Abstract
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.
Highlights
Promoting leadership qualities in university students is one of the major tasks of tertiary institutions
We addressed the research questions based on the “Service Leadership” subject offered at Polytechnic University (PolyU)
The rapid growth of service economies calls for effective service leaders, which drives higher institutions in Hong Kong to launch service leadership education initiatives (Shek et al 2018a)
Summary
Promoting leadership qualities in university students is one of the major tasks of tertiary institutions. As the service economy dominates in Hong Kong, different universities have implemented multiple leadership programs to promote students’ service leadership attributes and well-being (Wong and Chandra 2015; Shek et al 2018a). Some evaluation work has been done in different universities (Shek and Lin 2015; Wong and Chandra 2015), most research failed to use validated assessment tools for service leadership attributes. To fill these research gaps, the present study attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of a service leadership subject in Hong Kong by using validated assessment tools on service leadership qualities (i.e., knowledge, attitude, and behavior). This study assessed students’ changes in well-being and service leadership qualities after taking the subject. The relationship between the change in well-being and service leadership development was explored
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