Preparing globally competent leaders through innovative study abroad experiences

No one could argue with the fact that our world is changing at an exponentially rapid pace. As leadership educators, it is our role to prepare students for change in the global workplace and communities. This article will focus on one university's experiences taking leadership students abroad and using unique activities/discussions to study and build global leadership competencies.     

Preparing the professoriate to prepare globally competent leaders

Rapidly increasing globalization, the expanding use of technology, and intercultural competency have been discussed in the leadership literature for more than three decades. Simultaneously, the urgency to academically prepare globally competent organizational leaders has acclerated exponentially. Recommendations for global leadership competencies have been developed and undoubtedly have provided useful guidance in academic program and curricula development. In contrast, the preparedness of the leadership professoriate to prepare globally competent leaders has received little attention through research or discourse. The ongoing professional development of the leadership professoriate in terms of a global mindset and intercultural competencies are questioned and discussed. Recommendations are made for institutional and programmatic initiatives to increase the global learning and capital of faculty. Questions and recommendations are offered for personal and collective reflection and critical discourse on the need to expand and develop the international currency of faculty so that we can ensure the professoriate is prepared to educate students to be global leaders.     

The Common Language of Leadership

As our complex society continues to call for leadership across all career fields, preparing leaders at the college level can be challenging. This article outlines the results of a comprehensive examination of learning outcomes of 475 academic programs within 72 academic accrediting organizations in regard to student leadership development. The purpose of the current study was twofold: (a) to understand better what competencies college students need to develop in order to engage in leadership in their respective career fields and (b) to use research findings to develop a list of leadership competencies across academic disciplines, serving as a “common language” for use in program planning, course development, as well as individual student advising and mentoring. The Student Leadership Competencies have been translated to contemporary leadership models such as the Relational Leadership Model, the Social Change Model of Leadership Development, the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership, Emotionally Intelligent Leadership, and the CAS Standards. Implications for the use of the Student Leadership Competencies in program development, program assessment, and the development of strategic partnerships are also discussed.     

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

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.     

The human resource challenge to outward foreign direct investment aspirations from emerging economies: the case of China

The continued influx of foreign investment into China and the growing desire by indigenous Chinese companies to invest abroad have created an unprecedented demand for people who possess competencies to compete successfully in a global economy. Without this pool of human talent, China's economic growth will slow and its outward foreign direct investment aspirations will be thwarted. This paper presents two inter-related studies that can shed light on China's ability to meet this human resource challenge in the years ahead. The first study pertains to the intention of a sample of Chinese university students in Canada to return to work in China upon graduation. Most Chinese students were receptive to the idea of returning to China. The second study examines the willingness of non-Chinese university students to work for Chinese firms overseas or in China. In general, non-Chinese students were more willing to work in the North American operations of Chinese companies and less so in relocating to China. These two surveys are supplemented by in-depth interviews with Chinese who have returned to work in China and those who chose to remain overseas. The implications of these findings, both theoretical and practical, are discussed.     

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Leading HR: Delivering Competitive Advantage
Clive Morton, Andrew Newall and Jon Sparkes Employee Ownership, Participation and Governance: A Study of ESOPs in the UK
Andrew Pendleton National Labour Relations in Internationalised Markets: A Comparative Study of Institutions, Change and Performance
Franz Traxler, Sabine Blaschke and Bernard Kittel     

Core entrepreneurial competencies and their interdependencies: insights from a study of Irish and Iranian entrepreneurs,university students and academics

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of core entrepreneurial competencies and their interdependencies. Developing entrepreneurial competencies is increasingly seen as important to foster entrepreneurship. Studies to date have highlighted different entrepreneurial competencies in the context of different sectors, regions and countries. However, there has been a lack of consensus in relation to the perceived relative importance of core entrepreneurial competences and their interdependencies among students, academic and entrepreneurs. Our paper focuses on two key questions: first, what are the core entrepreneurial competencies that need to be developed in educational contexts? Second, what are the interdependencies between these entrepreneurial competencies that need to be developed in educational contexts? Using a collective intelligence methodology a comparative study of Iran and Ireland was undertaken that involved three stakeholder groups of students, academics and entrepreneurs. This methodology was used to identify, rank, and structure entrepreneurial competencies considered important for university students. The results of the study indicated that productive thinking, motivation, interpersonal skills and leadership are core entrepreneurial competences that need to be developed in educational contexts. Findings also highlight critical interdependencies between entrepreneurial competencies and the relative influence of different competencies across groups and regions. We outline the implications of our findings for designing a curriculum for improving students’ entrepreneurial competencies.     

Leadership competencies: An exploratory study of what is important now and what has changed since the terrorist attacks of 9/11

This exploratory study attempts to identify the leadership competencies that managers believe are needed to be successful across different managerial levels and organization types (manufacturing, finance, insurance, and banking, health, transportation, communications, and utilities, wholesale and retail trade, private nonprofit, and public) and presents an analysis of whether changes in the importance of certain leadership competencies over time coincided with the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Our findings suggest that the leadership competencies leading employees and resourcefulness were the most important across all managerial levels and organization types studied. Moreover, leadership competencies important (or not important) for one managerial level or organization type seem to be important (or not important) for others. Furthermore, leadership competencies important before 9/11 remained important immediately after 9/11, 2 years after 9/11, and are still important today. These findings may have implications for leadership training and development, selection, and succession planning.     

Factors shaping the international knowledge connectivity of industrial clusters: a comparative study of two Latin American cases

Abstract

Recent research has emphasized that success of industrial clusters is not only driven by intra-cluster knowledge sharing (‘local buzz’) but also by externally sourced knowledge (‘global knowledge pipelines’). This article examines the factors that determine the channels through which clusters connect with global knowledge pipelines depending on the structure of the global value chain within which they are inserted, their knowledge base and their stage of evolution. Building on a comparative case study of the salmon farming cluster in Chile and the software cluster in Costa Rica, we adopt an evolutionary perspective based on historical analysis to better understand how the configuration of clusters’ international knowledge linkages shifts over time. Our findings suggest that (i) the more hierarchical the global value chain structure, the less room for knowledge co-creation between local and foreign actors; (ii) clusters relying on analytical knowledge bases opt for more formal and coordinated links with high involvement of public actors, whereas in clusters relying on synthetic knowledge bases, international knowledge interaction is based on less formal links mainly between business actors; and (iii) as clusters evolve the channels through which they connect with foreign knowledge increase in number and new ‘hybrid’ varieties develop.     

Trending Now: Digital Leadership Education Using Social Media and the Social Change Model

The current article examines social media applications as a tool for positive social change. The number of users on applications from Facebook to Twitter and Instagram continues to increase in all demographics. These tools are being integrated into our daily activities and challenging boundaries, roles, and even possibilities globally. Currently, there exists a gap in developing competent leaders capable of leading change using social media. Education leaders and leadership education programs can adapt the values of the Social Change Model to reflect and apply digital competencies to their practice. Digital leadership requires reflection on online self‐awareness and congruence, grappling with the controversy that comes with cyber civility and how to be a digital citizen prepared to inspire positive social change.     

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.     

Analyzing the Effectiveness of Multisource Feedback as a Leadership Development Tool for College Students

Undergraduate students (n = 144) completed the Socially Responsible Leadership Scale (SRLS), which measures leadership capacity within the framework of the Social Change Model (SCM) of Leadership Development. Observers (n = 374) who knew the students from a variety of contexts completed observer‐report versions of the SRLS. The research was designed to measure differences in rating of capacity between student leaders and those who know and observe their behaviors. Mean observer scores were higher than self‐reported scores for most capacities, with moderate to large effect sizes. Significant differences between self and observer interscale correlations and a high degree of subscale intercorrelations within observer‐reports led to conducting an exploratory factor analysis of observer responses. A universal one‐factor structure emerged that was different from the SCM model, suggesting observers make little distinction among separate leadership capacities in those they observe. Implications for leadership development and education programs are discussed including the benefit of rater training prior to the use of multisource feedback instruments, how the context in which students interact with observers affects feedback, and the need for further examination of other methods of determining effectiveness in conjunction with multisource feedback instruments.     

Making European Managers: an Overview

John Storey, the Guest Editor of this special issue, is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Human Resource and Change Management Research Unit at Loughborough University. In this introductory article he reviews the wide span of issues raised by the idea of ‘Making European Managers’ and he places the contributing articles in context. This scene-setting piece organises the literature into two main blocks: first, the analyses of the competencies required by those who manage transnationally, and second, the analyses of the contrasting ways in which managers are made in the different European countries.     

People management: developing and testing a measurement scale

Abstract

The central concept in this study is people management, referring to line managers’ implementation of HR practices and their leadership behaviour oriented at supporting the employees they supervise at work. In this study we conceptualize people management and develop a multidimensional scale to measure it from the perspectives of both employees and line managers. Using a Study 1/Study 2 design, including two-wave multilevel data from employees and line managers of a financial service provider, and cross-sectional data from teachers, educational support staff, and supervisors, we demonstrate the scale’s reliability and multidimensionality across samples and over time. We provide evidence of the convergent validity by showing that employees’ and line managers’ perceptions of people management are significantly related, and that people management is significantly related to transformational and transactional leadership. Also, we demonstrate that people management adds explained variance above and beyond transformational and transactional leadership in predicting team performance. We demonstrate criterion-related validity through people management’s relationship with job satisfaction, commitment, and work engagement. We discuss the implications of our measure for theory and research on people management, its antecedents, and its effects.     

Leadership training for managers: An Adlerian approach

Adlerian theory—a social model of human behavior—provides an effective framework to improve managerial practices and enhance organizational leadership. Developed by Alfred Adler (1870–1937), founder of the influential school of individual psychology, Adlerian theory promotes principles of social interest, democracy, and encouragement. These principles may guide leaders in building collaborative, productive workforces through participative management, coaching, and employee engagement. Experiential training exercises that integrate Adlerian principles can help managers expand their interpersonal competencies and increase leadership effectiveness.     

Emphasizing analytical skills in HR graduate education: The Ohio State University MLHR program

The Masters in Labor and Human Resources Program in the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University has recently developed and implemented a new graduate curriculum in human resources. Impetus for the new curriculum was the formation of a corporate advisory board. The new curriculum emphasizes analytical and leadership skills as well as the functional content knowledge needed for graduate students to become effective internal human resource consultants. Both the need for this type of curriculum and the process used to develop the new curriculum is reviewed. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Promoting corporate social responsibility and sustainable development through management development: What can be learned from international service learning programs?

In this article, we discuss how the human resource development (HRD) function can support corporate sustainability strategy by designing and implementing leadership development programs incorporating international service learning assignments. We describe “Project Ulysses,” an integrated service learning program that involves sending participants in teams to developing countries to work in cross‐sector partnerships with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social entrepreneurs, supporting them in their fight against pressing global problems. We present the findings of a narrative analysis of learning stories produced by Ulysses participants. Understanding how participants make sense of, and learn from, their experiences abroad provides us with insights into how service learning programs can help managers to develop the knowledge, skills, and mind‐set that will enable them to successfully support a company's global sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. We conclude by discussing the implications for leadership development, specifically how organizations can incorporate a responsibility and sustainability focus in their management development programs.     

Linking learning with governance in networks and clusters: key issues for analysis and policy

In this paper we analyse the relationship between governance and learning in clusters and networks. In particular, we see these two key elements as interdependent, suggesting that, under particular circumstances, such interdependence may drive clusters and networks towards a dynamic development trajectory. A pure ‘governance perspective’ makes the development of any locality dependent on the system of powers which exists within the locality or across the global value chain. In parallel, a pure ‘competence-based approach’ focuses mainly on the capabilities of actors to learn and undertake activities. In contrast, we open the prospects for an interdependent relation that may change the actual competences of actors as well as the governance settings and dynamics in networks and clusters. When supported by public policies, the learning process may have the potential to modify the governance environment. Simultaneously, the learning process is intrinsically influenced by economic power, which may seriously affect the development prospects of clusters and networks. This is why an intertwined consideration of both aspects is necessary to promote specific approaches to learning and to design appropriate policies. In this paper we offer two preliminary case studies to clarify some of these dynamics: the first taken from the computers cluster in Costa Rica and the second from an Italian bio-pharmaceutical firm and its production network. The first case study refers to the software cluster that was created from scratch in Costa Rica thanks to an enlightened government policy in coordination with new local enterprises and an important foreign direct investor; while the second reflects on the ability of an individual company to create a network of relationships with large transnational companies in order to acquire new competences without falling into a subordinate position with respect to its larger partners.     

Unfolding the impact of leadership and management on sustainability performance: Green and lean practices and guanxi as the dual mediators

This study aims to empirically evaluate the predictors that influence sustainability performance among manufacturing firms. Leadership and management, green and lean practices, and guanxi were examined to determine whether these predictors are directly and/or indirectly affecting sustainability performance; 160 valid responses were collected and partial-least-squares-structural-equation-modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The results showed that leadership and management positively influenced green and lean practices and green and lean practices positively influenced sustainability performance. Leadership and management also positively influenced guanxi. Interestingly, leadership and management and guanxi do not exert a significant direct influence on sustainability performance. The findings contributed to the development of the resource-based-view theory further by empirically exploring the significance of leadership and management coupled with green and lean practices as competencies and capability to drive sustainability performance. The testing of the dual mediators' effects further added value to this study.