Cultivating globally and socially engaged graduates

This study examines one Business School’s endeavor to enhance its educational experience for its undergraduate students by providing extensive opportunities for students not only to have a significant overseas immersion to develop themselves personally and professionally, but to stimulate their civic awareness and sense of social responsibility during their intercultural experience. Data was collected through the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), which was administered as pre- and post-tests. The results suggest that particularly when the students are initially at the ethnocentric stages (denial, defense, minimization), short-term study abroad programmes that are structured with a mandatory service learning component, demonstrate greater effectiveness in enhancing students’ intercultural development, compared to longer periods of study abroad that are unstructured. The implications for management education and the structure and design of intercultural training, including the vital role of service learning, were discussed.