Hong Kong and China: Promotion of Holistic Development in Young People Under the Service Economy

With the growth of the service economy, we have to ask how we can nurture leadership with a service mindset. Service is not simply customer service. It is a quality transaction between the service providers and service recipients in service provision. As such, the qualities of service leaders are very important, which include competencies, character and care according to the Service Leadership Theory proposed by Dr Po Chung. Consistent with the beliefs of a positive youth development approach, we can enhance service leadership qualities by promoting holistic youth development under the service economy through various strategies. One common element in these approaches to optimal development of young people is the belief that desired attributes in young people can be nurtured through either dedicated programs and/or environmental change. We give several examples in this book. The first example is academic Service-Learning (SL) subjects. Another strategy to promote the holistic development of young people is positive youth development programs and the third strategy is to promote youth development through leadership subjects. We hope that these strategies can enrich our understanding of how we can nurture service leaders under the service economy.