Talent in international business defined: implications and applications for honours education

Abstract

Higher international business (IB) education has a responsibility to prepare graduates to be ready to enter the professional field and competency frameworks are used for educational programme design and alignment with expectations from the professional field. In IB there is an increasing demand for talent and special programmes in higher education are developed, so called honours programmes (HP’s) to educate talented students. However, there is not yet a clear dedicated competency framework that describes the competencies for talented IB professionals. In this context, this thesis first concentrated on what competencies characterise talent in IB, for implementation in honours education. Despite competency frameworks informing educational programmes, problems with alignment between what the professional field expects from graduates and what graduates have to offer exist. Therefore, the second main topic of this thesis concerns how honours students perceive and work with the talent competencies during their honours programme. To conclude, practical implications are identified that I think are essential conditions to be met when implementing competency frameworks in HP’s to further improve alignment between education and the professional field. This thesis ends by offering a table with practical suggestions to operationalize implementation of a competency profile for talent in an honours programme.