Home Schedule Canvas
What, materials, evaluation Support Values
Value added the "I" in organization Organizational culture Organizational leadership Technology impacts Final Presentation
Contact Options Last Updated on

Information Management for Organizational Effectiveness

Understanding Organizational Leadership

The purpose of this assignment is to reflect on your own perceived personal leadership styles and to decide if you learned anything about leadership from the movie we will watch together.

Fifteen percent of the grade for this class will come from two reports that displays your understanding of how leadership, culture (as expressed through memory), and ethics intersect.

But there will be two components

  • Leadership Styles
    worth 10 of the 15 percent for the task
  • Task
    Kurt Lewin has identified three leadership styles (other researchers have identified different taxonomies and types of leadership styles, but for this assignment we will use Lewin). The three styles are: authoritarian, participatory, and delegatory.
    1. Authoritarian leaders prefer to make decisions themselves and may not consult others in deciding how to structure and organize the work of an organization.
    2. Participative leaders tend to be more democratic, inviting the participation of organizational members in making decisions, but keeping control of the final decision process.
    3. Delegative leaders tend to delegate decision making to others, allowing members to make decisions themselves and inviting participation in decision-making at all levels.
  • While we recognize that truly exceptional leaders may need to adjust their styles in different circumstances, most people may have a natural preference for one style or the other. So, thinking back to an organization you are familiar with, consider the quality of the leaders in terms of one or more of these Lewin styles of leadership ...
    1. How would you evaluate the performance of the organization (the term "organization" may well include a team as an organization)?
    2. What are the particular strengths and weaknesses of the style(s) used?
    3. What criteria can be applied to determine whether a leader has performed well?
    4. Would you apply the same criteria as a yardstick for success, or would you apply different criteria depending on the style?
    5. What other aspects of the team might be important to consider in evaluating performance?
    6. What type of leader would you most prefer to work for and why?
    7. What type of leader are you most likely to be?

    If you have no experience with this kind of an organization, imagine one and discuss it.
    Answer at least three of the above questions in your single, narrated, visual presentation report
  • Condition
    This task should be done by your group and your group should turn in a single, narrated, self-running visual presentation that reflects the agreed position of your group on these three questions.
    Should you choose to do so, you may, instead of an organization you are familiar with, use the example from the movie as the backdrop to your discussion on leadership.
    To accomplish this task, you may submit a direct response in the Canvas assignment space.
    Alternatively, you may share a link to a cloud stored .pptx file that your group used to use to answer the requests in the task.
  • Standard
    A | 9.50 or better | mastery in understanding leadership types and their effective usage at the highest level of attainment that can reasonably be expected
    A- | 9.20 to 9.49 | extremely good, but perhaps a bit less than professionally sophisticated, in terms of depth of analysis
    B+ | 8.70 to 9.19 | a totally acceptable performance demonstrating an adequate level of understanding on models and their effectiveness
    B | 8.30 to 8.69 | really good, but perhaps a bit shallower in terms of your understanding one or more of the contexts
    B- | 8.00 to 8.29 | good, but not as good as it could have been; you may not have fully addressed all the elements requested
    C+ | 7.60 to 7.99 | a marginal performance
    C | 7.20 to 7.59 | you seem to understand the essential points of the module, but you did not articulate your understanding well enough to do more than the minimum
    C- | 7.00 to 7.19 | it's time to start wondering if you missed something important, if you misunderstood the task, if you did not understand the key elements
    D+ | 6.60 to 6.99 | this is a warning that you are not currently on the right path; you might need to have a discussion with the instructor about this performance
    D | 6.00 to 6.59 | there are indications that you were present and that you sort of grasped what we had discussed, but missed the key points to such a degree that you really need to re-group and catch up
    F | less than 6.00 | if it's unacceptable, it is unacceptable; it should be as obvious to you as it is to the instructor
  • Leadership Lessons
    worth 5 of the 15 percent for the task
  • Task
    We will have all watched together in class an old movie that has a well deserved reputation as one of the best studies of leadership under conditions of great stress.
    Discuss in a paragraph or two about whether or not anything you learned from 12 O'Clock High could add anything you your organizational understanding
  • Condition
    This task should be done individually. A paragraph or two should suffice.
    To accomplish this task, submit a direct response in the Canvas assignment space.
  • Standard
    This is worth five points and it should be easy to earn the full five. However, if your response sound less like you and more like a generatice AI created response, a zero is very likely to be awarded.
back to top