BUSI44U15: The Science of Leadership

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• To enable a science-based understanding of the role of leadership, its multiple facets, and its relationship to the role of management.
• To provide a systematic process-related framework for understanding, evaluating, and applying leadership theory.
• To critically review research evidence relating to our theoretical understanding of leadership, distinguishing leadership myths from leadership science.
• To understand how leadership affects the development of individuals, teams, organisations and societies.
• To build science-based understanding of students' own leadership skills and capacities.

• What processes lead to the perception of leadership and facilitate social influence and human performance?
• Major theories which underpin our understanding of leadership which may include:
• Process and skill-based theories of leadership
• Implicit theories of leadership
• Understanding alternative views of knowledge and their relation to effectiveness
• Social identity theory, social exchange, and social justice theories, and leadership
• Leadership and organisational performance, complexity, and change
• Effects of ethical versus destructive leadership; sustainable leadership; social leadership

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Critical understanding of the linkages between theory and practice of leadership through application to contemporary situations
• Critical understanding of current challenges for leadership, such as diversity, social justice, climate change, and the role of the follower and (coping with) destructive leadership

Subject-specific Skills:

• Ability to understand, criticize, and apply leadership from a systematic information processing, affective, social exchange and dynamic systems perspectives
• Ability to understand how to project an image as a confident, powerful individual

Key Skills:

• Written communication
• Understanding social perception and social communication processes involving explicit and implicit processes
• Understanding how social processes are embedded in context and the role of leadership/followership in managing contextual linkages

• Theory will be presented together with the relevant research and evidence to enable a critical and evidenced-based approach to understanding.
• Address issues to do with culture and context, thus allowing students to appreciate the role of the external environment in shaping leadership behaviour;
• Address the complexity for leaders to meet differing (individual/group and organisational) demands;
• Examine the effect of positive and also bad/destructive leadership, embodied aspects of self-presentation.
• These themes will be explored through a variety of media including videos, written cases and practical exercises. In this way each student will be challenged to apply the theoretical and evidence-based material from lectures and also gain an appreciation of the tools and techniques commonly used by leaders and followers.
• The summative written assignments (which will be topic or case based) will test students' theoretical understanding, their knowledge of relevant evidence, and their ability to apply these to contemporary settings.

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