In the module "Effective and Responsible Leadership" (Prof. Dr. Florian Kunze), the aim is to learn about and reflect on the current state of research on effective and responsible leadership behavior, as well as to learn about the application and impact of leadership behavior in concrete exercises and case studies. In detail, inputs and applications on the following central topics of leadership research are planned: (1) Classical approaches of leadership research, (2) New approaches of leadership research, especially transactional and transformational leadership, (3) agile leadership approaches . The planned input parts will deal with the current state of the behavioral science literature on these leadership approaches, but at the same time, always try to connect these results with concrete, practical examples to prepare the practical transfer.
The course discusses how both team members and team leaders can contribute to successful teamwork. As teams increasingly include members with different cultural, educational, and socio-demographic backgrounds, team diversity has become one of the most prominent concepts in recent team management. On the one hand, team diversity offers promising chances for effective team work such as increasing levels of creativity and innovation. However, on the other hand, diversity bears the risk of losses in coordination and communication, thereby challenging team effectiveness. Accordingly, the course aims at exploring chances and risks of working in diverse teams and provides recommendations for the effective leadership of such teams.
In the first part, theoretical considerations and empirical results regarding the effects of different types of diversity (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity) on teamwork and team performance will be discussed. Building on a large body of research in team diversity, it will be demonstrated that diverse teams do have to be managed carefully in order to realize their potential to the full. In the second part, we will discuss how team leaders may contribute to realize that potential. Effective team leadership includes considering requirements of both the team as a whole (e.g., by establishing a common team identity) and the individual team members (e.g., by fairly appreciating their individual contributions). In particular, so-called relations-oriented approaches to leadership (e.g., inclusive leadership, shared leadership, empowering leadership, and servant leadership) will be introduced.
Learning goals
In this course, participants will understand how teams in organizations work. In particular, they will receive an overview on how diversity effects the functioning of teams and how leadership may contribute to realize the potential of diverse teams. Accordingly, participants of this course will be able to reflect on the functioning of the teams they may have to work on in the future. For instance, they will be able to analyze the forms of diversity which are most relevant in their teams. Most importantly, participants will be able to select leadership behaviors adequate to enhance the chances of diversity while at the same time reducing the risks of diversity. Thereby, they will be able to consider promising relations-oriented leadership styles such as inclusive leadership, empowering leadership, shared leadership, and servant leadership.
Evidence-based policy is a concept in public policy stipulating that policy decisions should be based on evidence as opposed to ideological beliefs or common sense. What do we mean by evidence? In this seminar we examine what passes as rigorously established objective evidence, how it is generated and how this evidence has been used so far. In the first part, we focus on the methods of social science in general. In the second part, we gain an overview of different research designs, e.g. surveys, observational studies, laboratory and field experiments. We also examine field experiments that have a randomized design, so-called randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Furthermore, we will learn about the strengths and limitations of these methods and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these different methods for collecting and analyzing evidence. This is a hybrid course.