Service Leadership in an Uncertain Era

Abstract

The Service Leadership Initiative (SLI) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong involves an interdisciplinary general education three-credit 14-week course based on the premise that all students possess the potential to be service leaders. The course aims to promote service leadership through cultivating appropriate knowledge, skills, character, and care. It introduces students to theories of leadership from the disciplines of management, political science, psychology, and sociology with instructors from the appropriate faculties and departments teaching the classes. The first two classes introduce service from sociological and management perspectives based on classics of Heifetz (1994) for the former and Drucker (1968) for the latter with an overview of leadership theories provided by Northouse (2013) and Zigarelli (2013). As effective leadership requires sensitivity to oneself and to others, the course deepens students’ understanding in the third and fourth classes by adopting a psychological perspective on leadership, based on the works of Siegel (2007). Each student reflects on these theories by submitting, in week 4, a short essay on how each has experienced being a leader and how that experience reflects theories of leadership.

The remainder of the course and its articles, cases, videos, and guest speakers highlight business, social enterprise, NGO, and political leaders to stimulate students’ reflections on effective leadership. The course uses five video-assisted cases (each comprised of a 15–20-page written description plus a 15–30 min video) developed specifically for SLI. These cases include service leadership in the goods producer company, frontline leadership in banks, and leadership in NGOs and social enterprises. The leaders are individuals from the local community facing challenges in organizations to create value and maintain viability. Students are assigned case materials prior to classes and assess these cases interactively in class, participating in oral case discussions with the instructor calling on groups to express and defend their analyses. The videos show leaders reflecting on their authority, philosophies, objectives, traits, skills, situations, interactions, and effectiveness. Instructors adjust student group marks to reflect individual contribution to group performance by using student peer assessments. As Greater China in general and Hong Kong in particular are undergoing political changes, the course brings theoretical issuers of leadership to a contemporary focus, in a forum where leaders with different views on Hong Kong’s political development debate their philosophies, strategies, and tactics.

Each student submits at the end of the course an essay on “A Good Leader That I Want To Follow.” Upon completion of this course, students should be able to reflect on issues of leadership; understand how sensitivity to oneself and to others can enhance leadership; show an ability to summarize, classify, synthesize, and evaluate service leaders in business, nonprofit and political situations; and demonstrate knowledge of theories of leadership through using them to assess words and actions of recognized service leaders.

Appendices

Appendices

Appendix I: Excerpts from Annex A of the MOU

Project Objectives

What does the project aim to achieve? What are the learning outcomes intended for participating students? In what ways are the intended learning outcomes related to system-level learning outcomes of Service Leadership Initiative?

We will produce locally sourced, globally applicable, and current pedagogical materials to be used in undergraduate and postgraduate-taught programs. The materials will be primarily video-enhanced cases (“Cases”), designed to focus instructor-led student discussion on service leadership. We will structure an academically sound general education course on service leadership (the “SLIGE course”) consistent with the HKI-SLAM Curriculum Framework’s overarching education goals to improve students’ service leadership competencies, develop their characters, and nurture them in a caring disposition and social orientation. We will develop modules for undergraduate and postgraduate-taught program and diploma courses related to service leadership (the “Modules”) which may use the Cases.

Services in Hong Kong account for over 90 % of our economy and over 100 % of our current account surplus. The career of every student who graduates from every university in Hong Kong is dominated by service; yet no coherent body of course materials exists to meet the pedagogical needs of service leadership. We propose to develop Modules and Cases with professors currently teaching aspects of service leadership. While the largest proportion of Modules and Cases will be management related, especially in the first year, service leadership is important to disciplines beyond schools of business. In subsequent years, we will approach professors in nonbusiness disciplines to augment their courses with Modules and Cases.

A Case may involve a service industry (e.g., accounting, banking, consulting, mobile, cultural, design, education, entertainment, healthcare, hospitality, Internet, insurance, law, logistics, real estate, retailing, software, social, trade) or a service function within the goods-producing enterprise. Each Case will highlight a decision that a leader must make, giving facts appropriate not only to the problem at hand but also to the background to that decision. The background will include information necessary for analysis of the ethical implications of the leader’s decision and, for Cases used in Modules, information amenable to technical analysis of the discipline of the class using the Module.

Project Plan

How will the project be implemented and why? What are the key teaching and learning activities? How will student autonomy and peer learning be encouraged? What are the expected timeline and major milestones?

The plan includes three activities:

• 1. Case development

• 2. Course and Module design and delivery

• 3. Assessment

Course and Module Design and Delivery

We will promote service leadership philosophies consistent with HKI-SLAM’s overarching education goals and among our students through two avenues: the SLIGE course and Modules.

The SLIGE Course. We believe that SLI at CUHK can achieve its greatest impact if it is integrated as a credit-bearing course in CUHK’s general education (GE) program. At present, CUHK has no service leadership GE course. At CUHK, unlike other Hong Kong universities, GE courses are offered both through each of the nine constituent colleges of CUHK and through the university’s GE program. Each of the constituent colleges can express its own mission through its own GE courses. The colleges enjoy considerable flexibility in introducing innovative GE courses, notwithstanding the requirement that those courses be approved at the CUHK level. This means that, in practice, introducing a GE course at the university-level is more rigorous, as it is held to the standard of engaging students “… on perennial issues of human concerns through reading of original texts of lasting significance….” We will work with university GE staff and academics to design texts, reading materials, projects, assessment systems, and examination methods to meet the university standards. The pedagogical materials are likely to include Cases developed above. We aim to apply for CUHK approval for the SLIGE course in late 2012 so that it can be on the books by September 2013. As part of that application, we, with the input of the sponsoring department (most likely the Department of Management), will draft appropriate student learning outcomes consistent with the SLAM-SLI objectives. This drafting process will be initiated within six months of funding the SLI award, and we expect that the structure of the SLIGE course, with approved learning objectives, will be finalized in early 2013.

Delivery of the SLIGE course will be financed, as with all credit-bearing courses, from the teaching budget of CUHK.

Assessment and Evaluation Plan

How will student learning be credibly assessed? How will the overall effectiveness of the project be evaluated? To what extent will assessment and evaluation data be used to adjust the project plan?

Assessment will be continuous within the implementation.

The process of development described in Case Development above is iterative so that the developing professor can affect how his or her pedagogical objectives are to be achieved in the Case as the Case is being developed.

The Cases will be used by the developing professor and SLI and their colleagues at other participating universities. We will poll the users of each Case to determine effectiveness and to make minor improvements to the Case for subsequent use. Feedback will also be used to improve the Cases under development.

We will encourage the SLI champions to use the Cases in their own universities. Following their use, we will solicit their comments for Case assessment and improvement.

Cases will be distributed through existing Case clearing houses (Harvard, Ivy, Babson, ECCH, NACRA, HKU, etc.). We will also try to secure publishing in book form in appropriate anthologies.

The numbers of users and/or sales can be used as a quantitative measure of success.

All students taking all for-credit courses at CUHK are polled in the course and teaching evaluation (CTE). The CTE is administered by the university, and its results are made available to the professors in each course. We will collect relevant parts of the CTE for Modules and for the SLIGE course and report those results to SLI.

Appendix II: Instructors in SLIGE Course

CHAN, Kin-man

Kin-man Chan received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is currently the Director of Centre for Civil Society Studies, Associate Director of Center for Entrepreneurship, and Associate Professor of Sociology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He serves in the editorial boards of Journal of Civil Society (USA), China Nonprofit Review (Beijing), and Third Sector Review (Taiwan). He is the coauthor of Stories and Theories of Democracy (with Choy Chi-keung), Contentious Views: Nine Debates that Changed Hong Kong (with Ng Shu Yui), One Country Two Systems (with Tsui Sing Yan), Trade Association and Social Capital (with Qiu Haixiong), and author of Towards Civil Society and Civil Society Perspective: Towards Good Governance.

CHOY, Ivan Chi-keung

Ivan Choy is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Government and Public Administration of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received both his Bachelor of Business Administration (where he was head of the Students Union) and his MPhil in Political Science from CUHK. He is a well-known television commentator and editorialist in Hong Kong politics. His research and teaching interests are in comparative politics, political leadership, and electoral and political parties’ studies. Prior to joining CUHK, he was the Senior Lecturer at University of Macao and City University of Hong Kong.

LEUNG, Freedom

Freedom Y.K. Leung obtained both of his Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He joined The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1993 and is currently an Associate Professor of the Department of Psychology. In 2004/2005, he won the Vice-Chancellor’s Exemplary Teaching Award and the Faculty of Social Science Exemplary Teaching Award. Professor Leung’s research interests include adult psychopathology, personality disorders, and mindfulness therapy. He is a member of the American Psychological Association and its Clinical Division and Hong Kong Psychological Society and its Clinical Division. Professor Leung had served in different capacities in Hong Kong Psychological Society including Honorary Treasurer, Vice-President, and President throughout 1994 to 1997. During 1998 to 2000, he was the Founding Editor of Journal of Psychology in Chinese Society.

THOMAS, Hugh

Hugh Thomas is an Associate Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and an associate professor in the Department of Finance at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Alberta, postgraduate diplomas in Chinese language from the Beijing Language and Culture University, history from Nanjing University, MBA from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Ph.D. in International Business and Finance from New York University. He participated in founding China’s first business school, the National Center for Industrial Science and Technology Management at Dalian in 1980 and subsequently worked in banking and consulting in Hong Kong for 7 years. He is an award winning case writer. Prior to joining CUHK, he was an Associate Professor in the Finance Department of McMaster University in Canada.

YUEN, Terence

Terence Yuen is a researcher specializing in the fields of Civil Society and Public Policy. He is the Research Coordinator at the Centre for Civil Society Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and oversees the center’s research operations. An experienced Certified Public Accountant, he managed a leading charity in Hong Kong, disbursing over HKD200 million to over 100 charities per year prior to returning to academe to obtain a MPA and a Ph.D. in Politics and Public Administration, from the University of Hong Kong. He has served as a lecturer at the Community College of City University and is currently a member of the Hong Kong Social Entrepreneurship Forum, a founding member of Fullness Social Enterprise Society, and the Honorary Adviser to Fair Circle, a major fair trade organization in Hong Kong.

Appendix III: Syllabus for SLIGE Course

• The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• University General Education 2nd term, 2013–2014

• UGED 1251: Service Leadership in an Uncertain Era

• Fung King Hey Building – Swire Lecture Hall 2 – Tuesdays 1:30–4:15 pm

Coordinating Instructors
Prof. Chan Kin-man	3943–6610	kmchan@cuhk.edu.hk
Prof. Hugh Thomas	3943–7649	hugh-thomas@cuhk.edu.hk
Topical Instructors
Mr. Choy, Chi-keung Ivan	3943–7529	ivanchoy@cuhk.edu.hk
Prof. Freedom, Leung	3943–6575	fykleung@psy.cuhk.edu.hk
Dr. Yuen, Terence	3943–1423	tykyuen@cuhk.edu.hk
Teaching Assistants
Sharon Tam Ho Ying	3943–1691	sharon-tam@cuhk.edu.hk
Mandy Lam Kit Man	3943–7542	KitmanLam@baf.cuhk.edu.hk
Teaching Medium
Cantonese and English

Description

All students possess the potential to be service leaders. This course aims to promote a culture of service leadership through cultivating appropriate knowledge, skills, character, and care toward self, others, and society. The course will introduce students to theories of leadership from the disciplines of management, political science, psychology, and sociology. Because service is cocreated between the provider and the recipient and because leadership itself is a service, understanding effective service leadership requires sensitivity to oneself and to others. The course will include exercises to enhance this sensitivity. Using business, social enterprise, NGO, and political cases and through introducing students to leaders in different spheres, the course will stimulate students’ reflections on how they can lead effectively in a world full of conflicts and uncertainties.

Objectives

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

• Reflect on the issues of leadership.

• Understand how sensitivity to oneself and to others can enhance leadership.

• Show an oral ability to summarize, classify, synthesize, and evaluate service leaders in business, nonprofit, and political situations.

• Demonstrate knowledge of theories of leadership through using them to assess words and actions of recognized service leaders.

Student Evaluation

Reflective Note due on Feb. 11	20 %
Group In-Class Oral Contribution	30 %
Individual Term Paper due on April 15	50 %

Schedule

Week	Date	Topic	Class readings and videos	Instructor
1	Jan 7	Theories of leadership I	Heifetz	Chan Kin-man
2	Jan 14	Theories of leadership II	Drucker; Northous, Zigarelli	Hugh Thomas
3	Jan 21	The mindful brain – sensitivity to oneself	Siegel	Freedom Leung
4	Jan 28	The mindful brain – sensitivity to others	–	Freedom Leung
5	Feb 4	Holiday – Chinese New Year
6	Feb 11	Minding 12 dimensions of a service warrior’s personal brand	Reflective note due; Chung; HKSLI Website	Hugh Thomas; Po Chung, Cofounder, DHL Intl; Founder, HKI-SLAM
7	Feb.18	Services in products and frontline service	Cisco China; Constellation;	Hugh Thomas
8	Feb 25	Nonprofits and social enterprises	Crutchfield & Grant; Diamond Cab	Terence Yuen
9	Mar 4	Leadership of nonprofits and social enterprises: two cases	St. James’ Settlement Web: Intro	Terence Yuen; Michael Lai Kam-cheung, CEO, St. James’ Settlement
10	Mar 11	Forum on political leadership in Hong Kong	–	Panel Chan Kin-man, Robert Chow Yung; moderator Hugh Thomas
11	Mar 18	Service leadership in politics	Alinsky; Rotberg	Choy Chi-keung Ivan
12	Mar 25	Cross-sector service leadership	Heifetz, Kania & Kramer; WebOrganic	Terence Yuen
13	Apr 1	Service leadership in social entrepreneurship	L Plus H Community Interest Co Web:Intro	Terence Yuen; Ada Ho, Founder of Love + Hope
14	Apr 8	A synthesis: service leadership in an uncertain era	–	Chan Kin-man; Hugh Thomas
15	Apr 15	Wrap up: your leaders	Individual term paper due	Chan Kin-man; Hugh Thomas

Required Readings

Week 1

• 1. Heifetz, R. (1994). Mobilizing adaptive work, Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

• 2. Heifetz, R. (1994). Creative deviance on the frontline, Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Week 2

• 3. Drucker, P. (1968). Towards a theory of organizations. The age of discontinuity (pp. 188–211). Heinemann, London.

• 4. Northouse, Peter. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Chapter 1

• 5. Zigarelli, M. (n.d.). Ten leadership theories in five minutes [Video]. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKUPDUDOBVo

Weeks 3 and 4

• 6. Siegel, D. (2007). The mindful brain: Reflection and Attunement in the cultivation of well-being. New York: Norton.

Week 6

• 7. Chung, P. (2012).Service reborn: The knowledge, skills and attitudes of service companies (Chapter 1, 10). New York: Lexingford. Available from HKSLI Website: SLI Introduction http://hki-slam.org/index.php?r=article&catid=3

• 8. HKSLI Website: SLI Introduction http://hki-slam.org/index.php?r=article&catid=3

Week 7

• 9. Lee, R., &Thomas, H. Cisco and cloud-based education in China. Hong Kong: SLI Case.

• 10. Thomas, H. Constellation: The distribution of minibonds. Hong Kong: SLI Case.

Week 8

• 11. Crutchfield, L., & Grant, H. (2008). Forces for good: The six practices of high-impact nonprofits (Chapters 7 and 8 ). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• 12. Au, K., & Tsui, A. Diamond cab: Investment of a venture philanthropy fund. Hong Kong: SLI Case.

Week 9

• 13. St. James Settlement Web: Introduction. Available from http://www.sjs.org.hk/tc/index/main.php

Week 10 and 11

• 14. Alinsky, S. D. (1989). Of means and ends, Rules for radicals. New York: Vintage Books.

• 15. Rotberg, R. (2012). Transformative political leadership (Chapter 2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Week 12

• 16. Heifetz, R. A., Kania, J. V., & Kramer, M. R. (2004). Leading boldly. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2(3), 20–32. Available from http://www.ssireview.org/pdf/2004WI_feature_heifetz.pdf

• 17. Yu, J. Weborganic. Creating a blue ocean for a social cause. Hong Kong: SLI Case.

Week 13

• 18. L plus H Community Interest Company Web: Introduction. Available from http://www.lplush.com/index.php

Recommended Readings

Alinsky, S. D. (1989). Rules for Radicals. New York: Vintage Books.

Chung, P., & Ip, S. (2009). The first ten yards: The five dynamics of entrepreneurship. Singapore: Cengage.

Chung, P. (2012). Service reborn: The knowledge, skills and attitudes of service companies. New York: Lexingford.

Drucker, P. (1968). The age of discontinuity. London: Heinemann.

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life (Chapter 2 & 6). New York: Anchor Book.

Haifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership: Tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

Heifetz, R. (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Northouse, P. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Perry, J. (2010). The Jossey-bass reader on nonprofit and public leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Philips, D. T. (1998). Martin Luther King, Jr. on leadershi. New York: Warner Books.

Rotberg, R. I. (2012). Transformative political leadership. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Siegel, D. (2007). The mindful brain: Reflection and attunement in the cultivation of well-being. New York: Norton.

Sunstein, C. R. (2003). Why societies need dissent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Details of Student Evaluation

1. Individual Term Paper due on April 15 (50 %)

Each student is required to submit (in one hard copy and one soft copy through VeriGuide) an individual term paper of no more than 2,000 words in English on the subject “A Good Leader That I Want To Follow.” The essay should describe a real leader in the field of government/politics, business, and/or civil society/NGO/social enterprise sector who has achieved sufficient fame to allow you to conduct secondary source research. Your essay should discuss how your leader demonstrates leadership consistent to the topics/concepts covered in the course. Your leader may not be any of the leaders from the video-assisted cases or the guest speakers introduced in this class.

2. Reflective Note due on February 11 (20 %)

Each student is required to submit (in one hard copy and one soft copy through VeriGuide) a reflective note of no more than 500 words in English on the subject “A Personal Experience of Leadership.” The reflective note should describe how you have experienced being a leader and how this experience reflects theories of leadership as introduced in the first four classes in this course.

3. Group In-Class Oral Contribution (30 %)

The class will be divided into groups of four to five persons per group prior to the end of week 4. From week 5 through the end of the course, students will be assigned with case materials to analyze. During those classes, student will participate in oral case analysis with the instructor calling on groups to express and defend their analyses. The instructors will assess each group’s oral analysis, and that assessment will result in a single group mark for each group. Instructors reserve the right to adjust marks to reflect individual contribution to group performance. Individual contributions will be determined by student peer assessment. During the final class, each student will be asked to complete the following peer assessment:

	Contribution (x)
Group member	None	Poor	Good	Comment

Citations of Sources

Whatever work you submit must be your own. Claiming work written by others to be your own is plagiarism, a serious academic offense. Plagiarism will not be tolerated.

We encourage you to use any and all relevant sources, but whenever you quote directly, you must use quotation marks around your direct quote and insert a footnote and whenever you paraphrase another person’s words, you must insert a footnote. In either case, your footnote must contain a full citation that will enable the reader to find the source, independently verify facts, determine the extent to which your ideas derive from the source, and follow your original reasoning.

The instructors hope that you will find this course informative, thought-provoking, and useful.

Appendix IV: Details of the SLI Module in the NGO Internship Program

Background

I-Care NGO Internship Program in Greater China is jointly organized by Centre for Civil Society Studies, Youth Civil Society, and the Office of Student Affairs of CUHK. This program offers students an opportunity to participate in an 8-week internship in NGOs between June and August. Students were assigned to work as interns in both cities and rural villages in Mainland China and Taiwan. The program offered internship opportunities to 21 and 28 undergraduate students in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

Program Objectives

• 1. To broaden the perspective and experience of participating students, so as to prepare them to better serve the community through extending classroom learning to hands-on workplace training in indigenous NGOs in Mainland China

• 2. To enhance students’ understanding of contemporary sociopolitical and cultural developments in Mainland China, upon which students can make reflections on paralleled developments in Hong Kong

• 3. To cultivate students’ long-term interest and commitment in serving communities, to understand the diversity of culture and values, and in the process to achieve sustainable personal growth

Program Design

Key design features of the program are as follows:

• 1. Duration: 8 weeks, falling between June and August.

• 2. Design: Placements at NGOs is matched with the preference and ability of the students.

• 3. Locations: Beijing, Guangzhou, Inner Mongolia, Xi'an, Taipei, Nantou, and Central Taiwan.

• 4. Targeted students: CUHK full-time undergraduate students from all disciplines.

• 5. Team formation: Students assigned to the same NGO will form a team of two to four. The multidisciplinary backgrounds of each team would provide new perspectives and learning opportunities to the participants.

Program Activities

Period	Program activity
Preplacement training	(a) Lectures on civil society and service leadership particularly mindfulness in service
	(b) Workshops on community study, interviewing, writing, and humanistic photographing
	(c) NGOs/social enterprise visiting
	(d) Film screening and discussion about civil society
Internship placement	(a) 8 weeks internship placement
	(b) Weekly reflection journals submitted by students
Post internship	(a) In-depth group debriefing and evaluation on internship experience
	(b) Public sharing session on students’ reflections and experiences during internship
	(c) Overall reflection and reports submitted by students

Program Outcomes

• 1. Reflection on personal growth: Students reflected on their personal growth through the experience in the internship. It is shown that the 2 months allow students to understand their strengths and weaknesses and to learn to embrace problems encountered during internship.

• 2. Understanding of NGOs work: Students learned about NGO’s mission, work, and development through participation in NGO’s work. The program allows students to understand how NGOs apply creative and practical methods to solve different social problems as well as the constraints they face.

• 3. Understanding of sociopolitical developments in Greater China: Students learned the nature of social problems in the communities as well as the role of NGO/social enterprise in tackling these problems.

• 4. Continuous participation and study: Instructors helped students to reflect on their internship experience and how it would affect their career planning. Most students are still exploring various possibilities of their future career. Some students continuously develop their interest and ability in NGO work. A few students successfully seized job opportunities in the NGO sector.