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The purpose of this paper is to explore leadership styles and patterns in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the USA in order to contribute to a greater understanding of global leadership.

The paper uses cultural mythologies as a lens (Kessler and Wong-MingJi, 2009a) to extract the most favored leadership traits within selected countries. In doing so, the paper explores historical trajectories and core values of each country to identify their distinctive characteristics. Additionally, leadership styles of well-known business leaders in each culture are examined to develop a comparative discussion of global leadership patterns and styles.

The paper finds that leaders may share same characteristics across countries, however, their behavioral expressions tend to unfold differently within each context. The paper argues that without context, meanings embedded in cultural mythologies and behaviors often become lost. The paper concludes that a comparative analysis of selected countries reveals a more complex and rich array of cultural meanings, thus offering support to a contextual view of leadership.

Examination of cultural mythologies on leadership makes important theoretical contributions by illustrating that cultural mythologies indeed shape the values, behaviors, and attitudes of global leaders, and provide three important functions that are identified as: cultural bridging, meaning making, and contextual nuancing.

Understanding comparative leadership patterns is critical in international business. The paper offers cultural mythologies as a tool for leaders who seek to cross-cultural boundaries in developing long term and high-quality productive international business relationships.

The value of the study lies in developing a comparative analysis of leadership patterns in three Southeast Asian countries and the USA with the help of cultural mythologies. The paper urges that scholars to move beyond quantification of cultural dimensions to a more contextualized understanding of leadership.

This chapter develops a theoretical model of a collaborative inquiry-based group development process with a grounded theory approach. The purpose of this research study is to examine how educators engage in collaborative inquiry-based group development processes that transform their professional identity and pedagogical practices. Qualitative research data comes from the Livingstone Inquiry Group (LIG) in Vancouver, Canada. It is a longitudinal case study of inquiry-based pedagogies (IBPs) in a community of learners. They started in 2007 with members representing K-12 teachers, resource staff, administrators, higher education, and union organizations. The model outlines generative dynamics between social capital and relational learning which support pedagogical paradigm shifts in the group’s collaboration. Implications of this study provide direction for research regarding inquiry-based learning in higher educational institutions as an important forum for sustainable professional development of teachers as life-long learners.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to improve faculty and institutional development and to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions to enhance faculty and institutional development. This chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should be a place where lifelong and lifewide learning is cultivated and where self-directed learning is nurtured. To that end, this chapter argues that IBL helps cultivate a learning environment that is more meaningful, responsive, integrated, and purposeful.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of human resource supply chain (HRSC) models that enable comparison of different models for making more informed strategic HR outsourcing decisions.

In the paper interviews and company documents were used to construct multiple comparative case studies.

The paper finds that five generic HRSC models were identified in two broad categories – two in‐sourcing models (local contracting and HR centralizing) and three outsourcing models (purchasing HR, non‐staffing HR, and staffing HR). Additional findings relate to the redistribution of power and competencies for managing HR within and between organizations.

The paper shows that future research should account for different HRSC models to address various dependent variables, especially distribution of power and HR competencies in managing HR supply chains and contribution to firm performance. Future studies on strategic alliances can benefit from building on the HRSC models in building different types of partnerships.

In this paper it is found that managers have a means for comparison of different HRSC models to make more fully informed strategic outsourcing decisions and to develop related HR competencies related to each one of the generic models.

This paper clarifies critical differences in five different generic HRSC models that must be accounted for in research on strategic HR and outsourcing. Without understanding the differences in HRSCs, managers often unwittingly relinquish power and control over critical HR functions to other organizational units or vendor organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the types of business consulting services most needed by small business owners and entrepreneurs and to examine the role that gender and ethnicity plays in the demand for specialized assistance.

A survey was administered to small business owners and entrepreneurs to rate their interest in specialized consulting services. The consulting assistance was divided into strategic, operating and administrative categories based on the framework of Chrisman and Leslie.

Overall, the type of consulting with the highest interest was in the area of operations assistance, followed by strategic assistance and administrative assistance. Although few differences were found between male and female respondents, there were significant differences in the needs of minority women.

This study demonstrates the need for further research on minority female small business owners and entrepreneurs. In particular, it suggests further investigation of services that could be made available to them.

The results indicate that programs designed to assist minority women might have the greatest potential impact. Specialized attention may be necessary to assist this demographic segment, particularly since prior research indicates that minorities often start with greater resource limitations. Public policies should continue to encourage progress by helping establish a new generation of minority entrepreneurs.

The findings from this study provided current evidence of the specialized needs of minority entrepreneurs. It is important to distinguish the needs of entrepreneurs in today's marketplace, in order to develop the most effective and impactful small business assistance programs.

The purpose of this study is to conceptualize, develop and validate a scale reflecting performance dimensions of women entrepreneurs. The study intends to address the important aspects of women entrepreneur such as identifying factors influencing performance of women entrepreneur in emerging economies including India, and to develop a reliable and valid scale for measuring performance from women entrepreneurs’ perspective, which will help to explain the phenomena of entrepreneurship among women by using a holistic approach.

In-depth literature reviews were conducted to identify manifest item measuring the latent scale dimensions. Semi-structured interview with women entrepreneurs also contributed toward item generation. A total of 1,032 valid and usable questionnaires were used for the final statistical data analysis. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) also conducted to confirm factors-item composition considered for the study.

A final scale comprising six dimensions of entrepreneurial performance has been developed. These dimensions are business environment, motivation (pull/push), training and skill development, networking and market information, socio–cultural and financial. Dimensions are reflecting perception of women entrepreneurs on performance. Psychometrically properties of the proposed scale were tested and the model fitness was established through CFA.

The proposed scale will be beneficial for both existing and nascent entrepreneurs toward gaining awareness regarding what accounts for their performance enhancement in the respective ventures undertaken. At the same time, the finding carries implications for regulatory bodies and policymakers as well, which are engaged in drafting guidelines catering to the development of women entrepreneurship in respective economies.

The authors believe that the proposed scale offers superior ability to explain factors that affect the performance of women entrepreneurs in emerging economies such as India.