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Abstract
A qualitative evaluation study of a subject entitled "Service Leadership" at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University was conducted. The participants were 68 university students who took this subject in the 2013-14 academic year. Through the use of qualitative descriptors and metaphors, the participants gave their subjective evaluation of the subject. Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability analyses showed that the coding was highly reliable. Content analysis showed that most of the students gave positive descriptors and metaphors about the subject. The findings suggested that this subject achieved its learning outcomes and it was effective in facilitating university students to be service leaders.
Keywords: service leadership, qualitative evaluation, Hong Kong, university students, leadership training
department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, P.R. China 2Centre for Innovative Programmes for Adolescents and Families, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Hong Kong, P.R. China
department of Social Work, East China Normal
University, Shanghai, P.R. China
4Kiang Wu Nursing College of Macau, Macau,
P.R. China
^University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, Kentucky, United States of America
Introduction
The economy in many places in this world has been transformed from product-oriented economy to service-oriented economy. Accordingly, the leadership paradigm has shifted from industrial paradigm that emphasizes sheer productivity, individual achievement, management, and positional authority to post-industrial paradigm that emphasizes common good and shared responsibility (1-3). As such, leadership theories have gone through a transformation from the focus on trait and behaviour of elite leadership to transformational influence and moral character of leaders as well as to the reciprocal relationship of leaders and followers (4-8). In the 1990s, scholars began to pay attention to the development of leadership attributes in college students and apply post-industrial leadership theories/models in the education of college students (1). The two theories/models that are widely applied in the college student population are servant
leadership model (9, 10) and the leadership challenge model (11). The servant leadership model proposed a service-oriented philosophy that leaders should emphasize the growth and well-being of people and the groups to which they belong (9, 10). On the other hand, the leadership challenge model proposed five practices of exemplary leadership, which are modelling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and encouraging...