TY - JOUR
T1 - Promoting Service Leadership Qualities and Well-Being among University Students
T2 - Evaluation Findings in Hong Kong
AU - Zhu, Xiaoqin
AU - Shek, Daniel T.L.
N1 - Funding Information:
The evaluation study is financially supported by the Victor and William Fung Foundation. The preparation for this paper is supported by the Foundation and the Endowed Professorship in Service Leadership Education at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. This paper is also financially supported by start-up grant to XZ (Project number: P0034745).
Funding Information:
As service industries have become the pillar of economic prosperity in Hong Kong, educators and researchers have put the above educational beliefs into practice with the guidance of the SLM framework. Specifically, HKI-SLAM and the Victor and William Fung Foundation collaboratively launched a service leadership initiative that provides financial support of HK$40 million for the eight government-funded universities in Hong Kong to develop and implement service leadership education. These universities integrated service leadership paradigm with their existing leadership programs and/or designed new service leadership programs as a part of their formal university curricula.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
PY - 2021/12/1
Y1 - 2021/12/1
N2 - Service leadership education initiatives have been launched in Hong Kong to meet the emerging demand for service leaders and enhance university students’ well-being through nurturing not only competence but also good character and caring disposition. However, rigorous evaluation work based on validated assessment tools has not been adequately carried out to examine whether student well-being and service leadership qualities would increase after the learning process. Using a one-group pretest-posttest design, this study investigated the effectiveness of a credit-bearing subject entitled “Service Leadership” implemented in one university in Hong Kong. Based on the responses of 114 participants (49.1% boys, Age = 20.21 ± 2.96 years), it was found that students showed improvement in service leadership knowledge, attitude, and behavior after taking the subject. In addition, their life satisfaction and positive youth development attributes as indicators of well-being also significantly increased. Furthermore, the increase in well-being among students was closely associated with their attitudinal and behavioral changes but not knowledge acquisition. The present findings imply that a formal curriculum-based leadership course can be a promising way to promote student service leadership qualities and well-being.
AB - Service leadership education initiatives have been launched in Hong Kong to meet the emerging demand for service leaders and enhance university students’ well-being through nurturing not only competence but also good character and caring disposition. However, rigorous evaluation work based on validated assessment tools has not been adequately carried out to examine whether student well-being and service leadership qualities would increase after the learning process. Using a one-group pretest-posttest design, this study investigated the effectiveness of a credit-bearing subject entitled “Service Leadership” implemented in one university in Hong Kong. Based on the responses of 114 participants (49.1% boys, Age = 20.21 ± 2.96 years), it was found that students showed improvement in service leadership knowledge, attitude, and behavior after taking the subject. In addition, their life satisfaction and positive youth development attributes as indicators of well-being also significantly increased. Furthermore, the increase in well-being among students was closely associated with their attitudinal and behavioral changes but not knowledge acquisition. The present findings imply that a formal curriculum-based leadership course can be a promising way to promote student service leadership qualities and well-being.
KW - Leadership attitude
KW - Leadership behavior
KW - Leadership knowledge
KW - Pretest-posttest
KW - Service leadership
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100114143&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11482-021-09922-w
DO - 10.1007/s11482-021-09922-w
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85100114143
SN - 1871-2584
VL - 16
SP - 2475
EP - 2495
JO - Applied Research in Quality of Life
JF - Applied Research in Quality of Life
IS - 6
ER -