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How can we learn leadership? The vision of the Europe-wide University

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Abstract

In the view of many students, business and engineering education in Europe today do not sufficiently take into account complex problems, tendencies of chaos and uncontrollable business behaviour, and the lack of mutual trust in business transactions. Additionally, universities seem to fail in creating leaders, instead focusing on educating future managers. Therefore, the student-run international organisation the European Students of Industrial Engineering and Management (ESTIEM) offers a whole series of educational activities and programmes in parallel to their own university courses. It is based on the concept of experiential learning. Through ESTIEM, we, students of Industrial Engineering Management, learn and practise working in teams with shared and rotating leadership among ourselves. These experiences are to be described in the paper in some more detail, as a model for university education in industrial engineering and management. Furthermore, the following questions will be tackled: What does leadership mean today? How are problems handled by leaders and managers in industry nowadays? How can leadership to solve complex problems be taught in the university? As a consequence, it is suggested to develop out of the ESTIEM programmes, a series of university-equivalent ESTIEM courses. In the long term, the goal might be to realise the vision of a genuine Europe-wide “ESTIEM University” in its own right, similar to normal universities which will help in shaping new leadership generation in Europe.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is a short summary of thoughts and experiences gathered during the last two years that we spent within ESTIEM. It would not have happened without two particular events and two particular persons: Jim Platts, University of Cambridge, and Dietrich Brandt, RWTH Aachen, Germany. Also, we would like to thank Toon Ariens, University of Applied Science Rotterdam, NL, for helping us in developing our business projects during the Summer Academy 2012. The two weeks spent on those two Summer Academies would not be the same without the 25 ESTIEMers—the participants of both Summer Academies 2011 and 2012. Thank you for being our friends and thank you, ESTIEM, for linking us with those people.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty for Business Administration, Mummert Scholarship for Executives of Tomorrow (Bosch Foundation), University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Natalia Kobza

  2. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Torben Schaefer

  3. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Robert Glawar

  4. RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Dietrich Brandt

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  1. Natalia Kobza
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  2. Torben Schaefer
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  3. Robert Glawar
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  4. Dietrich Brandt
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Correspondence to Natalia Kobza.

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Kobza, N., Schaefer, T., Glawar, R. et al. How can we learn leadership? The vision of the Europe-wide University. AI & Soc 31, 413–429 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0616-5

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