Topic outline

  • Course description

    This is a reading-based course on leadership theory. In this course you will read classic, groundbreaking and influential theories on leadership. 

    This course is recommended to anyone planning on doing their Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis in leadership, to those interested in different vantage points about leadership and to those interested in alternative theoretical approaches to leadership. This is consequently designed to be a theory-driven and theory-heavy course which complements other courses in leadership, change management, and micro-perspectives in strategy.

    In this course you will become acquainted with many well-known theories into leadership, and learn about leadership literature through influential articles. You will need to make sense of the theories, how they are related and/or different from each other, and how useful or helpful the different theories are from your own point of view.   

    There are two online lectures and two compulsory essays in this course. The Intro lecture and essay and the Outro lecture and essay. In addition, there will be assigned compulsory reading groups and reporting from group discussions. 

    The online intro lecture is to orient you into the course, to give you an overview of the readings as well as to organize reading-groups. The compulsory Intro essay is focused on your motivation to take the course as well as about your interest in leadership. The compulsory Outro essay is a literature review of the course material, which also includes an application exercise. Your grade in this course is entirely based on the Outro essay. The online Outro lecture is designed to take stock of the readings and learnings from the course. To pass the course you need to pass the Intro essay, Outro essay, and have participated in at least five discussions with a reading group.

    The kick-off for this course is the online Intro lecture. After the submission DL for the Intro essay, the students will be organised into Do-It-Yourself reading-groups for peer-support and joint sensemaking of the articles. The reading-groups are compulsory, with at least 5 meetings during the course.  The instructions and grading criteria for the Outro essay (DL 18.8) are also available in MyCourses under Assignments.

    Learning objectives

    In this course you will learn:

      1. A range of classic and groundbreaking theories on leadership
        2. The evolution of leadership perspectives and theory
          3. Make sense of and apply leadership theories

          Teacher: Peter Kenttä, peter.kentta@aalto.fi