Assignment

Digital Leadership (DL)

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

February 21, 2025

Assignment

You portray a leader and introduce a theory to critically reflect on the behavior and outcomes of the leader by means of a ~15 minutes presentation and 5 minutes discussion.

Your task is to portray a leader of the digital age and critically discuss her or his leadership.

The portrait of the leader needs to be based on publicly available data and/or originally collected data and must be comprehensible without prior knowledge of the person. The discussion must be based on a theory related of leadership or organizational behavior. The theory needs to be introduced and then used to develop explanations of the leader’s behavior and the observable outcomes. Your presentation ends with theoretically grounded conclusions and recommendations for yourself and your fellow students.

The presentation should take at min 14 minutes and at max 16 minutes and is followed by a critical discussion (5 to 10 minutes).

Leaders

To avoid duplication, you must propose a shortlist of two to three leaders you would like to portray. I will then assign you a leader from your shortlist.

If you do not propose a shortlist or if there are too many duplicates, I will assign a leader you will portray. For deadlines see schedule.

Theories

In addition to the theories and theoretical concepts discussed in class, following theories might be helpful in developing explanations of your observations.

• Cognitive Dissonance Theory
  
• Contingency Theory
• Emotional Intelligence
  
• Functional Leadership Theory
  
• Identity Threats and Identity Work
  
• Job Demands-resources Theory
  
• (Digital) Mindset
• Power Theory

• Psychological Safety
  
• Self-determination Theory
  
• Social Cognitive Theory
• Social Identity Theory
• Social Judgement Theory
  
• Socio-analytic Theory
  
• Shared Mental Models
• Transformational Leadership Theory

Submission

All students need to submit the required documents at the same time.

• Upload your presentation slides (.pptx) via Moodle until the deadline
• Use following naming scheme: DL_ST24_Surname-Name
• You will present the slides uploaded to Moodle (no late updates)
• For the deadline and the presentation dates, please see the schedule

The presentation slots will be announced shortly after the submission.

Grading

An excellent presentation has the following characteristics

• The leader is comprehensibly portrayed.
• The presentation conveys a deep understanding of the theory.
• The data on which the portrait is based is transparent.
• The theoretical foundation is based on scientific literature.
• The theoretical explanations presented are comprehensible.
• The theory helps us understand why leaders behave the way they do
  and what happens as a result.
• The conclusions drawn flow logically and make sense.
• Visual aids are carefully selected and enhance the presentation.
• The presenter is confident and easy to understand.
• The audience is engaged in an informative and entertaining way.
• The time was effectively and economically used.

Bonus points

You can earn bonus points.¹

The extra points you get are based on how well you contribute to the exercises and discussions about the presentations of your fellow students, compared to the other students.

The bonus points can improve your performance by up to two grade increments (up to .7).

A note on grades

It is unlikely that every student will receive a very good grade, i.e. deliver an outstanding performance - see the meaning of grades. Instead, it is to be expected that the grades will spread across the spectrum.

Grade	Meaning
1 — very good	A truly outstanding achievement that (not only) shows no deficiencies in the criteria mentioned, but also gives both the supervisor and external assessors an excellent impression.
2 — good	Work that exceeds the average requirements/performance and is easily recognizable and presentable to the outside world as a “good performance”.
Note	2.5 is the average of passed assessments, i.e., an “average performance”
3 — satisfactory	A performance that achieves the desired goal “to a satisfactory extent”; however, deficiencies can be identified here and there.
4 — sufficient	A performance that “still adequately satisfies” the requirements, but deviates from the expectations placed on it in several ways.
5 — not sufficient	A performance that does not meet several of the criteria mentioned.

Literature search

There are several ways of searching literature for your theoretical foundations. I recommend using the Web of Science or Google Scholar search engines.

Additional recommendations

• Use the citation count as primary quality indicator (rule of thumb: the more cited, the more significant is the paper).
• For understanding the theory try to follow the conversation (start with early, introductory papers and then read more recent papers).
• Look for literature reviews that summarize the current state of knowledge.
• For finding recent empirical evidence look for papers that apply the theory.

Q&A

Literature

Footnotes

1. The bonus points are only taken into account when determining the module grade if it results in a better module grade and the original module grade is at least “4.0”. For details, please see the general examination regulations of the HNU (APO).