The Development of the Global Manager: An Empirical Study on the Role of Academic International Sojourns

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Student mobility is highly popular among the educational efforts directed at developing global competencies in management education. Yet, research that corroborates the assumed learning outcomes, particularly with respect to advancing multicultural competence, is inconclusive. Null-to-small effect sizes are often reported and are based on unidimensional assessments of multicultural competence that have limited our knowledge of the benefits of academic work abroad. Building on Earley and Ang's (2003) conceptualization of cultural intelligence (CQ), we test the effect of studying abroad on the metacognitive, cognitive, motivational, and behavioral dimensions of multicultural competence. Following a pretest–posttest design, we tracked 84 business students who completed academic coursework abroad. To isolate the effect of the sojourn, we controlled for individual and contextual variables that might influence learning outcomes. Results confirm the multidimensional nature of our dependent variable and indicate that studying abroad acts differently on its dimensions. While participants exhibited development of the cognitive-based components of the competence, studying abroad was innocuous in advancing participants' motivational and behavioral cultural intelligence. We discuss the theoretical implications of these outcomes in light of existing conceptualizations of multicultural competence, as well as their practical implications for academic efforts that seek to advance global competencies in management education.