Classic Leadership and Organization Dilemmas

Aim

After completion of the course, the student should be able to

• identify, explain and apply key concepts of leadership and organization and relate them to the exploration/exploitation challenge.
• identify, explain and reflect upon fundamental leadership dilemmas through classic works of literature as well as business cases, and relate them to contemporary issues in innovation, organizational learning and decision-making
• analyse complex situations from a leadership and organization perspective, identify patterns and problems, develop plausible explanations, suggest possible solutions, and reflect upon the outcomes of actions taken.
• critically analyse and integrate knowledge gained through reading, discussions, and cases, and express it orally and in writing in an academic manner.

Content

The basic assumptions of this course are that (1) leadership and organization share a symbiotic relationship, (2) that major leadership issues also are issues of life, and (3) that great classic works of literature hence provide a good basis for exploring and reflecting upon some of the great challenges and dilemmas of leadership and organization. In the first phase of the course we will focus an organizational challenge that has kept researchers (and managers) occupied for years: How can we manage an organization's simultaneous needs for exploration of new opportunities (relying on imagination, vision, foolishness, courage, breaking rules and routines) and exploitation (developing more efficient ways of working through rationality, standards, routine, rules, and similar patterns of thinking) and more specifically how do we allocate scarce resources between the two? In the second phase of the course we will go more in-depth and explore fundamental questions of leadership such as what is the relation between genius and madness? How do we recognize great leaders among the crazies? How do we nurture genius if we cannot recognize it? How do we sustain commitment in the face of adverse or ambiguous outcomes? How do we come to believe that a leader has succeeded or failed? That one leader is better than another? What should we value in leadership and individuals who are leaders? Here reading classic works such as Shakespeare’s Othello, Shaw’s Saint Joan, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote will provide food for thought. These questions will then be connected to the exploration and exploitation challenge as well as contemporary issues in innovation, organizational learning and decision-making.