Education and Literature for Development in Responsibility: Partnership Hedges Globalization

Development in Responsibility

The need for global cooperation in mutual responsibility has long been accepted and has furthermore been underlined by the complex effects of globalization. As an effort to effectively manage the positive effects of globalization and to hedge its negative societal consequences, the need for trans-national collaboration among universities enjoys growing importance. Since 2004, an educational program for managers, developers, policy makers and administrators has been implemented at Graz University in Austria attracting annually some hundred new students (GS 2012). Similar initiatives creating developmental curricula were successful earlier in Vienna (IE 2012) and later in Salzburg (PLUS 2012).

For practical implementation of such ethically and globalization-oriented studies, the distribution of curricular courses at any given university might have to

• 1.

  Demonstrate appropriate respect and esteem in relation to other paradigms.

• 2.

  Allow students a high level of choice according to their preferences and needs.

• 3.

  Take into account the availability of courses from other studies that can be included as electives.

One of the practical uses of this article might be to serve as a template and case study for similar transnational collaborative ventures in higher education management, to support interdisciplinary quality assessment and encourage the building of cutting-edge transdisciplinary educational programs in order to manage globalization in a culture of partnership. Disciplines and communicational profiles are both manifest in the diversity of students’ backgrounds.

For educational programs dealing with globalization, development and global studies, the author proposes as definition and motto: development is growing jointly in responsibility.

The present article has two targets:

• 1.

  To present a view on developmental science and “Global Studies” (GS) using a bibliographic analysis of the main peer reviewed journals in this field by utilizing several literature databases: ISI by Thomson Reuters, Scopus by Elsevier and Publish or Perish (PoP) using Google Scholar data.

• 2.

  To show and explain the curriculum of “Global Studies” (GS) Graz as a template for international comparison that could serve to enhance further trans-national collaboration among universities and even lead to the foundation of so-called “joint degrees.”

As a basis for writing and contextualizing, this paper dwells on the involvement of the second author as initiator and founder of the GS curriculum at Graz University after a full career in continued education, peace-keeping, and institution-building; of both authors’ lectures in practically all courses established specifically for GS Graz; and of the first author’s decades-long experiences in technologically-enhanced collaborative learning environments and dozens of practical developmental projects.