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you will be responsible for a research Term Paper, which
focuses on a company of your choice examining the challenges of leadership
within this organization. It is best to choose a company with which you
are familiar as this paper will require significant knowledge of the company
and its leadership. 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 firm’s work
environment.
Leadership
and how the various concepts and leadership models discussed in the text
are utilized in your firm’s 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 company’s 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.
Company
Selection
For this term paper, a brief study will be done of
Tesla from which we will highlight the type of leadership style that is
employed by its management team (transactional or transformational). Further
analysis will be done to assess the pros and cons of their leadership type, and the suitable solution will be recommended where necessary.