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This article endeavors to detail the outcomes of an exploratory investigation into the perceived attainment levels of complex thinking competencies among business students at a technological university in western Mexico. It seeks to examine and contrast the students' self-assessed development of this critical competency, along with its associated sub-competencies, throughout their academic tenure.

Our analysis focused on two distinct groups of students, one at the beginning of their academic journey and the other nearing its completion, to explore whether perceptions of competency development were equitable across genders. Utilizing multivariate descriptive statistical analysis, we were able to substantiate the existence of a gender gap in the perceived development of competencies.

While both male and female students showed improvement in their self-perceived competencies, the results indicate that women outperformed their male counterparts in the area of complex thinking and its associated sub-competencies by the conclusion of their degree programs.

The evidence suggests that there is a gender gap in the educational process for this group of students, highlighting the urgent need to minimise disparities in the perception between male and female business students about their competencies.

This article presents findings that pave the way for future research aimed at exploring strategies to narrow the gap in perceived competency achievement throughout the educational journey in business studies, considering how the environment and cultural elements can be determining factors in how students perceive their abilities and skills.

This article aims to present the results of an exploratory pilot study that demonstrates the validity of a self-created implementation methodology to develop the students' level of perceived achievement of the social entrepreneurship competency and explain how this is equally valid in developing the perceived achievement of the complex thinking competency.

Based on a multivariate descriptive statistical analysis, this article offers the results of an educational intervention carried out on a sample group of students from a Mexican university before and after a training program in social entrepreneurship.

The favorable results showed that the proposed methodology is valid for scaling social entrepreneurship and complex thinking competencies and their subcompetencies.

These results are not only academically valuable, as they highlight the need to delve into the relationship between these two competencies, but they also allow us to appreciate the ample opportunities for practical implementation of entrepreneurship programs by universities and other institutions to work directly with social entrepreneurs and seek alternatives to develop skills through devising, proposing and developing social entrepreneurship projects.

The study aims to assess students' perceived mastery of reasoning-for-complexity competency and its sub-competencies in a sample of students in a Latin American university. The intention was to identify statistically significant differences between a population of men and women with similar sociocultural characteristics, assessing whether gender could be a factor for educational institutions to consider when implementing strategies to develop this competency.

The eComplexity instrument was applied to 370 undergraduate students in their first to ninth semesters in a private university in Western Mexico. Descriptive statistics were analyzed to determine the mean and standard deviation indicators and were tested for statistical significance. The convenience sampling methodology ensured that there were students from all semesters and a diversity of majors. The sampling aimed for a balance of men and women, resulting in 189 women and 181 men.

The results confirmed no statistically significant evidence to indicate differences between men and women in their perceived mastery of the reasoning-for-complexity competency in general. However, statistically significant differences were found in the perceived achievements of the sub-competencies of systems, critical and scientific thinking, which comprise the overall competency. Women presented a higher average perception of systemic and critical thinking achievement, and men had a higher perception of scientific thinking. The authors concluded that social and cultural elements influence the perception of achievement that men and women develop in thinking and solving problems.

Governments and educational institutions must establish training programs that do not follow gender stereotypes and promote reasoning-for-complexity skills equitably in men and women. It is necessary to create more scientific and academic spaces and projects involving women in the sciences; countries must emphasize this to improve their scientific competency. Only in this way will it be possible to reverse the perception that men and women have of their problem-solving skills and abilities, which, as this study shows, are more a matter of culture than capabilities.

Unlike previous studies, which analyze the competency of complex thinking in a particular way among its sub-competencies, this research sought comprehensive measurement. Furthermore, beyond measuring competency development, this study aimed to measure the perception of achievement. The authors believe this is the first step towards identifying elements of the social imagination that limit the formation of scientific thinking among women in Latin America.

The challenges facing 21st-century society are becoming increasingly complex, requiring the development of new citizen competencies. This study aims to validate an educational model focused on developing complex thinking in higher education students. Current educational models lack future-ready competencies, necessitating the emergence of new models to guide future generations toward the common good.

This was an adaptation of the causal-layered analysis (CLA) applied to 415 participants from higher education institutions in Mexico, Panama and Spain. Sessions were designed to present the proposed educational model and explore participants’ perceptions of its significance and contributions to future education.

Key findings include the following: participants perceived complexity as difficult and challenging; causes of problems were linked to outdated educational models requiring replacement by those that develop students’ competencies; participants envisioned changes that would develop individuals capable of understanding and transforming society; and participants recognized the model’s transformative potential, offering a novel proposal for 21st-century education.

This research sought to gather opinions from different stakeholders using the CLA methodology, providing a deep understanding of participants’ perspectives on the proposed solution.

Service robotics, a branch of robotics that entails the development of robots able to assist humans in their environment, is of growing interest in the hospitality industry. Designing effective autonomous service robots, however, requires an understanding of Human–Robot Interaction (HRI), a relatively young discipline dedicated to understanding, designing, and evaluating robotic systems for use by or with humans. HRI has not yet received sufficient attention in hospitality robotic design, much like Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) in property management system design in the 1980s. This article proposes a set of introductory HRI guidelines with implementation standards for autonomous hospitality service robots.

A set of key user-centered HRI guidelines for hospitality service robots were extracted from 52 research articles. These are organized into service performance categories to provide more context for their application in hospitality settings.

Based on an extensive literature review, this article presents some HRI guidelines that may drive higher levels of acceptance of service robots in customer-facing situations. Deriving meaningful HRI guidelines requires an understanding of how customers evaluate service interactions with humans in hospitality settings and to what degree those will differ with service robots.

Robots are challenging assumptions on how hospitality businesses operate. They are being increasingly deployed by hotels and restaurants to boost productivity and maintain service levels. Effective HRI guidelines incorporate user requirements and expectations in the design specifications. Compilation of such information for designers of hospitality service robots will offer a clearer roadmap for them to follow.