Developing leadership curriculum for business education program in Asia

With the strong demands and challenges in the leadership components in the curriculum of management education, most transnational business education programs need to ensure the quality of learning and teaching, materials and resources, assessment strategy and content is at an optimal level. The importance of leadership training, beginning at the undergraduate level, has been recognized by many business schools worldwide. The focus on leadership knowledge, skills and action requires special understanding of both local and international contexts in each program. In many transnational education programs the understanding and implementation of various local cultural contexts that influence various aspects of leadership are not taken seriously by the providers of international business education programs. Hence, in this study, we question what should be done to improve the quality of leadership education in the transnational education program. In order to comprehend this complex business education question, a questionnaire survey was conducted with students, who enrolled in the leadership course in an Australian transnational program in Hong Kong and Singapore. In total, 582 students from Singapore and 282 students from Hong Kong participated in this study. Questionnaires were developed by research team members and pilot tested in Australia prior to the fieldwork in Hong Kong and Singapore. Eight curriculum components and outcomes were focused in this study. They included learning objectives; activities, resources, assessment, teaching and learning strategy/approaches, content, internationalisation, and educational technologies. The results from 271 respondents showed numerous differences that were significant in terms of student’s perceptions toward the curriculum between students from Singapore and Hong Kong. When it the generic descriptive statistics were analysed, the results showed that there was no consistency of a statistical mean position among students from Hong Kong and Singapore. The scores of standard deviation among Singaporean students were, in general, larger than those from Hong Kong. The larger standard deviations suggested that there were greater differences in participants’ perception towards curriculum components. The key differences among students in terms of quality were within leadership education include teaching strategy, technology in learning and teaching, assessment, learning activity, and learning resources. This study confirms that practical learning is important in leadership education. In the transnational education context, there is a profound need to integrate the local and international practical aspects into leadership education. More importantly, students’ diversity plays pivotal roles in the effectiveness of leadership education.