Strategic Leadership and Accountability

Aims of the course

1. To understand main economic, legal and ethical responsibilities of a strategic leader in general.
2. To understand the responsibilities of a strategic leader towards different stakeholders groups (investors, customers, suppliers, employees, public and society at large) in particular.
3. To gain insight into personal qualities a leader needs to carry out these diverse set of responsibilities.
4. To examine own assumptions and fundamental beliefs about human nature, the nature of society, the purpose of business, the nature of truth conditioned by the Western-centric philosophy, religion and upbringing.
5. To expand to worldview of participants by non-western centric approaches to leadership practices and responsibilities of a leader.

Course syllabus

This is a course of integrative nature which addresses the professional (economic, legal and ethical) responsibilities of a strategic leader towards different stakeholder groups (investors, customers, employees, suppliers, other interested public).

The purpose is to develop both basic understanding and capacity to act responsibly when faced with competing responsibilities towards different stakeholder groups, ambiguous standards, factual uncertainties, and intense time pressure.

The course draws upon economics, law, ethics, organizational behavior and cultural sociology. Each of on these disciplines uses its own distinctive vocabulary and modes of reasoning that stimulate participant towards integrative thinking and holistic judgment of business matters.

The course is of complex nature, however the complexity of course is developed gradually through two distinctive parts of the course. In the first part the course addresses three main responsibilities of a strategic leader: to create wealth, to obey law and to comply to ethical standards. Accordingly, class of acceptable and desirable strategic leadership lies in the area of where all three responsibilities are successfully met. This is the area of sustainable long-term value creation. The first part of the course is assuming the leader superiority in relation to followers.

The second part of the course questions the leader-centric approach dominant in the Western (Europe, North America) centric philosophical doctrine developed in participants through their family upbringing, Western-centric education, culture and religion. Participants are challenged to question the leader-centric approach by being exposed to the leadership wisdom and practices from different cultures and societies. The aim of the later is to raise the awareness of possible blind spots and hidden assumptions that their western centric upringing is embodying, and may impede the successful leadership conduct when facing other cultures.

Course director(s)