General provisions

Master's Programme in Business and Management - specialisation 'International Business', 'Marketing', 'Organisation'.

Entry requirements

Strategy and Contemporary Issues, 15 credits. A Bachelor's degree, equivalent to a Swedish Kandidatexamen, from an internationally recognised university. Also required is 90 credits in business studies. Proficiency in English equivalent to the Swedish upper secondary course English 6. As all teaching takes place in English, very good language skills in English are a necessity to be able to partake in the course.

For incoming exchange students an introductory course at Master's level from previous studies is required. Exceptions can be made from the requirement of 90 credits in business studies, provided that special reasons are considered to exist.

Learning outcomes

The course deals with well-established concepts and theories about leadership and employees in companies and organizations. In today's integrated world, global conflicting expectations are encountered internally and externally both nationally and globally, which together with complexity in various situations make leadership difficult. Individual leadership is increasingly questioned in favor of alternative leadership solutions. Based on contemporary leadership research, sustainability, ethics, and social responsibility together with major challenges facing both organizations and society are treated in the course with the aim of understanding their implications for leadership. The consequences of specific societal challenges for organizational strategies will be an analytical focus from a leadership perspective.

The course objectives are to:

- Develop knowledge about basic leadership theory and how its central dimensions can be interpreted and applied in today's world, especially with a focus on complex work situations, culturally, nationally, and globally.

- Develop an understanding of leading and collaborating with others, especially regarding diversity and social responsibility.

- Develop an analytical ability to understand a leader's multifaceted role from a contextual perspective, especially regarding sustainability, ethics, and contemporary national and global leadership challenges.

- Enable in-depth reflection on leadership to help students find the basis for the own value-based leadership in relation to employees, external stakeholders and superiors.

After completion of the course the students should be able to:

• in a critical and independent way, give an account of different theoretical perspectives and models regarding leaders and leadership,
• in a critical and independent way, distinguish and compare the practical applications of different analytical models,
• in a critical and independent way, understand and reflect on how external organisational contexts (cultural, national and global) affect the conditions for leadership,
• critically and creatively analyse practical situations from different theoretical perspectives and from there develop alternative scenarios for how leaders can handle leadership challenges,
• show an understanding of the opportunities and limitations that research, but also widely spread perceptions of leadership, entail when it comes to finding workable solutions to contemporary leadership challenges,
• discuss contemporary leadership challenges effectively and persuasively, despite scarce and contradictory information.

Content

The course begins by introducing the basics of leadership theory and contemporary perspectives on leadership. Based on this knowledge, the student will be able to explore the conditions for leadership and collaboration in complex work situations, in both a national and global environment. Subject-wise, the course is primarily based on the following three different perspectives (the leader's, the employee's, and the contextual perspective):

• The leader (leadership behavior and activities, styles, characteristics, skills, roles, and leadership as activities and process).
• The employee (employee-leader interaction, employee expectations of leadership, including the employee's own leadership responsibilities as well as collaborating and sharing leadership in teams).
• The leadership context (different situational cultural, national, and global contexts, different legal and organizational contexts).

The course will especially touch on leadership issues linked to leaders' social responsibility as well as major contemporary societal challenges:

• Social responsibility (sustainability, ethics, and diversity).
• Major societal challenges (current societal challenges, unforeseen events, change, and crisis, nationally and globally).

For each course, the teaching team selects a number of current leadership challenges that will be in focus during the course.

Instruction

The course is designed with the aim of developing the student's theoretical knowledge, analytical skills, and understanding of leadership, its prerequisites, expectations, and requirements in different contexts, nationally as well as globally. Therefore, a mixture of teaching methods is used to support the student's knowledge development as well as the ability to apply theory to real leadership challenges, including contemporary major social issues. Literature, seminars, lectures, individual submissions, and various exercises performed in small groups, as well as individual reflective submissions are examples of elements that are used to support active participation in the course and individual knowledge development in a varied and pedagogically inspiring way. The course is given in English.

Assessment

The student will get one single grade, equivalent to 7.5 credits.

The examination includes several different forms of continuous knowledge assessments, such as active participation in seminars, lectures, individual assignments and group exercises with written and oral assignments. The final grade for the course is based on an assessment of all parts of the examination.

Grading criteria applied to different assessments are presented in the study guide. The following grades will be used: pass with distinction (VG), pass (G), and fail (U). Examinations handed in late will not be assessed except under special circumstances. Any remaining supplemental work must be completed and handed in by the deadline specified in the study guide. Otherwise, the entire course (all examinations included) must be retaken during subsequent course sections.

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University's disability coordinator.

Uppsala University does not accept cheating or plagiarism. Suspected incidents of cheating or plagiarism are reported to the Vice-Chancellor, which may issue a formal warning to the student or suspend the student from studies for a certain period.

NOTE: Only completed courses can count toward a degree.

Other directives

The course substitutes/overlaps Leadership, Master Course 2FE819.