The Department of Management, University of Dhaka held a progress review meeting on 25 July 2026 for its ongoing research sub-project under the University Grants Commission's Higher Education Acceleration and Transformation (HEAT) Project, Academic Transformation Fund (ATF), Window 3a — "Up-Skilling Bangladeshi Talents for Corporate Leadership: A Sustainable Pathway to Reducing the Dependencies on Top-Tier Inpatriates" (PIN-13001).

The sub-project, led by Dr. Mohammad Abdul Jabber (Sub-Project Manager) with Dr. Shah Ridwan Chowdhury as Assistant Sub-Project Manager, and Md. Razib Hossain and Md. Nazmus Sakib as team members, aims to reduce Bangladeshi corporations' reliance on highly compensated foreign executives by building leadership capacity among indigenous talent. Four Masters scholarship students from the Department from the 26th and 27th batches are also attached to the project as part of its research capacity-building mandate, with Elma Noorain Momo (26th) and Banhyshikha Thakur (27th) presenting the project’s progress to the board.

Presenting to the board, the team reported that three major components of the project's first objective have been completed:

- A systematic literature review of 60 studies, drawn from an initial pool of 183 records identified through Scopus and Google Scholar and narrowed through a structured PRISMA screening process.
- The research methodology for Objective 1, grounded in the Organization-Task-Person needs-assessment model and Peterson and Van Fleet's ten-skill leadership competency framework.
- A survey instrument covering all ten leadership skill categories, developed from validated sources and prepared for nationwide administration.

With this foundation in place, the project is now positioned to move into its next phase: a nationwide baseline survey of approximately 1,800 incumbent managers across key economic sectors, designed to diagnose leadership skill gaps and inform sector-specific upskilling strategies.

The team also noted that three research papers are currently in preparation based on work completed to date, including a systematic and bibliometric review expected to be submitted within the next three months.

The HEAT/ATF Window 3a initiative supports research led by junior academics in priority national development areas. The Department of Management's sub-project runs from August 2025 to June 2028.