The Contribution of Financial Services-related Higher Education to the Development of Global Citizenship and the Influence of Global Citizenship on Employability in the Financial Services Sector

This thesis explores the 'global citizen' concept in higher education and financial services sectors. It investigates business school lecturers' and financial services managers' understandings of the 'global citizen' phenomenon. It investigates whether global citizenship supports employability in the financial services sector and should therefore be an aim of financial services-related higher education.Since 2000, 'global citizen' has been used increasingly in public, educational and business discourses, but the term encompasses many ideas and practices and is not clearly defined in policies or research literature in either higher education or business contexts. Some literature and policy documents suggest that global citizenship contributes to employability, which implies the need for a match between employment recruitment criteria and global citizen attributes promoted and developed in higher education.To address these issues, a qualitative investigation was undertaken using semi-structured interviews with business school lecturers and financial services managers together with documentary analysis of higher education and financial services policies. The conjoining of Lave and Wenger's legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice and Archer's identity development through reflexive deliberation provided a framework to understand, interpret and explain the data. The findings show varied understandings of 'global citizen' both within and between my academic and professional communities of practice, and challenge the notion that being a global citizen contributes to employability in the financial services sector.This study also exposes disparities in academic and professional understandings of the aim(s) of higher education both within and between the two groups. Business school participants in the study largely considered that developing employability should be an aim of higher education, while the academics who participated in the research believed higher education should promote students' personal development. This may include global and cultural awareness, attributes that may be ascribed to global citizenship, but not the development of global citizens per se.