<p>Higher education institutions have been adding global contexts to their mission/vision statements, strategic plans, objectives, and initiatives in an effort to meet the needs of organizations dealing with the phenomenon known as globalization. Phrases such as “ensuring our students are globally competitive,” “international competitiveness,” “success in a highly competitive global and technological marketplace,” “global perspective,” and “global competency” are becoming more common within higher education. Organizations are looking to higher education institutions to fill the need of future leaders with the leadership competencies required to manage effectively in a rapidly changing global environment. The purpose of this study was to explore and to better understand the concept of individual global competitiveness from the perspective of academic business and technology professionals from around the world. The study was commissioned to evaluate the eighteen factors extracted from the three theoretical models identified during the literature review process and to determine the importance of these factors to the development of an individual’s global competitiveness. The three basic research questions were: 1) How do academic business and technology professionals around the world define the term “individual global competitiveness”?; 2) What components from the three models are critical to influence, increase, or change an individual’s global competitiveness?; 3) What other factors, not represented in the three models, influence, increase, change, and define an individual’s global competitiveness? A mixed methods study was conducted, which consisted of an online survey and face-to-face interviews conducted at a conference in Helsinki, Finland. For the qualitative portion of the study, structured interviews were utilized which consisted of ten questions around the eighteen factors identified from the three theoretical models. The analysis of both data sets indicated three overriding factors that emerged during the study as essential to an individual’s global competitiveness: communication/language, collaborating/sharing, and adaptability. The results from the research indicate that it takes more than simply having a global mind-set for an individual to be globally competitive, that the ability to communicate, to collaborate, and to be adaptable are even more paramount and therefore need to be embedded into the context, curriculum, and culture of higher education institutions. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3646235 |
| Date | 23 December 2014 |
| Creators | Gordon, James A. |
| Publisher | Indiana Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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