Empowering Leaders for Global Contemporary Businesses

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Developing leadership capacity conference

Research seminar series

Conversation Series

Empowering Leaders for Global Contemporary Businesses

Call for Submissions: Empowering Leaders for Global Contemporary Businesses, October 27-29, 2025 (Centre for Leadership and Empowerment, Off Campus Division, University of Greater Manchester, UK; Global and Sustainable Business Futures, University of Bradford and the SHE Inspires Foundation)

The Centre for Leadership and Empowerment at the University of Greater Manchester, in collaboration with the Global and Sustainable Business Futures Research Cluster at the University of Bradford and the SHE Inspires Foundation is proud to host a Joint conference titled Empowering Leaders for Global Contemporary Businesses on its beautiful campus in Bolton from the Monday 27 to Wednesday 29 of October 2025.

This pioneering event brings together scholars, practitioners, industry leaders, and changemakers to explore leadership strategies and approaches, sustainable business practices, and strategic innovation within contemporary global enterprises. Positioned at the intersection of academic research and real-world impact, the conference aims to spark meaningful dialogue and inspire actionable insights towards a more empowered, equitable, and future-oriented business landscape.

This joint conference aims to advance current understandings of empowering leadership within the context of contemporary global business. In this conference, we welcome submissions that offer novel insights, challenge conventional wisdom, or present evidence-based practice across a range of leadership and organisational contexts. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Emerging leadership models in global business settings
Empowering leadership strategies and organisational capability
Leadership in creativity, innovation, and learning
Gender and inclusive leadership
Leadership for sustainability and ESG outcomes
Strategic governance and innovation in international organisations
Digital leadership and technological transformation
Responsible and ethical leadership practices
International HRM and leadership development
Cross-cultural leadership and global talent strategies
Ethical Leadership in the Age of AI
Sustainability Leadership - Green Capitalism or Greenwashing?
Geopolitics and the Global Corporation
Social entrepreneurship and business ethics
The role of innovation and agility in sustaining competitive advantage
Empowering digital innovation by diverse leadership in ICT
International business and leadership lessons to tackle societal grand challenges.

SUBMISSIONS

This conference is for academics and practitioners who are interested in developing the leadership and managerial capacity to succeed within a dynamic environment. Our purpose is to create a meaningful dialogue between academics and practitioners by creating space for debate in the following three formats. However, participation in the conference is also possible without a submission.

Research and Theory Tracks: Submissions to this stream should make contributions towards research and/or theory. In this stream, we would like to particularly encourage early career researchers and PhD students to submit their work.
Practical Workshops: Submissions to this stream should be practically orientated and should be small workshops that explore innovative and creative techniques and tools used in leadership learning, development and education. Space and resources will be provided for explorations, so requirements, such as room size and time, should be made clear in the abstract/summary submitted.
3. Case Studies: This submission stream is dedicated to those wishing to describe and explore examples of innovative and creative leadership learning, development and education.

While we encourage submissions linked to the conference theme, we also welcome work on any theme linked to research on leadership and allied fields.

Submissions to the conference should be in the form of a 750-word (excluding references) abstract and should be forwarded to the conference organisers on or before Friday 13 of June 2025 at w.nandini@bolton.ac.uk or r.hasmi2@bolton.ac.uk

The conference committee will consider abstracts after the deadline, and decisions are communicated within two weeks.

Further information can be found here