Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Economies worldwide are shifting from manufacturing to service economies, resulting in a demand for new leadership qualities. The Hong Kong Institute of Service Leadership & Management (HKI-SLAM) proposed the Service Leadership and Management Model which highlights the importance of leadership competencies, moral character, and caring dispositions as crucial leadership attributes in service economies. The Global Youth Leadership Programme (GYLP) was developed for students from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Peking University, aiming at nurturing students' service leadership qualities. The present paper reports findings based on objective outcome evaluation utilizing six waves of data. Results showed that students had significant improvement over time on different outcome measures, including positive youth development attributes, service leadership competencies, and life satisfaction. The study provides evidence for the effectiveness of service leadership education and GYLP. Implications for nurturing service leaders and promotion of holistic development of students through leadership programmes are discussed.
Keywords: Service leadership, Global Youth Leadership Programme, Chinese university students, objective outcome evaluation, student wellbeing
Introduction
One of the most challenging and imperative objectives of tertiary education is to help students develop integrity and strength of character which prepare them for leadership (1). As future professionals, students should acquire qualities such as, "increased sensitivity and action, responsibility... directness and honesty, and high demands on themselves and others" (2). Similarly, the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education asserted that "regardless of differences in academic discipline, organizational affiliation, cultural background, or geographical location, students must be better prepared to serve as citizen leaders in a global community" (3). Hence, one common expectation is to nurture university students to be leaders. In a recent review of leadership theories over the past two decades, Meuser and colleagues (4) identified 49 leadership approaches/theories. Some of the more popular theories/approaches included transformational leadership, charismatic leadership, participative/shared leadership, and the trait approach to leadership.
Obviously, we have to ask whether existing leadership theories are deemed as effective and relevant in today's time and age. Satterwhite et al. (5) observed that our understanding of leadership has evolved in the past century as the challenges we face as a global community "have increased in complexity, size, scope, consequence. As a result of this contextual evolution, our definition of effective leadership...