COURSE DESCRIPTION FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON BULLETIN:

MBA 659, SPECIAL TOPICS: THE ETHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LEADERSHIP: Study of the ethical tools for decision making, the values to be pursued, and the qualities necessary for effective leadership with application to recognized leaders in politics and business and to actual cases in business practices.

GENERAL ORIENTATION:

 This course will focus on two major areas of leadership. (1) It will examine the way leaders should make ethical decisions by utilizing recognized ethical concepts and tools. (2) It will identify and parse the characteristics/virtues of effective leaders and ways students can develop them for themselves. Students will be actively engaged in making sound ethical decisions and applying the characteristics/virtues of effective leaders to cases in the corporate world.  [Scroll to the bottom of this page to see the student qualifications for success in this course and the technology qualifications to participate in the on-line activities.]

ON-LINE FEATURES:

Since there will be no class meetings for this course students can expect to be required to make a greater commitment to reading and writing than might be expected in a course, which meets in a regular class setting. Students can expect to:
    1) Read about 500 pages over the 16 week course.
    2) Write 3 individual essays (300-500 words) over the 16 week course to help students crystallize their own beliefs, in a detailed way, about the important qualities of leadership.
    3) Participate in two Collaborative Writing Projects (about 2,500 words), over the 16 week course, to analyze the way an effective leader would address specific actual and contemporary cases. As a result of this interaction and collaboration, students will produce a report (about 2,500 words) analyzing the ethical processes of the case and the role leadership played in resolving the case.
    4) Spend time participating in 6 Threaded Discussions over the 16 week course to promote team building, to parse significant aspects of leadership and to exchange ideas and insights about the demands of leadership.
    5) Participate in 5 (1 and 1/2 hours each, for a total of 7 and 1/2 hours) electronic synchronous Web Conferences (Audio Chat Rooms) to exchange understandings, ideas, and insights about identified characteristics and demands of leadership over the 16 week course.

SPECIFIC TOPICS TO BE CONSIDERED:

1) Dominant ethical theories in Western philosophy: Natural Law, Deontology, Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, Feminist Ethics.
2) Principles for resolving ethical conflicts: Autonomy, Beneficence, Justice, Parentalism.
3) The concept of "virtue" as a characteristic or habit, its foundation in values, and the way virtues are nurtured.

4) The centrality of virtues for effective leadership.

5) A list of virtues that are important for leadership in business practices as recognized in the literature, e.g., commitment, communication, competence, courage, initiative, listening, responsibility, self-discipline, servanthood, trust, vision, etc.

6) A detailed examination of the virtues of leadership.

7) Establishing the priorities of the virtues of leadership.

8) An assessment of the virtues of leadership, through examples of great leadership, that were exercised in both ordinary and perilous times.

9) Historical examples of principles of sound leadership including the Founding Brothers (Fathers), Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan, and Nelson Mandela. A series of narrated Slide Shows will be used to examine these principles.

10) Strategies for identifying and developing the virtues of leadership in individual students in the course.

11) Cases that have emerged as problems of leadership; cases reported in The Wall Street Journal will provide the raw material for such analysis.

12) Demonstrations of how technology can be effectively used in exercising leadership "at a distance."

COURSE PROCEDURES AND GRADING SCALE:

• There will be no classroom meetings.
• All written individual essays will be sent to the instructor as e-mail attachments, not as  e-mail messages.
• Collaborative Writing Projects will be posted on the Quickplace website.
•  Web Conferences (Audio Chat Rooms) will be conducted on staggered days (but generally 7:30-9:00 p.m. EASTERN TIME) in the evening over the 16 week period to allow for flexible participation on the part of students. [There may be occasional Web Conferences (Audio Chat Rooms) on Saturday morning (9:00 a.m. EASTERN TIME) to accommodate students' schedules.]
• Threaded Discussions will be posted on the Quickplace website and will be conducted for one week at a time; participation requires 3 contributions for each Threaded Discussion topic.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Students will be required to participate in five (5) of the scheduled ten (10) Web Conferences (Audio Chat Rooms).
2. Students will be required to participate in the six (6) Threaded Discussions.
3. Students will be required to produce two (2) Collaborative Writing Projects (teams of 5-6 students) of approximately 2,500 words for each project.
4. Students will be required  to write three (3) individual essays of approximately 300-500 words.

TEXTS:

Ciulla, Joanne. Ethics, the Heart of Leadership, 2nd edition, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004. ISBN 0-275-98252-1.

Greenleaf, Robert K. The Power of Servant Leadership. Larry C, Spears ed. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1998. ISBN 1-57675-035-3.

Additional essays linked from the "Reading Assignment" webpage by John Maxwell, Abraham Maslow, James MacGregor Burns, Peter Drucker, and Thomas Moore.