Service leadership education in Hong Kong: Reflections after a decade

With the shift of the economy from manufacturing economy to service economy throughout the world, we have to re-think about qualities of leadership under the service economy and how we can nurture effective service leadership particularly in young people. According to Dr. Po Chung, Co-founder of DHL International, effective service leadership qualities have 3Cs: competence, character and care. With reference to university students, we have to address their well-being issues such as poor mental health and ethical issues (e.g., cheating and plagiarism) as well.

With the support of the Victor and William Fung Foundation, we have introduced the Fung Service Leadership Education Initiative since 2012. At The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, we have developed two credit-bearing subjects on Service Leadership. The first subject is entitled “Service Leadership” which is a classroom-based leadership subject utilizing experiential learning activities such as role play, group discussion, group reflection and group activities. Since its inception in 2012, more than 1,700 students have studied this subject. Besides teaching in Hong Kong, we also implemented the subject in Cambodia and Xian, China. To understand the impact of the subject on the students, we have utilized different evaluation strategies. First, we have used objective outcome evaluation using the one group pretest-posttest design and quasi-experimental design. Second, we have collected subjective outcome evaluation data based on the client satisfaction approach. Third, in the early days, we conducted process evaluation to make sure that the implementation was in line with the curriculum design. Finally, we have collected qualitative evaluation data through different ways. Evaluation findings based on different strategies have generated positive evaluation findings and they provide support to the claim that Service Leadership education is effective in promoting positive changes in students who took the subject.

Besides “Service Leadership”, we have also designed and implemented another Service Learning subject entitled “Promotion of Service Leadership through Serving Children and Families with Special Needs”. To date, 1,800+ students have taken this subject with service projects in Hong Kong and outside Hong Kong. For Service Learning projects outside Hong Kong, we have also utilized online Service Learning (electronic Service Learning) mode to deliver the service during the pandemic (summer of 2020, 2021 and 2022). Again, we have used different evaluation strategies to assess the impact of this subject on the service providers (i.e., university students) and service recipients.

In this presentation, we will review the evaluation findings in the past decade based on 3,500+ students. The findings generally suggest that these two subjects are promising means to promote service leadership qualities and well-being of the students.