Stakeholders' views and experiences of leadership education in construction: suggestions for improvements

Paper in proceedings, 2015

In construction-related education, leadership development is generally a scarce feature in education curricula. Yet, the critical need of "good" leadership at all levels of construction-related organisations is being increasingly highlighted in research and in practice. In this paper, we focus on how leadership competence at middle-manager level, e.g. site managers, may be enhanced and we examine how higher education may address this need. The overall aim is to suggest how leadership development may be introduced and/or improved in programs and courses. Rather than using a questionnaire or individual interviews, the data was collected in three focus groups. Each group addressed one level of higher education: vocational, bachelor and master, respectively, and included practitioner, teacher and student stakeholders. The focus groups were recorded. The field notes and the photographic documentation strengthened the reliability of our interpretations. The paper describes how focus groups were used, discusses the aggregated findings from the groups and suggests some ways in which education curricula can be improved to incorporate transferable leadership development and competence to contexts in which graduates will operate. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.