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As business becomes more international companies have to take account of linguistic and cultural boundaries, both within the organization and in the marketplace. Addresses the question of whether business schools are equipping managers to communicate in such environments. Presents the results of a survey of UK and continental European business schools’ approaches to language teaching. Also reports the results of a survey of young UK managers which illustrates the problems of coping in multilingual business situations. Describes how the attitudes of this group towards languages in a business context were closer to the philosophy of continental European business schools than most UK ones. Concludes by raising the question of non‐European languages which are addressed by neither group of business schools.

As universities operate in a global environment, internationalisation is inevitable for higher education (HE), as it is driven externally by political, economic, and socio-cultural globalisation forces. Through decoding and deconstructing the English language proficiency of international students and the international student experience at universities in the UK, this chapter investigates how university academics should consider employing both scaffolding strategies and cultural intelligence in their teaching and learning to enhance the international student experience and bridge the gap in educational attainment between home and international students. This calls for academics to re-assess and re-conceptualise what teaching, and learning means in a culturally and linguistically diverse context. It also aims to encourage further research around the convergence of English language and the disciplines, as well as the internationalisation and equality, diversity and inclusivity of HE policies and strategies.

Australia has enjoyed two decades of growth in international student enrolments. This phenomenon, combined with the evolution of quality assurance policy frameworks, has stimulated interest in the social and academic experiences of international students and their educational outcomes. The Australian Universities Quality Agency's (AUQA) second round of quality audits assessed and reported on the performance of Australian universities in the area of “internationalisation”. AUQA findings and recommendations for required action send powerful messages to guide university priorities, practices and strategies in pursuit of quality enhancement in relation to student engagement. This paper seeks to address these issues.

This study uses a thematic analysis approach to explore “internationalisation” in 14 AUQA audit reports published between 2006 and 2010.

This paper identifies three key areas arising from AUQA audit reports that form a basis for discussion in this paper. These areas are: the social and academic engagement of both international and local students, and matters relating to English language standards and support. Observations arising from AUQA university reports direct attention to examples of initiatives that appear to be enriching the quality of the student engagement and indicate where further development may be required.

In seeking strategies for enhanced student experience, AUQA supports collaboration across universities in devising models for identifying student needs and creating mechanisms that bring about quality student experience, engagement and language outcomes. This analysis of the reports will likely assist those stakeholders working in universities who wish to identify successful approaches to promote the engagement of international students and refine existing useful and positive strategies in implementing and developing ideas in their own individual university contexts.

Analysis of the substantial text of AUQA reports have been underexploited by researchers to date. This paper is likely to be of interest to those stakeholders of international education in universities, not only in Australia but in other national contexts where international students are significantly represented.

Student transitions from secondary to tertiary education have attracted global attention as universities and colleges of higher education seek to improve student retention. Over the course of one academic year, I documented the transitional experiences of first-year male Emirati students at a college of higher education in a rural location of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In this paper I describe four categories of cultural border crossing experiences – smooth, managed, difficult, and impossible – with easier and smoother crossing experiences associated with close congruency (related to the students’ self-perceived attitude and scholastic preparedness as broadly reflected in their competence in their second language, English) between the predominantly Arabic life-world associated with Emirati families and government schooling and the dominant Western/English language culture in institutes of higher education. Additionally, I describe and evaluate students’ cultural border crossing experiences with some Foundation program faculty, finding that those teachers who developed a classroom culture based on Kleinfeld’s (1975) notion of ‘warm demandingness’ and caring rapport-building appeared to have the most positive impact upon the students. Implications from this research have the potential to positively impact both the student and faculty classroom experience in the Gulf tertiary classroom, in addition to improving overall student retention rates.

This study reports on the academic support programs targeting first-year business students at La Trobe Melbourne. The at-risk students were offered both a general academic support class and a content-based program. This study was conducted to explore students' perception of the usefulness of these programs. The paper also aims to create a better intervention to attract more at-risk students by exploring the reasons behind the low rate of at-risk students making use of these services.

The specific research uses a mixed method approach to explore a way to best address the academic needs of the first-year international business students, especially those identified as at-risk students in a college in Melbourne where both a general academic program and a discipline-based program were on offer.

The findings indicate that although the content-based program was highly evaluated by students and also attracted more students than the general support module, many at-risk students did not use this service. The low level of English proficiency, the heavy workload, the passive and dependent learning style, the unclear information about the service and the desire to follow only teachers' guidance all prevented at-risk students from making use of the available services. These students need further help and guidance in this transitional period to recognise the assistance provided for them and to make use of these services to enhance their learning.

Recently, various support activities have been designed to assist international students in enhancing their language and academic skills necessary for pursuing their study in Australia. These activities range from credit-based English for Academic Purposes courses, to optional general language and study programs, and more recently, discipline or content-based programs. There is also a tendency in several universities to move from offering general language and study programs to embedding disciplinary programs. Adopting disciplinary-based academic support activities seem to be the right direction in many universities as these activities are more likely to help increase the overall pass-rate and improve student learning outcomes. However, problems seem to remain when many at-risk international students do not seem to go for these services. This study has led some light on how to improve the future language and academic skills to support activities for first-year overseas business students.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications for student learning when accounting education is delivered in the student’s non-native language. It examines the impact on learning arising from the different components of English language competencies, namely, listening, reading, writing, and speaking.

The data are drawn from focus group interviews with students from Mainland China undertaking an accounting degree in Australia.

The findings indicate that students relied primarily on their reading instead of listening to seek understanding, and in turn, writing was considered less important compared to listening and reading. Notably, speaking was overlooked by many students as it was considered the least important skill necessary to achieve success as a student and to be a competent practitioner. Students developed a misconception that the quality of oral communication required of accountants in practice is unimportant.

The findings will assist accounting educators and the accounting profession in designing and implementing appropriate instructional strategies and assessment tasks for international students. One suggestion includes a more balanced weighting between written and oral assessment.

Few studies have specifically explored the impact of English language on learning accounting. While some studies examine specific aspects of language as a unitary concept, little has been reported on the impact of all components of the language skill-set on student learning.

This study aims to investigate two issues inherent in accounting judgements: the directional influence of uncertainty expressions and how they might positively or negatively affect accounting judgements and the foreign-language effect (FLE), which refers to the reduction of judgement bias that occurs when an accounting judgement is made in one’s foreign language. This study examines both issues in the context of accounting judgements made in Chinese and English languages.

This study conducted two experiments. The first experiment applied a 2 × 2 between-subject research design, and the second experiment adopted a 2 × 2 within-subject approach.

The overall results revealed that directionality biases existed in the exercise of accounting judgement in subjects’ native and foreign languages. However, when the language was switched from the subjects’ native tongue to a foreign language, overall directionality biases are reduced.

This study suggests that the use of native and non-native languages can have unintended consequences on accounting judgements. However, because of the limitations of using students as proxies for professionals and applying self-assessed language scales, the literature would benefit from future research that extends the subject profile to professional accountants and that assesses language skills more objectively.

This study contributes to the literature on cross-lingual accounting, both theoretically and methodologically. It also extends the FLE theory to an accounting context, providing insights on how language is involved in judgements concerning uncertainty expressions.

In Australia, as in many other countries, refugees are over-represented in the ranks of the unemployed, under-employed and precariously employed and often become frustrated in their attempts to secure work. Despite the construction industry being a major potential source of employment for refugees, there has been a surprising lack of research into their experiences of securing work in the industry. Addressing this gap and also the general lack of voice for refugees in construction research, the aim of this paper is to explore the barriers refugees face in securing employment in the construction industry.

This paper reports a survey of refugees who have worked or attempted to seek work in the Australian construction industry.

Results show that the main barriers to securing employment in construction are: lack of local work experience; employer discrimination; employer failure to recognise previous qualifications, skills and experience and employers not understanding the challenges they face. Government employment agencies and systems are also perceived to be of limited value and overly complex, in contrast to the activities of not-for-profit support agencies.

While the research is limited to Australia, the findings contribute an important and missing refugee dimension to the emerging body of research on construction social procurement. They also contribute unique sector-specific insights into the broader debate about refugee resettlement and employment. Further research is needed in other national contexts.

Recommendations are made to address the barriers to employment identified including: initiatives to provide refugees with work experience in the industry; education to break-down negative stereotypes of refugees among employers; greater support for not-for-profits supporting refugees and reform of government and employment agency systems and procedures.

By enhancing understanding of the barriers to employment for refugees in construction and proposing solutions to reduce those barriers, this research contributes new insights into a growing global challenge of how we better integrate growing numbers of refugees into harmonious and prosperous societies.

The findings are important in facilitating the smoother integration of refugees into society. Beyond the moral imperative, there are significant social, cultural and economic benefits which successful refugee integration brings to host countries and industries like construction which in many countries are now being required to employ refugees in their workforce as a condition of public sector contracts.

The chapter focuses on humanizing higher education by infusing ethical leadership in the curriculum to improve the public service. Its design is qualitative in nature and literature reviews and document analysis were employed in compiling the chapter. It followed an interpretive paradigm and used Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory as a lens in understanding humanizing education in higher education. Nowadays ethical leadership is of paramount importance in higher education and in the public service. Ethical leadership should be based on the moral person and on the moral manager. The moral person component focuses on desirable personal qualities of leaders such as being perceived as honest, fair and trustworthy. The moral manager focuses on the leader and uses transactional efforts such as rewards and punishments to reinforce desired behaviors. Soft skills are very important in higher education and should be transferred through coursework. Students need to be supported in all aspects of education including the academic, emotional and social demands in higher education.