepts associated with contemporary leadership practices. The study's findings possess several implications for leadership educators—in higher education and external organizations—in the ways these professionals create both formal and informal developmental experiences for undergraduate students.     

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Harmful Leadership with a Moral Façade

The current qualitative study used narrative inquiry to explore white supremacist leadership and how it aligns with and differs from transformational, servant, and charismatic leadership theories. By examining the concepts and examples of leadership within the white supremacist movement, an image of harmful leadership begins to develop. These leaders were found to use leadership strategies such as creating purpose, community building, follower focus and meaning making, empowerment and motivation, and trust and respect to gain followers. These strategies were combined with detrimental approaches to leadership that included pursuing and abusing power, developing a sense of self‐importance, using fear, and having a sense of isolation that contributed to a harmful leadership style. Harmful leadership and its implications for leaders and followers in more mainstream organizations are explored.     

Indicators of leadership development in undergraduate military education

Despite the reputation of service academies and military colleges for producing leaders of character who serve as commissioned officers in America's armed forces, little is known about the actual effects these institutions have on the leadership development of their students. A two‐step process, this cross‐sectional study sought to investigate leadership development through the lens of the leadership identity development model as measured by the aptitude for commission grade. From a review of the military leadership curriculum at American service academies and military colleges, the initial phase of research established that leadership development occurred. The second phase used quantitative methods and a cross‐sectional design to investigate the effects of peer ranking, cumulative grade point average, leadership grades, and varsity athletic participation on leadership development throughout four years of undergraduate education. Findings indicated that company ranking by peers was significant regardless of gender or ethnicity. Mixed significant findings resulted for grade point average, leadership grades, and varsity athletic participation when based on gender and self‐identified minority status.     

Assessment Adrift: Review of the Current State of Assessment of Academically Based Leadership Education Programs

Assessment is a growing priority among the academy and also appears to be of increasing interest among academic‐based leadership education programs. This article offers a brief history of assessment within higher education as well as an overview of the current state of assessment in the context of academic‐based leadership education programs. While there are numerous studies reporting on assignment‐ and course‐level assessment activities, comparatively limited literature addresses program‐level assessment. It is the author's assertion that we must raise the level of conversation within our emerging discipline to identify effective best practices.     

Introduction

This symposium addresses the challenge of educating global leaders through a collection of scholarly perspectives and practices that focus the development of global leadership and intercultural competency, specifically through immersive international contexts. Through this symposium, we addressed the cognitive, behavioral, and affective competencies that aspiring leaders need to be successful in global contexts. It focuses on the importance, issues, and methods of developing global competence as part of leadership education. Although this symposium is timely, global and intercultural competence is not new. Scholars of 19th‐century Europe shaped the original thoughts of global competence. Their focus was internationalization through colonial conquering, and the ultimate goal was to “learn from the West” (Baumgratz, 1995). This globalization piece did not gain much attention on an international scale. In fact, many managers in the 1960s and 1970s did not consider the international piece of business to be of much importance, often with very small specialized operational departments as the sole contributor to globalization within organizations (Morrison, 2000). However, a rapid shift of perspective occurred in the 1980s when the rise of Japanese businesses began to bring to focus the importance of global leadership. The climate of this theoretical foundation has shifted again recently as leadership educators are faced with preparing students to meet the needs of a dynamic and complicated organizational landscape. Expanding these challenges globally comprises a new level of preparedness for aspiring leaders. Globalization, and the technology that increasingly bridges countries and cultures, requires fresh paradigms and new leadership competencies (Bueno & Tubbs, 2004). Global managers will be expected to master an ever‐expanding range of knowledge and skills that will allow them to be successful in international contexts (DiStefano & Maznevski, 2003). Cultural competency development and a globalized curriculum are perhaps paramount to this charge as educators embark upon the challenging journey of providing the next generation of global leaders. The following questions provide educators with opportunities for reflection and discussion as we attempt to develop global competencies in the students we serve.     

Leadership,governance, and perceptions of trust in the higher education industry

This article presents a trust‐centered, integrated model for achieving educational excellence in the higher education industry with focus on governing boards and strategies for academic quality and financial performance. The discussion includes leadership themes and strategies on development of teacher‐leaders, creating a culture of shared leadership and effective governance for performance outcomes, robust evaluations of student‐learning assessments for continuous improvement, and strategic leadership in the implementation of high‐quality programs. Perceptions of trust form the foundation of the integrated model with influences of personality, culture, motivation, values, reliability, competence, and intuition. Trust among board trustees is essential for creating collaborative environments for innovative change and educational performance excellence. Collaborative environments promote a sense of shared leadership and governance to encourage innovation and performance excellence at all levels within the educational institution.     

Global critical leadership: Educating global leaders with critical leadership competencies

Global critical leadership competency means espousing critical thinking skills in all aspects of leadership decision making in the global context. This paper reviews the actions of critical thinking, argues that global leaders too must lead critically, and draws attention to the deficiency of critical thinking curricula in higher education and subsequent lack of recent graduates with critical thinking competencies. Leading critically is defined as applying critical thinking skills to decisions about leadership actions in different situations and is a challenge for leaders, followers, and educators. Nevertheless, global leaders, stakeholders, and educators in global leadership programs must embrace this challenge in order to make informed decisions in global contexts.     

Introduction

The new education must be less concerned with sophistication than compassion. It must recognize the hazards of tribalism. It must teach man the most difficult lesson of all—to look at someone anywhere in the world and be able to see the image of himself. The old emphasis upon superficial differences that separate peoples must give way to education for citizenship in the human community. With such an education and with such self‐understanding, it is possible that some nation or people may come forward with the vital inspiration that men need no less than food. Leadership on this higher level does not require mountains of gold or thundering propaganda. It is concerned with human destiny. Human destiny is the issue. People will respond. Norman Cousins The preceding quote provides a powerful message grounded in the idea that our world is becoming increasingly smaller and it is becoming increasingly difficult to make local decisions without global consequences. However, Cousins' quote also indicates the complexity and enormity of the issues facing leadership. To address the development of intercultural communities through humanistic means, leaders will be challenged to create innovative paradigms and practices along with educational curricula that will create the impetus for the development of future global leaders. This scenario is further complicated, as leadership educators will be asked to innovate and attend to the needs of their learners within a system of depleted resources. Higher education and corporate training have been forced to endure the reduction of resources stemming from growing economic concerns. Such diminished resources have created a considerable challenge for leadership educators, as they attempt to develop learners who are competent and equipped with the skills to work with intercultural populations. Parsons (2005) wrote that divisions within the federal government have created the need for new alternatives for learning within higher education, as government funds exacerbated by domestic spending limitations are now, and will be in the foreseeable future, diverted to other priorities. It is unlikely that leaders like Claiborne Pell or Robert Stafford will be walking through the proverbial door and onto the national landscape anytime soon, considering the depletion of the national treasury and the bipartisan struggles facing Congress. Thus, the plight of our learners will fall to the innovative capacities of our educators to create opportunities for growth through alternative means and innovative practice. Where in the past immersion provided the opportunity for the development of these learners, the future will force educators to consider much different methodologies in an effort to develop the necessary competencies for successful interactions with global populations. This symposium addresses the challenge. The symposium provides a collection of scholarly perspectives exploring innovative practices aimed at preparing learners for the work that they do with intercultural communities. With respect to the competing resource limitations, the symposium specifically addresses innovative practices within nonimmersive contexts. Through the symposium, the authors have addressed the cognitive, behavioral, and affective competencies that aspiring leaders need to be successful in global contexts. The following contributions focus on the importance, issues, and methods of developing global competence as a vital piece of leadership education.     

The Emerging Role of Higher Education in Educating and Assessing Future Leaders for Disaster Relief

As the frequency and intensity of disasters throughout the world increase, so do the demands for humanitarian relief and the need for effective disaster‐based leadership training. Numerous organizations are poised to act in response to disasters that necessitate a significant amount of leadership and logistics support. Although there are many entities often involved in disaster relief, the symposium outlines the emerging role higher education can play in improving response outcomes, not only by providing “boots on the ground” but also by developing skilled disaster relief leaders in both curricular and cocurricular venues. Institutions of higher education provide experiential learning opportunities offering critical service for immediate disaster relief while developing the skills of future leaders. During these experiences, students develop disaster‐based leadership and logistics acumen. Similarly, programmatic assessment is critical in measuring student leadership growth during the experiential learning process of providing disaster relief. The education and assessment of these trainings provides an important dimension of disaster leadership as it examines the leaders in action and fosters a commitment to adequately prepare them to lead in a time of disaster. A qualitative approach is recommended for assessing experiential leadership learning to better inform teaching and to cultivate future disaster leadership that meets ongoing global needs.     

The intercultural communication cultural immersion experience: Preparing leaders for a global future

The dynamics of globalization mean we face a reality wherein leaders are called upon to communicate effectively in cultural situations unfamiliar to them. This situation brings new challenges for communication and leadership educators. Our article describes a cultural immersion experience called The Cagli Project, where communication and leadership students learn effective intercultural communication skills for leadership formation while studying in Italy. The philosophical and experiential aspects of the program are described along with leadership outcomes. The article ends with a discussion of the transferability of this model to alternative programs. Perhaps nothing has had a more profound effect on human communication and hence leadership in the past half century than the movement of people around the globe and the growing diversity of world society. Globalization is the mantra that seems to be driving much that is new in higher education today. It has its roots in the “global economy” and seems most relevant to the business disciplines, but there is a sub‐text to globalization that resonates throughout all our institutions, and that is diversity (Caputo, 2011).     

Strategic human resource management at Praxair

This article describes the human resource management system in place at Praxair. Key emphases of Praxair's HRM infrastructure include (1) competency development and performance‐management processes and (2) team‐based performance systems, which include four levels of measurement: company‐wide, business‐unit, cross‐functional teams within business units, and special‐initiative project teams. Key challenges for the future include (1) prioritization of choices in support of the firm's global growth initiatives, (2) employee development and new talent acquisition, (3) designing more effective methods to anticipate business needs and provide strong, proactive leadership, (4) accelerating leadership development and influencing adequate investment in education and development programs, and (5) designing and implementing effective methods to acquire new talent to support business strategies. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Health Care Educators: New Directions in Leadership Development

Fortune 500 companies have a competitive advantage in leadership development, whereas health care has lagged far behind. Physician leadership development, in particular, is a game changer for a closed staff, group practice that relies on a pipeline of physician leaders—such as the Cleveland Clinic. To address this leadership development gap in health care, the Cleveland Clinic Academy (CCA) was established in 2006. The academy is predicated on developing health care leaders with specific emphasis on physician leadership education using a competency‐based curriculum with value‐added components, including continuing medical education (CME) and master's of business administration (MBA) transfer credits. In the pioneering spirit of Dr. F. Mason Sones, the novel curriculum includes didactic learning, experiential immersion, and executive coaching, designed to promote physician career development, leadership potential, productivity and job satisfaction, and business acumen. The unique programs—54 stand‐alone courses, and customized programs such as Leading in Health Care, Staff Leadership Rotation, Samson Global Leadership Academy, Healthcare Finance and Accounting, and others—have affected individuals and patient care by reaching over 6,000 health care providers, including physicians from Cleveland Clinic, Bulgaria, France, Ireland, Japan, Qatar, UAE, India, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Turkey, Dominican Republic, and throughout the United States. CCA provides a new direction in leadership development with an integrated competency‐based curriculum for physicians, nurses, and administrators.     

Leadership preferences of a generation Y cohort: A mixed‐methods investigation

Presently there are four generational cohorts in the workplace. Born from 1977 to 1997, the youngest cohort group, Generation Y, has 81 million members, of whom over 29 million are already in the workplace. The importance of leader‐subordinate relationships in the workplace has been confirmed. In recognizing this, leaders must identify and adapt to the era‐shaped needs of employees, who cannot fully participate in organizational life if their most urgent needs are not being met. The goal of this study was to determine leadership preferences of a Gen Y cohort as a means to enhance workplace relationships in the 21st‐century organization. A sequential, mixed‐methods study was employed to explore leadership preferences of a Gen Y cohort. Initially, focus‐group interviews were used to generate leadership themes. Based on these themes, an instrument was designed, and Gen Y business students from three higher education institutions were surveyed. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the themes. Five leadership themes emerged in the focus groups and were confirmed through CFA.     

Motivating faculty through transactional and transformational leadership strategies

The use of both transactional and transformational leadership strategies can have a tremendous impact on the dynamics of organizational agility and subsequent competitive advantage. For educational institutions, organizational agility refers to the ability of administration and faculty to identify, acknowledge, and adapt to factors important to academic quality, quality of instruction, and overall learning experiences. When it comes to motivating faculty performance, both transactional and transformational leadership styles are important. From a transactional perspective, faculty appreciate administrators who clearly communicate both university and departmental goals. For true motivation, administrators must seek to affect faculty on an intrinsic level where personal efficacy is raised through the successful accomplishment of objectives. A model for college steering committees and a specific faculty training program for sharper instructional focus are presented.     

Initial assessment and validation of an instrument to measure student perceptions of leadership skills

This article reports on development and validation of an instrument for use in measuring student perceptions of leadership skills. The article describes the development process of an instrument through use of subject matter experts for measuring leadership skill perception among students and use of an exploratory factor analysis technique to validate the resulting instrument. These data were obtained from a survey of 214 students in a small liberal arts college of business. The article presents an instrument for assistance with measuring leadership skill perception, development, and importance as well as further reports on the initial validity and reliability measures resulting from the analysis. In addition, the usefulness of the instrument for educators and workplace trainers is explored.     

Training older workers: Lessons learned,unlearned, and relearned from the field of instructional design

Changing workforce demographics have highlighted the need to provide training and development opportunities for older workers. This article critically examines the current state of research on the use of systematic instructional design procedures to develop work‐related training that is inclusive of older workers. The review reveals a disconnect between what the literature recommends to achieve age‐inclusive design and what is offered as evidence of age‐inclusive design. Age‐related generalizations about cognition and learning capacity often serve as the basis for design decisions, with little attention paid to the role of training context and content. The article recommends that this disconnect be resolved and offers some specific suggestions about how human resource managers can integrate sound instructional design principles into the training and development component of their talent management strategies. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Leadership strategies for sustainable development: a case study of Suma Wholefoods

This paper explores possible leadership strategies for a firm wishing to move towards sustainable development, defined in its most holistic, long term, environmental, social and financial sense. Empirical, grounded theory, case study findings from Suma Wholefoods, a socially innovative U.K. worker co‐operative, are used to explore the above research aim. A case study of such a company could prove illuminating considering the importance placed by numerous authors on the links between worker participation, pluralism and sustainable development. The central objective of the paper is to consider to what extent Suma can maintain its pluralist commitment and practically move towards sustainable development, using a contextually appropriate leadership strategy. Realising that sustainable development may be more of a journey than a destination, Suma's past, present and possible future leadership strategies are explored. The case study findings argue against using solely participative or wider pluralist leadership strategies. Alternatively, the findings argue that a business should adopt a contextually appropriate set of leadership styles, based on different contingency theories. For Suma, a possible future leadership strategy would be predominantly pluralist, in order to take account of its enduring pluralist commitment. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment     

Transforming the international learning experience for students: Moving beyond the principle of accompaniment

Evidence exists that international learning experiences provide undergraduate and graduate students with opportunities to develop intercultural competence and global perspectives. This development is grounded in the idea of accompaniment that is prevalent in study abroad programs and international service experiences at the higher education level. Accompaniment is firmly planted in the idea of mutual relationships and sharing culture. However, it only creates a superficial understanding of the community and fails to address and implement systems of sustainable practice. This theoretical supposition challenges educators to go beyond the foundation of accompaniment and explore innovative practice that can benefit the development of intercultural competence in students and promote sustainability in the international contexts that these academic‐based international service programs work with. The authors detail suggestions that educators can use as a framework for transforming international service experiences, their students, and the communities they serve.