Social Enterprise Work Placements: Connecting Competence to International Management Experience

In this chapter we show how international management work placements, particularly in social enterprises, can be structured to support management and leadership competencies in students across disciplines. First, we explore the current drivers for change in management education towards social benefit, and how universities are capitalizing on this trend by offering students from multiple disciplines opportunities for work placement abroad. Then, through examples from a successful programme, we discuss implications for course design, assess, indicate general issues and challenges, and provide a range of areas for further development. After that, we connect the programme to current international management competency literature — specifically Responsible Global Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship competencies. Further, we introduce three context-defined competencies that are university ‘mission-specific’— action research, vocational discernment, and failure analysis. These are mapped with existing competencies on a global framework adapted from the management literature. The result is a global competency structuring tool which programme planners and students can use to build, justify, adapt, and/or accredit their international management field experience, particularly in relation to problem solving for sustainability and social change.