This study explores how a 12-week virtual management development program fosters networking leadership, global self-confidence and multicultural acceptance across different career stages (students, managers and executives) using experiential learning theory (ELT) and transformative learning theory (TLT) as integrated design principles.
Participants from over 50 countries (N = 214: students, n = 103; managers, n = 89; executives, n = 22) completed post-program survey. We used Welch ANOVA with Games-Howell post hoc tests to address heteroscedasticity and OLS regression with HC3 standard errors for robustness checks, controlling for age and international experience.
Career stage-specific peaks emerged: managers scored highest on Networking Leadership (M = 3.64, ω² = 0.09), executives on Global Self-Confidence (M = 3.82, ω² = 0.12), and students on Multicultural Acceptance (M = 3.57, ω² = 0.02). The effects remained strong even after controlling for age and experience. All competencies correlated positively (r = 0.42–0.56), supporting integrated management development approaches.
Organizations should implement career-stage-aware integrated designs in which all participants experience each component with a developmental focus guided by coaching prompts rather than content separation. This maintains the advantages of cross-stage learning while meeting the diverse needs of learners.
This is the first study to demonstrate ELT–TLT integration in a scalable virtual format with career-stage differentiation, offering a replicable component-level blueprint and robust statistical methods for analyzing heterogeneous sample data.
