Mentorship Podcasts for Fostering Cross-Disciplinary Leadership in International Business Education

This article examines an innovative pedagogical initiative designed to foster core International Business (IB) competencies through an interdisciplinary peer-mentoring-based learning experience. Undergraduate Business and Journalism students collaborated in hybrid teams to produce podcasts addressing contemporary global business phenomena. Final-year Business students assumed structured mentoring roles, guiding their peers in the accurate interpretation of economic concepts, the use of international data sources, and the framing of business issues within global and institutional contexts, while Journalism students focused on narrative clarity, audience adaptation, and public dissemination. This design specifically targets IB-related learning outcomes, including global business literacy, the ability to translate complex economic information for nonspecialist audiences, cross-disciplinary communication, and cross-disciplinary leadership in heterogeneous teams. Quantitative and qualitative data collected over two academic years reveal that the activity enhances motivation, analytical sensemaking, and collaborative learning, while also highlighting the cognitive and emotional demands associated with mentoring roles in multidisciplinary settings. The findings suggest that podcast-based peer mentoring can serve as a scalable and low-cost pedagogical tool for IB educators seeking to develop students’ capacity to navigate complexity, ambiguity, and knowledge integration, competencies that are central to contemporary global business practice.