The course presents concepts and theories of strategic leadership through different teaching formats. This includes the essence and scope of strategic leadership, the role and style, characteristics and experience of executives, decision-making style and their relationship to organizational outcomes as well as leadership in teams. Important topics like inclusive and ethical leadership and adaptive leadership will be covered. 

·     Given that the Strategic Leadership course awards 6 ECTS credits, the total expected workload is approximately 150 hours. The course includes 18 contact hours across 9 online sessions, including the final exam. Given the reduced number of contact hours, a substantial portion of the workload is dedicated to self-study, including reading and writing assignments and group work. This ensures that students engage with the material outside of class and apply theoretical concepts in practice.

Students who have passed this course successfully are able to:

• Distinguish between different types of leadership;
• Understand different aspects of leadership and place them into their respective contexts;
• Apply leadership to decision-making and to working in teams;
• Understand how cultural contexts influence leadership behavior;
• Identify characteristics and behaviors of inclusive and ethical leadership.

In addition, students practice collaboration and presentation skills by working in groups. Problem-solving, critical thinking and the application of theory to practice are enhanced through a group project on various leadership topics.

Attendance in all online sessions is mandatory. This is because the course is offered in a format with less contact hours and more time for self-study (for preparation, group work and reading assignments). The online sessions are therefore reserved to critically discuss the reading material, organize group work and interactive activities to apply theoretical concepts to practical cases.

Class contributions are an essential part of the grading. Students are expected to turn their camera on and participate actively. Please make sure to have a quiet and appropriate environment for an online lecture (no background noises or distracting circumstances).

The course involves a variety of teaching methods, including:

• Lectures and discussion of key concepts
• Case studies and interactive group exercises, including role plays
• Videos illustrating leadership examples
• Individual reflections
• Coaching sessions

Lectures

Key concepts are presented in class and discussed with students. All participants are expected to have read the relevant chapters beforehand in order to contribute to a meaningful discussion. The theoretical input will be complemented with interactive exercises to solidify the knowledge gained.

Leadership Articles, Case Studies and Exercises

Leadership articles and case studies are used to deepen theoretical knowledge and exemplify key concepts through real-world examples. Students will complete these individually or in groups to discuss and prepare input. Interactive exercises include guided discussions, video analyses and role plays.

Leadership Videos

Students will have the opportunity to gain insights from leaders in business across the world through videos featuring biographical information and leadership talks.

Reflection

Students are expected to reflect on leadership throughout the course. This includes picking leaders of their choice and analyzing their behavior or working on an assigned leadership case.

Coaching sessions

In preparation for the group progress presentations, student groups are required to attend a mandatory coaching session with our tutors. More information on this will be communicated in the course. Failure to attend this session will result in a 5-point deduction from the group project. In addition, instructors are available for individual meetings throughout the course upon request.

The course grade is based on the following assessment elements:

• Class participation and reading assignments: 15 points
  • Oral participation: 7 points
  • Reading assignments: 8 points
• Learning diary: 10 points
• Peer grading: 10 points
• Group project: 30 points
• Final exam: 35 points

This course includes individual and group performance. Evaluation will be based on the different assignments by the instructor and peer evaluation by students of their group members (avoiding free-riding).

Please log in with your WU account to use all functionalities of read!t. For off-campus access to our licensed electronic resources, remember to activate your VPN connection connection. In case you encounter any technical problems or have questions regarding read!t, please feel free to contact the library at readinglists@wu.ac.at.

Instructor
Professor Barbara Sporn, Professor and Director, Institute for Higher Education Management, barbara.sporn@wu.ac.at

Use of AI in Assignments

All assignments submitted on CANVAS will be screened for plagiarism and AI using Turnitin.

Your assignments should be your original work and you should declare the use of AI. Misusing text generated by AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Grammarly, Bard, or others, is not considered original work. It is considered academic misconduct under our policy, leading to serious disciplinary actions.  The automated plagiarism check of your assignments will return a probability score for AI generated text.

While the core should be your own creation, you are allowed to use AI-based tools for grammar checks and writing revisions. However, you are not allowed to use AI-based software to generate new text for your assignments, for example, by using prompts like "write a paragraph about my topic" or "make this section longer." If you choose to use AI-based tools, please ensure that you provide a detailed overview in the appendix, including your prompts and the responses from the text generation software that you used to generate your paper. To assist you with this, we provided a reporting text template below.

Text Template for Reporting the Use of AI Tools:

Acknowledgment of Artificial Intelligence Tools Used:

For purposes of writing revision and grammar checks, I used the following tools:

Gramarly (https://www.grammarly.com)

Chat-GPT v.3.5 (https://chat.openai.com/)

Bing (https://www.bing.com)

I used the following prompts:

"Check for errors in my writing"

"Correct for grammar, spelling and comma mistakes."

I used the output to help revise my writing in the following segments of my thesis:

1.1. Introduction
2.3. Sampling
3.4.2. Results Study 1
4. Discussion