Administrivia

Digital Leadership (DL)

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

February 21, 2025

Motivation

Society often associates leaders with individuals that have grandiose titles, a large corner office, and make world-changing decisions. Thus, many people shy away from identifying themselves as a leader. However, real leadership can be seen most clearly in the small moments throughout the day.

Leadership is about behaving in a way that makes the life of another person better than before you arrived. Drew Dudley

General remarks

You will deepen your understanding of leadership in the digital age.

You will

• read papers to get a theoretical foundation,
• apply findings in exercises,
• pesearch and reflect on a leader, and
• present your findings

This module helps you to deepen your understanding of the requirements of leadership in the digital age.

To this end, you will read a series of scientific papers, consolidate and deepen your knowledge in exercises as well as while working on your assignment and, in the best case, increase your leadershik skills. As a graded exam assignment, you will research on a (digital) leader and make sense on her/his behavior using a scientific theory related to leadership and present your findings in a presentation to your fellow students.

It is very important that you prepare yourself for the classes (see Table 1 for details).

Contents

We touch base on following topics to increase understanding of challenges in different leadership roles and situations and to get to know tools to deal with these:

Specifics of leading in the digital age, basics of leadership, theories and theoretical concepts, and digital leadership tools

• Specifics of leading in the digital age (e.g., VUCA, role of technology, etc.)
• Basics of leadership (e.g., motivation, leadership characteristics, etc.)
• Theories and theoretical concepts (e.g., psychological safety, social capital theory, etc.)
• Digital leadership tools (e.g., storytelling and workshop tactics)

Learning objectives

During this course, you should improve your ability to consciously use, reflect on and further develop your leadership skills in your day-to-day work, in particular with regard to

• leadership requirements in the context of digital transformation,
• identification of and reflection on challenges and opportunities in your own leadership role,
• understanding of the facets of different personality types,
• basic understanding of characteristics of sustainable organizational systems, and
• lead hierarchically and laterally using digital leadership tools.

Effort

You will gain 5 ECTS for this course. This equals approx. 150 hours workload, of which you need most to pass the course.

• Classes (approx. 30 hours)
• Preparation and follow-up (approx. 10 hours)
• Preparation of the presentation (remaining time)

Please prepare your schedule accordingly.

Schedule

It is of importance that you prepare yourself for the sessions and work on the case study continually. Please prepare your schedule accordingly.

Date	Topic	Preparation
19.03.2025	Administrivia, Introduction & Mental Models	—
26.03.2025	Leader Characteristics	Reading1
27.03.2025	Deadline Leader Shortlist	Shortlist
01.04.2025	Announcement: Assignment of Leaders	—
02.04.2025	Leadership Paradoxes	Reading2
09.04.2025	Leadership Behavior	Reading3
16.04.2025	Individual Coaching	—
23.04.2025	Power Dynamics	Reading4
30.04.2025	Storytelling (InnovationSpace, Creative 2)	—
07.05.2025	Excursion Week (no lecture)*	—
13.05.2025	Deadline: Slides Upload	Slides
14.05.2025	Student Presentations — Session #1 (till ~5.15 pm)	—
21.05.2025	Student Presentations — Session #2 (till ~5.15 pm)	—
28.05.2025	Student Presentations — Session #3 (till ~5.15 pm)	—
04.06.2025	Student Presentations — Session #4 (till ~5.15 pm)	—
11.06.2025	Witsun Holidays	—
18.06.2025	Witsun Holidays	—
25.06.2025	Student Presentations — Session #5 (till ~5.15 pm)	—
02.07.2025	Retrospective Workshop (InnovationSpace, Creative 1)	—

Table 1: Schedule summer term 2025 (may be subjected to changes)

Literature

House, Robert J. 1996. “Path-Goal Theory of Leadership: Lessons, Legacy, and a Reformulated Theory.” The Leadership Quarterly 7 (3): 323–52.

Judge, Timothy A, Joyce E Bono, Remus Ilies, and Megan W Gerhardt. 2002. “Personality and Leadership: A Qualitative and Quantitative Review.” Journal of Applied Psychology 87 (4): 765.

Karahanna, Elena, and David S Preston. 2013. “The Effect of Social Capital of the Relationship Between the CIO and Top Management Team on Firm Performance.” Journal of Management Information Systems 30 (1): 15–56.

Lavine, Marc. 2014. “Paradoxical Leadership and the Competing Values Framework.” The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 50 (2): 189–205.

Nahapiet, Janine, and Sumantra Ghoshal. 1998. “Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage.” Academy of Management Review 23 (2): 242–66.

Footnotes

1. Judge et al. (2002), see Moodle

2. Lavine (2014), see Moodle

3. House (1996), see Moodle

4. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) and (optionally) Karahanna and Preston (2013), see Moodle