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Service-learning as a pedagogical avenue to apply students’ knowledge and skills, relate such knowledge and skills to communal needs, and prompt students’ civic participation has been emphasized in higher education for decades. It has been highlighted as one of the major roles, if not the most major, of universities in modern times, transitioning such universities toward becoming more socially vibrant, responsible, and connected institutions rather than being isolated think tanks explicit to a specific audience. Nonetheless, service-learning might seem neither a very spontaneous learning process for some theoretical courses (e.g., language, civilization, communication, and math courses) nor a very practical approach to implement during unprecedented times of lockdown and physical distancing such as that of the COVID-19. This chapter presents and analyzes the case study of a Lebanese higher education institution, in emphasizing service-learning through the “Learning in the Workplace and Community” (LiWC) approach across various theoretical and practice-based courses prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter asserts that prior to the pandemic, service-learning enabled universities to equip their students to become agents of social, economic, and technological change and development. On the other hand, the chapter argues that during and post-COVID-19, service-learning will empower universities to play a more critical and vital role in preparing their students to become agents of support, resilience, agility, and sustainable growth within a global era of social, economic, technological, and healthcare chaos and change. In other words, service-learning will equip students to become avant-garde of certainty in such an uncertain, complex world.

Business schools need to prepare students for effective, ethical decision-making. When faced with stressful life events that negatively affect wellbeing, making decisions can become more challenging. As future managers, students will need to learn how to make decisions when they are at the same time faced with stress and cognitive overload. In such situations, the brain looks for mental shortcuts in making choices to make things faster and easier, which leads to less optimal decision-making. Research shows that mindfulness meditation can effectively decrease stress and anxiety. Mindfulness meditation increases metacognition and, in the process, reduces the effects of biases, ethical blind spots, and psychological traps. Therefore, introducing students to these techniques has significant pedagogical potential for business education as students learn mindfulness meditation and show a need to include such practices in the curriculum. This chapter sheds light on two mindfulness technique cases with business school students in Lebanon and Switzerland. In these cases, the authors explore the impact of mindfulness practices on students by applying the emotional intelligence mood metre and mindfulness meditation. The authors also apply the ‘response time testing’ (RTT) methodology in the Swiss case to measure students’ attitudes. As a result, the authors provide simple confirmations from their classrooms that engaging in mindfulness activities and meditation is a simple and productive exercise that is essential for student wellbeing, learning, and decision-making. Therefore, the authors’ purpose is to encourage and give mindfulness practices a viable place in business education.

Higher education goes beyond classroom teaching and emphasizes on community and democratic participation of students and teachers who are expected to practice inclusive education and support the needs of the community and a diverse group of stakeholders. In the 1990s a new form of experiential learning started evolving in higher education where students were given credits to become more empathetic and address the needs of humanity or their immediate community. Curriculum were improvised to include volunteering services, internships and integrating them to the existing teaching learning needs. However, a fine line does exist about how inclusive education should be and what dimensions of community services can be included in the curriculum. This book is a collection of case studies and interventions adopted by academics across the globe to explain and explore the concepts of social responsibility in education, social justice and civility. The current pandemic situation has made it increasingly difficult for students to explore gaps in society and work toward mitigating it. Academics have showcased that online learning doesn’t mean an end to service learning, but it can be enhanced, and students can continue to be agents of social change. The volume describes the concept of service learning as a model, as a pedagogical tool, a framework that can be inculcated in different areas higher education.

Globalization introduces new challenges related to increased levels of diversity and complexity that organizations cannot meet without capable global leaders. Such leaders are currently lacking, so a theory-based approach to global leader development is needed. A critical intermediary outcome that enables competent global leadership performance is global leader self-complexity, defined by the number of unique leader identities contained within a leader's self-concept (self-differentiation) and the extent to which the identities are integrated with the leader's sense of self (self-integration). This research aims to generate and test a theory of the development of global leader self-complexity through identity construction during international experiences. In Study 1, I gathered qualitative data through retrospectively interviewing 27 global leaders about identity-related changes following their international experiences. Using a grounded theory approach, I developed a theoretical model of global leader identity construction during international experiences, which I empirically tested using quantitative data in Study 2. Specifically, I tested the hypothesized relationships through structural equation modeling with cross-sectional survey data from a sample of 610 global leaders. Findings from both studies indicate global leader identity construction during international experiences primarily occurs through interacting with locals and local culture over a sustained period, motivated by appreciation of cultural differences and resulting in increased global leader self-complexity. These results advance understanding of the global leader self-complexity construct (i.e., what develops) and global leader development processes (i.e., how it develops). Additionally, the findings have practical implications for global leader development initiatives.