Description
About the Assignment
This assignment is designed to allow you to demonstrate your knowledge of the roles and responsibilities of leaders in the management and operations of an organization, including the critical roles of decision making and communication during a crucial time in an organization. You will conduct a leadership analysis to apply concepts learned throughout the course and explore aspects of motivation, conflict and change management in contemporary organizations.
Prompt
Choose a well-known corporation or organization that has had to face a major dilemma or opportunity sometime in the past 10 years. If you are unable to find such a situation on your own, consider examining one of the following scenarios:
National Basketball Association Early COVID-19 Response
CrossFit Tweets regarding George Floyd
Wells Fargo Bank Mortgage Oversight 2018
Meta/Facebook Privacy Settlement 2023
Tesla Self-Driving Software Errors 2022
Southern Baptist Convention Sexual Abuse 2022
Gilead Sciences New H.I.V. Medicines 2023
Twitter Rebranding 2022-23
Research the emergence and development of the situation you are addressing, as well as the leadership practices and style of the highest-level organizational executive who was directly responsible for addressing the situation.
In a written analysis and critique of the situation and how it was handled, please take the following approach:
1. In 200 – 300 words, summarize the organization and chosen leader:
Company name, company function (product or service), leader name and title
A description of the chosen leader’s leadership style.
A summary of the primary role and responsibilities of the leader within the company.
2. In a section of 300 – 500 words, summarize the situation you are analyzing. Be sure to address how the situation originally developed, the ramifications addressing or ignoring the situation might have for the organization, the actions the chosen leader considered, and which actions the leader finally selected and enacted. Discuss the near-term and long-term results of the leader’s decisions. Make sure to include a timeline that includes each step of the process.
3. In a section of 750 – 1000 words, analyze and critique the leader’s and organization’s decision and process. Be sure to include the following aspects in your analysis:
Does the leadership practice place emphasis on requesting input from subordinates and/or peers prior to making major decisions?
How does the leadership style encourage innovation? If innovation is not encouraged, what is the reason behind it?
How does a company leader communicate with and provide feedback to his/her subordinates? Does the leadership style consider communication and feedback as important and why?
Does the leadership approach have access to diverse sources of information and points-of-view, both internally and externally?
What different action(s) might you have taken, and why? (a response of ‘…nothing different…’ will be detrimental to your grade)
What systems or processes would you recommend putting into place to ensure that similar situations are better addressed in the future?
Related Lessons
The following lessons from the course may help you with this assignment.
Fiedler’s Contingency Theory & a Leader’s Situational Control
The Path-Goal Theory and Leadership Styles
Differences Between Power, Leadership, Authority & Influence
Using Sources
You may refer to the course material for supporting evidence, but you must also use at least three credible, outside sources and cite them using APA format. Please include a mix of both primary and secondary sources, with at least one source from a scholarly peer-reviewed journal. If you use any Study.com lessons as sources, please also cite them in APA (including the lesson title and instructor’s name).
Primary sources are first-hand accounts such as interviews, advertisements, speeches, company documents, statements, and press releases published by the company in question.
Secondary sources come from peer-reviewed scholarly journals, such as the Journal of Management. You may use sites like JSTOR, Google Scholar, and Social Science Research Network to find articles from these journals. Secondary sources may also come from reputable websites with .gov, .edu, or .org in the domain. (Wikipedia is not a reputable source, though the sources listed in Wikipedia articles may be acceptable.)
