LDRS-Value Based Leadership-Whittington

This course focuses on an employee-centered analysis of organizational value creation through the leadership of human resources.  The intersection of organizational theory, behavior, development, and change serves as the context in which students are challenged to develop the knowledge, skills, and ability necessary to plan, evaluate, implement and improve organizational initiatives.  Emphasis is placed on critically evaluating multi-dimensional value creation perspectives.

This is an advanced course in management that is designed to stimulate creative and critical thinking about how leaders create value in and for contemporary organizations. The course materials have been selected to prompt thinking about the complexity of leading organizations from a wide variety of perspectives. As a result, participants in the course will improve their understanding of organizations, as well as their ability to relate to, function within, and effectively lead organizations to create value.

This course will use concepts from organizational behavior, human resources management, philosophy, social psychology, sociology, strategic management, and organizational theory. Accordingly, we will look at organizations through many lenses throughout the semester. In fact, we will work hard at developing what is termed “critical multiplism” and attempt to cast aside the biases of “perspectivism” that we all have.

REQUIRED TEXT(S):

The format of the course is:

−      An interactive seminar in which each participant shares responsibility for the presentation and discussion of materials. To facilitate this process, participants will be assigned an article/book excerpt or two to present to the class and lead the class discussion during the term.  Each article overview presentation will be no longer than five-minutes.

−      The participant responsible for leading the discussion will provide each member of the class a 1-page, bullet point, executive summary of their assigned article/book excerpt.  Each course participant is required to upload the executive summary of their assigned reading onto the course’s UD E-Companion under the “docshare” area (please make the document viewable to all class participants) for that week’s session no later than the beginning of the session.

−      Students who are not leading the discussion are to prepare one discussion question for each assigned reading. A discussion question should do one of the following: critique the reading, offer a contrasting or comparative viewpoint, or extend the application of the article’s perspective to other settings such as the work environment.  The discussion questions are to be typed (vs. hand-written) and turned in to the instructor (all questions for the class session on one page) at the beginning of each class session in hard copy.

Class participation:

The format of the course is an interactive seminar in which each participant shares responsibility for the presentation and discussion of the course materials.  Participation does not mean saying something just to be heard.  Some general characteristics of “accountable participation” include:  thought provoking questions, relating what is in the readings to “real world” organizations and situations, putting forth alternative viewpoints about the topic at hand, listening and thoughtfully responding to the views of classmates, and putting forth reasons for your opinions. 

Integrative essay: There will be three integrative essays assigned during the course of the semester. Students are required to complete two of them. These will require the student to demonstrate an understanding of the course materials by integrating the topics through an essay that explains the concepts in detail and may involve comparing and contrasting the various perspectives discussed in class. I will provide some questions to prompt your thinking for these essays. They should be written in good form, double-spaced in 12-point font.