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Learning from SAGE Journal Articles
Chapter 1. Being a Leader
- Chin, C. O., Gu, J., & Tubbs, S. L. (2001). Developing global leadership competencies. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 7, 20-31. This article discusses global leadership competencies in American and Chinese business leaders. It also explores some cultural and philosophical differences.
- This article is ten years old. How has the world changed since
this model was developed?
- Which elements of Chinese culture, explained in this article,
are appealing to you?
- How can leaders develop the competencies that comprise
the global leadership competency model? How does one cultivate
the necessary attitudes? What action steps are needed to become
tolerant, understanding, accepting, and open to transformation?
- The authors state that leaders should not only demonstrate global competencies but also be able to teach them to others in the organization. Do you agree that teaching skill is required of effective leaders?
- Atwater, L. E., & Yammarino, F. J. (1993) Personal attributes as predictors of superiors’ and subordinates’ perceptions of military academic leadership. Human Relations, 46, 645 – 668. This article assesses relationships between military academy leaders’ personal attributes and others’ ratings of transformational and transactional leadership.
- How well does personality predict a person’s leadership potential?
- How do superiors and subordinates differ in their perceptions of a
person’s leadership traits and abilities?
- Would the results of this study differ if the sample population was comprised of female nurses or female athletic coaches?
- What are the implications of this study for leadership training?
Chapter 2. Recognizing Your Traits
- Casimir, G. & Waldman, D. A. (2007). A cross cultural comparison of the importance of leadership traits for effective low-level and high-level leaders: Australia and China. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 7, 47-60. The article discusses the importance of 18 traits for effective low-level and high-level leaders.
- How did the Australian and Chinese employees in the study differ on the traits they valued in leaders? How do those trait preferences relate to underlying cultural values?
- Why is it important for leaders to be aware of followers’ expectations for leadership?
- When cultural expectations for leadership clash, which culture should adapt to the preferences of the other?
- Steyrer, J. (1998). Charisma and the archetypes of leadership. Organization Studies, 19, 807-828. Based on the concept of ‘archetypes’ of leadership, four types of charismatic leadership are defined: the hero, the father, the savior, and the king. The article uses dozens of technical terms, which should be explained in class before discussing the questions below.
- How did the Australian and Chinese employees in the study differ on the traits they valued in leaders? How do those trait preferences relate to underlying cultural values?
- Why is it important for leaders to be aware of followers’ expectations for leadership?
- When cultural expectations for leadership clash, which culture should adapt to the preferences of the other?
Chapter 3. Recognizing Your Philosophy and Style of Leadership
- Mattaliano, A. (1982). Theory X or Theory Y: What Is Your Style? NASSP Bulletin, 66, 37-40. This brief article makes the case for why a Theory Y approach is needed to "save" higher education.
- Based on the four pairs of questions in the article, are you more of a Theory X or a Theory Y leader? What life experiences shaped your beliefs about the true nature of people?
- How does a person become intrinsically motivated?
- As participants in the U.S. higher education al system, where do you see the need for more creativity in the system? What would be the intended outcomes?
Chapter 4. Attending to Tasks and Relationships
- Zimmerman, P., Wit, A., & Gill, R. (2008). The relative importance of leadership behaviours in virtual and face–to –face communication settings. Leadership, 4, 321-338. A survey of 419 technical engineers found that, in most cases, most task–oriented as well as relationship–oriented leadership behaviors are considered to be more important in virtual settings than in face–to–face settings.
- How comprehensive are the leadership behaviors included in the questionnaire? If you work in a virtual team, are there any leader behaviors you think are missing in the list?
- Can you give evidence from your own work experience to support or challenge the findings from this study?
- Do leaders need any special skills to work in a virtual setting?
- In a work environment, when should face–to–face communication be used instead of CMC?
- Sherwood, A. L. & DePaolo, C. A.(2005). Task–and Relationship–Oriented Trust in Leaders. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 12, 65-81. A survey of 345 employees on how they perceive their supervisors revealed competency and consistency affected perceptions of task–oriented trust, while motivational intention affected perceptions of relationship–oriented trust.
- The authors explain various definitions of trust and then offer their own. Which definition comes closest to your understanding?
- The study examines three antecedents of trust. If you were to conduct a similar study, what variables would you want to include? Why?
- How can you use the results of this study in your own leadership practices?
Chapter 5. Developing Leadership Skills
- Herman, J. L. & Herman, J. L.(1995). Defining administrative tasks, evaluating performance, and developing skills. NASSP Bulletin,79,16-21. The authors present an evaluation system and personal improvement plan to improve administrative performance.
- What are the CSFs for your job? Are these the factors you are actually evaluated on? Who should be responsible for determining the CSFs for
a given job?
- How would you assess your effectiveness on each of the factors?
- Develop a hypothetical Personal Improvement Plan based on your CSFs.
- From a student’s perspective, how useful do you think this plan is for improving teacher performance?
- Miller, J. & Lewis, F. (1982). Closing the gap in quality assurance: A tool for evaluating group leaders.Health Education and Behavior, 9, 55-66. The authors discuss group leader evaluation in HMOs.
- What has been your experience with group instruction? When is it effective? What are some common pitfalls? Are these addressed in this article?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of relying on participant assessment to measure teaching effectiveness?
- How did the researchers account for social desirability bias?
- Do you think the need for instructors to display both task leadership and relational leadership is the same across the six different health programs? Can one questionnaire evaluate all programs equally well?
Chapter 6. Creating a Vision
- Ylimaki, R. M. (2006). Toward a new conceptualization of vision in the work of educational leaders: Cases of the visionary archetype. Educational Administration Quarterly, 42, 620-651.The author discusses vision as intuition, perception, insight, and holistic seeing.
- What is “new” about the concept of vision offered in this article?
- What are archetypes and how do they influence our everyday lives?
- How do the four ways of seeing apply to your roles as a student, employee, or leader?
- Which of Ylimaki’s metaphors for vision do you find most compelling?
Do you have a different metaphor for visionary leadership?
- Brown, K. M. & Anfara Jr., V. A.(2003). Paving the way for change: Visionary leadership in action at the middle level. NASSP Bulletin, 87, 16-34.The authors discuss group leader evaluation in HMOs.
- What has been your experience with group instruction? When is it effective? What are some common pitfalls? Are these addressed in this article?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of relying on participant assessment to measure teaching effectiveness?
- How did the researchers account for social desirability bias?
- Do you think the need for instructors to display both task leadership and relational leadership is the same across the six different health programs? Can one questionnaire evaluate all programs equally well?
Chapter 7. Setting The Tone
- Gabriel, Y. & Griffiths, D. S. (2008). International learning groups: Synergies and dysfunctions. Management Learning, 39, 503-518.
- What are some of the challenges that foreign language speakers face when working in international learning groups?
- What do the authors mean that, "Clearly, 'native speakers' and 'non-native speakers' are constructions with little relation to any objective qualities"?
- What accounts for the different perceptions of free-riders in groups?
- What contributes to effective leadership in international learning groups?
- How do individuals' "voice anxieties" relate to their constructing legitimate identities as group members?
- Hayslip, J. B. & VanZandt, Z. (2000). Using national standards and models of excellence as frameworks for accountability. Journal of Career Development, 27, 81-87.
- Why is it important to have national standards for career curriculum
in public education?
- Using national and state models, local school boards can choose and adapt those to better fit local needs. Does your local community have unique needs that should be addressed in a career development curriculum?
- Looking over the list of New Hampshire’s Broad Goals for Career Development, which of the goals do you think are most relevant to
career success, based on your perspective and experiences as
an adult?
- Choose one of the Broad Goals for Career Development. How can
one assess a student’s progress in attaining that goal?
- How do New Hampshire’s Broad Goals for Career Development
support the seven Cs?
Chapter 8. Listening to Out-Group Members
- Harasty, A. S. (1997). The Interpersonal nature of social stereotypes: Differential discussion patterns about in-groups and out-groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 270-284. This study investigates how interpersonal discussions about gendered in-groups and out-groups encourage stereotype development.
- How does language use affect the impressions we form about others?
- On page 281, the author uses Brewer’s (1988) process model to explain the difference between individuated exemplars of a category and personalized entities. Do you agree with her speculation about why “out-group members may more likely be represented as individuated category exemplars, whereas known in-group members may be more likely personalized”?
- This study was done over 20 years ago. If repeated today, would you expect the results to be similar? Why or why not?
- Ensari, N. K. & Miller, N.(2006). The application of the personalization model in diversity management. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 9, 589-607.
This article discusses how personalization can improve intergroup relations in organizations, and thereby increase effectiveness and productivity. It also proposes how personalization effects can be extended to the out-group as a whole.
- Besides being required by management, what would motivate an organizational member to make personalized contact with an out-group?
- “Depersonalized interaction, such as that which is more characteristic of many computer-mediated communication systems, promotes intergroup differentiation and attitude polarization” (p. 593). With more and more work being done virtually, what can be done to mitigate this effect?
- Explain the three modes of decategorization and their limitations. Have you used any of them? What was the effect?
Chapter 9. Handling Conflict
- Brown, J. (1957). Principles of intrapersonal conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1, 135-154. This is an early theoretical paper explaining the psychological processes that lead to inner conflict. It adds depth to our understanding of the affective dimension of conflict, which is part of Wilmot and Hocker’s (2011) definition used in chapter 9.
- Explain the basic conflict paradigm in figure 1.
- How do the cues that prompt intrapersonal conflict relate to the different kinds of content and relationship conflicts described in chapter 9 of our textbook?
- Using figure 4, how does an individual “decide” whether to avoid or engage in conflict?
- In the final section of the paper, Brown applies his model to interpersonal conflicts. What new insights does his perspective give you on the Kilmann & Thomas (1975) conflict styles model?
- Fitzpatrick, M. A. & Wamboldt, F. S. (1990). Where is all said and done: Toward an integration of intrapersonal and interpersonal models of marital and family communication. Communication Research, 17, 421-430. This article introduces a special issue of Communication Research focused on marital and family communication. It gives an overview of the rest of the articles in the special issue and how they inform one another.
- What are the benefits of studying conflict at both the intrapersonal and interpersonal levels?
- What does it mean that some studies are “heuristic”?
- What is intersubjectivity? How does it explain why family communication is different from other communication contexts?
- Three different definitions of family are offered in this paper. How would conflict be understood within each of these different definitions?
Chapter 10. Overcoming Obstacles
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Shah, A. M. (2005). The foundations of successful strategy implementation: Overcoming the obstacles. Global Business Review, 6, 293-302. This article spells out the factors that promote successful implementation of management initiatives.
- Why is strategy implementation “the most complicated and time-consuming part of strategic management”?
- How do the top seven major obstacles identified in this article compare to the seven obstacles addressed in chapter 10 of our textbook? What new obstacles are identified?
- Some of the identified obstacles are not completely within a manager’s control (e.g. getting commitment from top managers). What can a manager, then, reasonably do to implement company initiatives?
- Thinking about your place of employment, or your school, how can information systems better “link people efficiently and make them do their job together instead of performing with indirect linkages”?
Chapter 11. Adressing Ethics in Leadership
- O’Connell, W. & Bligh, M. (2009). Emerging from ethical scandal: Can corruption really have a happy ending? Leadership, 5, 213-235. This case study illustrates how a U.S. city moved beyond scandal by avoiding even the appearance of improper behavior, highlighting ethical expectations and symbolic leadership.
- What are some of the ways leaders can set an ethical tone from the top of an organization?
- What is the role of media in influencing how (un)ethical corporate behavior is to be understood by readers?
- How do the characteristics of ethical leaders in Table 1 compare to the six components of ethical leadership in chapter 11 of our textbook?
- Be able to briefly summarize the stages of the scandal and recovery in Denver.
- Gardner, W. L.(2003). Perceptions of leader charisma, effectiveness, and integrity: Effects of exemplification, delivery, and ethical reputation. Management Communication Quarterly, 16, 502 – 527.
- Be able to distinguish between exemplification, delivery, and ethical reputation.
- What is the “boomerang effect”? What explanations are given for why the “boomerang effect” does not always occur after a leader’s moral transgressions?
- What effect does a leader’s message delivery have on audience perceptions of the leader?
- What is the “romance of leadership” concept and how does it work?
- If this study were replicated with older subjects (not 18- to 21-year-olds), do you think the results would be the same?
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