A Critical Approach to Developing Culturally Relevant Leadership Curricula for Muslim Students

The secular and materialistic values imported to Muslim countries through globalisation and the uncritical application of Western models and theories are changing societies from being Muslim towards a materialistic and secular one where economic value is the most critical factor that drives people’s behaviour and decisions. The real challenge for Muslim countries, then, is to develop and implement higher education curricula that reflect Islamic and cultural values while incorporating global knowledge developed by Western and other scholars. This chapter aims to achieve this balance by proposing a theoretical model that can be used for developing culturally relevant and critically reflective leadership curricula. The model is derived from Habermas’ account of critical theory and offers a critical and holistic approach to leadership teaching. It adopts an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach to learning and aims to start a dialogue between Western and indigenous sources of knowledge. The model also proposes the content and teaching practices recommended by leadership scholars and leadership development literature internationally to provide students with a balanced and pluralistic learning experience that addresses both the spiritual and the intellectual aspects of knowledge

The Olympic Bid Cycle as a form of irrational investing: An application of Minskyian theory

Host city bidding for the Olympic Games appears to constitute a form of pro-cyclical irrational investing that leads to multi-billion dollar economic and financial shortfalls and budget over-runs with 100% consistency. The utilisation of Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH) and Credit Cycle to the Olympic Bid Cycle sheds valuable light on the irrationality of these practices, highlighting a move from stable (hedge) to unstable (speculative) and unsustainable, precarious (ponzi) financing over the life-cycle of an Olympic bid. Application of Minskyian theory to the Olympic Bid Cycle carries important insights for practitioners and policy-makers, extends the analysis of Olympic-Games studies to the post-Classical economics realm, and addresses a wider theoretical call for the utilisation of Minskyian theory outside of a financial markets context. The article concludes with recommendations for further research