This assignment requires you to demonstrate your learning and to highlight the leadership challenges in which you describe how your chosen organization has orchestrated their leadership and followership culture and applied transactional versus transformation leadership theory. Emphasis will be on the understanding of the problems, critical evaluation as well as the ability to clearly communicate proposed solutions. Your final project is your major contribution, where you will exhibit your learning.
You will write an analysis of the organizational culture, leadership, ethical practices, and the use of power and political behavior in your chosen company. This will require you to research as much as you can through the company’s own website, articles written on your company, our textbook, and scholarly articles about your company.
In your analysis, discuss the following areas:
* The organizational culture and the unique characteristics of the firms work environment.
* Leadership and how the various concepts and leadership models discussed in the text are utilized in your firms CEO and management team.
* The organizational design and structure of the firm.
* How the firm manages ethical issues, conflict and managerial challenges.
* Whether the firm uses either or both the characteristics of transactional and transformational leaders.
* Your recommendations for the future of the company.How can key leaders of this firm improve in the next 2-3 years? Please do not make recommendations on products or services you want the firm to produce. Rather focus on how the companys organizational climate, leadership, ethics, leadership development and overall leadership environment should improve.
When discussing these concepts, be specific and use examples that detail how your analysis of the organization fits with the theories (especially transformational and transactional leadership) that were covered in this class. The focus of this paper should be on the leadership of the company and should incorporate what you’ve learned in this course.
Parameters and guidelines for the term paper are as follows:
* The term paper should be at least 1,500 words with at least 3 scholarly references in addition to your eText for a minimum of 4 total references. Please keep in mind that the word count requirements point out the minimum amount of effort that should be put into the paper. Word count isn’t everything because quality of writing and research matters as well, but it is an indication of the quantity of effort put into the assignment. Note that word count does not include title, abstract, or reference pages. Not following this requirement will significantly impact the grade.
* Use scholarly peer-reviewed references rather than websites. Scholarly references are generally more credible and make a more persuasive argument. Non-academic websites are not typically recommended for academic writing. While most of the information generally is correct, it is not always reliable because anyone can change the content, bias is often present, and it is not peer-reviewed. For example, it’s best not to use news websites, Wikipedia, investopedia.com, about.com, smallbusiness.chron.com, huffingtonpost.com, ehow.com, forbes.com, cnn.com, online encyclopedias, or similar non-academic websites. Articles in these types of websites are written by reporters or individuals who may or may not be experts in the field, and consequently may have incorrect or biased information. Instead, it adds much more credibility to use the class eText, other related textbooks, and peer-reviewed articles, i.e. scholars have analyzed and evaluated the content for accuracy, quality, and reliability. Be sure to use the university library to help you find these types of scholarly references. The library has a setting in database searches that allow you to search for peer-reviewed articles only.
* It is acceptable to use a company website for research, say for example if you are researching Apple, it’s ok to use www.apple.com to describe their mission, strategy, financials, etc.