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The development of corporate leadership skills is seen as a crucial ingredient of management education programmes in higher education. Moreover, with the increasing globalisation of business activity, the education of those who will ultimately occupy positions of authority within organisations must take into account cross-cultural differences in the interpretation and conceptualisation of leadership. A key task for educators in this respect is to design and deliver programmes that facilitate an understanding and enhanced competence in the exercise of relevant skills that are sensitive to the complexity of the notion of leadership in a cross-cultural environment. The manner in which such objectives have been pursued on the full-time MSc in International Business and Management course, jointly run by Sheffield Business School, United Kingdom, and the International Business School at Groningen in the Netherlands, is the theme of this article. Working within an action research paradigm, the tutor responsible for the International Management Competencies module has sought, through three cycles, to plan and hone an approach designed to help students develop a cross-cultural perspective on corporate leadership. The nature of the challenge is analysed – specifically the generic nature of the treatment of leadership skills in much of the literature and the difficulties students face in relating what they learn to their own experiences. The three cycles are described. Consideration is also given to the lessons learnt both in terms of the treatment of leadership as a concept and as an international management competence and of further potential refinements in the learning and teaching process.

Draws on relevant academic literature to explore the nature of cross‐cultural capability and goes on to consider its implications for the student experience in British undergraduate business education. Some of the key issues concerning the design of mechanisms and strategies for integrating cross‐cultural capability within the curriculum are highlighted and discussed with a view to informing what needs to be done to prepare undergraduates for the international business world of tomorrow

As part of their attempt to embed their teaching more firmly in the ‘real world’ of business, some university tutors have incorporated ‘commissioned’ or ‘live’ projects into their learning and teaching strategies. These projects enable students to make a direct contribution to their business clients while simultaneously fulfilling key educational objectives. Drawing on their experience of the use of commissioned projects on an MSc in International Business (MSclB) course, the authors analyse in detail both the potential benefits and the problems that arise in implementing such schemes. In this paper, they outline some of the key features of the MSclB course, focusing on the commissioned project component; indicate the reasons for using commissioned projects from the point of view of both tutors and students; describe and evaluate the methodology used to generate data for informing the identification and discussion of issues; and explore a number of key factors for tutors and students in the use of commissioned projects. The paper thus raises awareness of the nature of commissioned projects as a pedagogic tool and of what needs to be done if their contribution to the enhancement of students' understanding of the business world is to be maximized.

Examines the nature of commissioned projects in business education and the value they hold for key stakeholder groups: students, tutors and clients. Identifies the essence of commissioned projects as being a unique fusion of vocational and pedagogic (problem‐based learning) perspectives. Describes the structure of commissioned projects and argues that this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for their success. Argues that the key to their successful utilisation is the establishment of effective foundations. Identifies these as a strategy for curriculum support; a commitment to the integration of skills and knowledge; a negotiated approach to the specification of learning outcomes; a recognition of the importance of process issues; the development of a framework for applying learning; and an emphasis on the concept of reflective practice.

Although BTEC has considerably refined its approach to the development and embedding of common skills (core skills) within its Higher National Programmes in recent years, argues that there are still a number of problems associated with the practical operation of this strategy and obstacles to a deeper acceptance of the common skills pedagogy within a higher education context remain. From a survey of students who completed a Higher National Diploma at Sheffield Business School in 1993 the crucial issues in this respect were seen to be the complexity of the common skills strategy, difficulties in the area of assessment, the value placed on subject knowledge by students, the lack of an acceptance of a common skills profile when applying for jobs, interviews, and further study, the fact that students thought some skills to be more important than others, and the fact that the development of skills was not undertaken with sufficient reference to probable future contexts where they could be utilized.

This chapter argues that one of the key criticisms of contemporary business education relates to its approach to knowledge construction, and the prioritising and privileging of disciplinary-based propositional knowledge in the core curriculum. It is suggested that, in general, business education has been slow to respond to the changing conditions and nature of knowledge creation outside of the academy, and it is posited that a recognition of this “new knowledge” is crucial when developing the skills and attributes identified as being important in the workplace. It is further argued that, although project and work-based learning opportunities should be expanded within the higher education (HE) curriculum as a way of making learning more relevant to the business world, of equal importance is how this knowledge is fused with disciplinary-based propositional knowledge within the majority of modules or educational experiences a student is exposed to. By way of illustration, the findings of a small scale research project examining student learning from a “live” company project will be examined. It is concluded that by incorporating authentic learning approaches more extensively within the curriculum, which expose students to or enable them to develop aspects of the “new knowledge”, and then leveraging these broadly across the curriculum, business educators can forge a knowledge synthesis and support skills development that will go some way to bridging the expectations gap between universities and business.