12: The Impact of Globalization and the COVID-19 Pandemic on Leadership in International Development: The Need for Adaptive Transformational System Leadership and Expanded Consciousness

The end of the Cold War and concomitant globalization radically transformed the priorities of international development and international aid, and placed new demands on leaders in this realm (Asefa, 2010; D’Alessandro & Leautier, 2016; Verson, 2017). Globalization brought new challenges of integration into global markets of previously isolated countries, expanded trade, unleashed mass migration, climate change, pandemics, more localized conflicts and demands for citizen influence on political processes, increased inequality and extreme poverty, among others. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these challenges in addition to threatening a global economic collapse and causing millions of people to be unemployed and to sink into extreme poverty. The pandemic revealed that fundamental socio-economic systems are in collapse. Greatly increased interconnections and interactions between global leaders and states are required to address these multi-faceted challenges. Leaders in international development and international aid have had to broaden their horizons and embrace new perspectives and approaches in order to effectively deal with these new, complex realities.