BUSI44U15: The Science of Leadership

• None

• None.

• None.

• 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

• Lecture sessions: theory will be presented together with the relevant research and evidence to enable a critical and evidenced-based approach to understanding.
• Seminars will address:
• issues to do with culture and context, thus allowing students to appreciate the role of the external environment in shaping leadership behaviour;
• the complexity for leaders to meet differing (individual/group and organisational) demands;
• 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.

If you have a question about Durham's modular degree programmes, please visit our Help page. If you have a question about modular programmes that is not covered by the Help page, or a query about the on-line Postgraduate Module Handbook, please contact us.

Prospective Students: If you have a query about a specific module or degree programme, please Ask Us.

Current Students: Please contact your department.