Course Syllabus1:

Leadership

• Instructor: John Antonakis, Professor of Organizational Behavior

• 3 credits ECTS
• 2 hours of teaching per week, winter semester
• Bologne Master—management major
• Language: English
• Course assistant (general issues): sabine.cacciatore@unil.ch
• Course assistant (research assignment): philippe.jacquart@unil.ch

Objective: A substantial portion of the variation in organizational (and subordinate)

outcomes can be attributed to leadership. This course is designed to provide
students with a comprehensive understanding of leadership as a phenomenon
and its impact on the organizational behavior of individuals. Major theories of
leadership will be examined and leadership will be integrated to various
internal and external organizational factors. Students will learn to think
critically about the leadership phenomenon and about the boundary conditions
of leadership theories.

Contents: Theories of leadership (e.g., trait, behavioral, contingency, and neocharismatic

transformational approaches). Various topics will be linked to leadership
including: gender, power, ethics, job design and motivation, personality,
national culture, and leader development.

Readings: Textbook (required): Antonakis, J., & Cianciolo, A. T. & Sternberg, R. J.

(Eds.). (2004). The nature of leadership. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Articles (available for download on my website).

Evaluation: The final mark will consist of two components: (a) an individual project (in
English or French) weighted 50%, and (b) a written exam (in English or
French) weighted 50%. Students can only participate in the final exam if they
have submitted a project within the due date. Students who fail the course must
resit the component/s that was/were failed. If a student is required to resit the
exam, they will do so during the official resit examination period. If the student
is required to redo the project, the deadline for submitting the project will be
midday of the date of the resit exam (the assignment brief of the project will be
the same as the assignment brief included in this syllabus. Note that in the case
of a project resit, the requirement to again present a proposition of the theory,
as well as a brief list of potential boundary conditions of the theory, will be
waived.)2

1
The professor reserves the right to change the scheme of work and course content, depending on time
constraints or other unforeseen circumstances, with the intent of maximizing student learning outcomes.
2
The total mark will be rounded. The rounding procedure, after the decimal point, is as follows: (a) marks
between .25 and .74 are rounded to .50; (b) marks between .01 to .24 are rounded down to .00 (of the next whole
number); (c) marks over .75 are rounded up to .00 (of the next whole number). Also, students can only resit
failed components and may not retake a component merely to improve their mark.
 Weekly program

Note: TNL = “The Nature of Leadership” by Antonakis, Cianciolo, & Sternberg, R. J. All
other readings are available for download on my website. Readings are compulsory and you
are strongly advised to keep up with the readings on a weekly basis.
Week 1; Monday 24-10-2005
Topic: Introduction to the course. Definitions of leadership. Examples of
leadership. Science-practice divide. Introduction to the full-range
leadership theory.
Required reading: 1. TNL, Chapter 14 by Bennis.
2. Berlew, D. (1974). Leadership and organizational excitement.
California Management Review, 17, 21-30.
3. Dawes, R. M., Faust, D., & Meehl, P. E. (1989). Clinical versus
actuarial judgment: Science, 243, 1668-1674.

Week 2; Monday 31-10-2005

Topic: How is leadership differentiated from management? The necessity of
leadership. Leadership and strategic-organizational functions. Brief
history of leadership research.
Required reading: 1. TNL, Chapter 1 by Antonakis, Cianciolo, & Sternberg
2. TNL, Chaper 2 by Hunt
4. Antonakis, J., (in press). Leadership: What is it and how it is
implicated in strategic management? International Journal of
Management Cases.

Week 3; Monday 7-11-2005

Topic: Ethical leadership. The power of leaders and situations.
Required reading: 1. TNL, Chapter 13 by Ciulla
2. Bass, B. M. & Steidlmeier, P. (1999). Ethics, character, and authentic
transformational leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 181-217.

Week 4; Monday 14-11-2005

Topic: Theories of motivation. Link between leadership and follower
motivation. Link between organizational structure/job design and
follower motivation.
Required readings: 1. Ambrose, M. L., & Kulik, C. T. (1999). Old friends, new faces:
Motivation research in the 1990's. Journal of Management, 25, 231-
292.
2. De Treville, S., & Antonakis, J. (in press). Could lean production job
design be intrinsically motivating? Contextual, configural, and levels-
of-analysis issues. Journal of Operations Management.

Week 5; Monday 21-11-2005

Topic: Leadership as a function of contextual factors. National culture as a
contextual factor.
Required reading: 1. TNL, Chapter 11 by Den Hartog & Dickson
2. Antonakis, J., Avolio, B. J., & Sivasubramaniam, N. (2003). Context
and leadership: An examination of the nine-factor Full-Range
Leadership Theory using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire
(MLQ Form 5X). Leadership Quarterly, 14(3), 261-295. (Note: this

2
 article is a “heavy read” so skip the statistical findings and just focus on
the theoretical arguments and substantive findings)

Week 6; Monday 28-11-2005

Topic: Trait theories of leadership (individual differences in terms of
personality, intelligence, etc.) that predict leadership
emergence/effectiveness.
Required reading: 1. TNL, Chapter 5 by Zaccaro, Kemp, & Bader.
2. Lim, B-C, Ployhart, R. E. (2004). Transformational Leadership:
Relations to the Five-Factor Model and Team Performance in Typical
and Maximum Contexts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 610-621,

Week 7; Monday 5-12-2005

Topic: Contingency and situational theories of leadership.
Required reading: 1. TNL, Chapter 7 by Ayman
2. House, R. J. (1996). Path-goal theory of leadership: Lessons, legacy,
and a reformulated theory. Leadership Quarterly, 7, 323-352.

Week 8; Thursday 12-12-2005

Topic: The "new" leadership. Theories of charismatic and visionary leadership.
Required reading: 1. TNL, Chapter 8 by Sashkin
2. Shamir, B., House, R. J., & Arthur, M. B. (1993). The motivational
effects of charismatic leadership: A self-concept based theory.
Organization Science, 4, 577-594.
3. Antonakis, J., & Atwater, L. (2002). Leader distance: A review and a
proposed theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 13, 673-704.

Week 9; Monday 19-12-2005

Topic: The extended full-range leadership theory: Transformational,
instrumental, transactional leadership.
Required reading: 1. Antonakis, J., & House, R. J. (2002). An analysis of the full-range
leadership theory: The way forward. In B. J. Avolio & F. J. Yammarino
(Eds.) Transformational and charismatic leadership: The road ahead
(pp. 3-34). Amsterdam: JAI Press.

---------------------Winter Break ---------------------

Week 10; Monday 9-1-2006

Topic: Leadership and gender
Required reading: 1. TNL, Chapter 12 by Eagly & Carli
2. Heilman, M. E, Wallen, A. S., Fuchs, D., & Tamkins, M. M., (2004).
Penalties for success: Reactions to women who succeed at male gender-
typed tasks. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 416-427

Week 11; Monday 16-1-2006

Topic: An integrated video and case-study and discussion—Martin Luther
King.
Required reading: Case Study on Martin Luther King, available for reading at the library.

3
Week 12; Monday 23-1-2006
Topic: Leader development, theories of learning, leader interventions.
Required reading: 1. TNL, Chapter 10 by London & Maurer
2. Dvir, T., Eden, D., Avolio, B. J., & Shamir, B. (2002). Impact of
transformational leadership on follower development and performance:
A field experiment. Academy of Management Journal, 45, 735-744.
3. Denrell, J., (2005). Selection bias and the perils of benchmarking:
Harvard Business Review, 83, 114-119.

Week 13; Monday 30-1-2006

Presentation and brief discussion of propositions relating to assignment
(see assignment brief below). Please note the deadline. Students who
ignore this deadline will not be allowed to submit the project and will
thus fail the course.

Week 14; Monday 6-2-2006

Topic: Revision session (questions and answers, explanations about final
exam)

Please e-mail any questions, by Wednesday 1 February June, about any

of the material that I covered that was unclear to you. Questions about
the project may also be posed. I will reply to those questions and post
them on my webpage so that all students can benefit from the
explanation.

Final exam Date, place, to be announced on official HEC website.

Individual assignment brief

Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to allow students to critically discuss a leadership theory. A
theory is a set of interrelated constructs that explain a phenomenon and predict a dependent
outcome/s under certain conditions (see Dubin, 1976; Bacharach, 1989; see also Antonakis et
al., 2004 for an overview of theory, research, and methods for studying leadership). For
example (and this example is indicative—please do not use such a basic example for your
assignment), one could view leadership, as comprising two constructs/factors: democratic and
autocratic leadership, which negatively covary. Democratic leadership is operationalized as
the extent to which the leader involves subordinates in decision-making, empowers followers,
and so forth. Autocratic leadership is operationalized as the extent to which the leader makes
decisions unilaterally, uses many controls and checks, and so forth. Democratic leadership
predicts satisfied employees, because individuals prefer to operate autonomously to satisfy
various higher-order needs. However, whereas autocratic leadership predicts dissatisfied
employees, for reasons x, y, and z, under conditions a and b (these conditions are boundary
conditions and could include culture, organizational risk, subordinate “need maturity,” etc.).

The main task will be to identify a major leadership theory by reading a credible peer-
reviewed journal article (see section in the end to see which journals I will accept as being
credible). Then, summarize the theory in maximum 4 to 5 pages, explaining what the major
constructs/factors of the theory are, how the constructs have been operationalized (i.e., the

4
manifest indicators of the constructs), and how or why the constructs theoretically predict a
dependent outcome and the conditions under which the theory is supposed to work (i.e.,
discuss the major propositions of the theory and their explicit or implicit boundary
conditions). In this summary include a one-page discussion on potential boundaries of the
theory that have not been explicitly considered by the authors (note: to find potential
boundary conditions you will need to read papers that have investigate this theory or related
theories—use SSCI to track articles that have cited your target theory. See relevant section
below).

Then, use 8 credible peer-reviewed journal articles (at least 4 of these articles must be
from a journal included in my credible journals list below) to discuss whether the theory is
supported, focusing specifically on whether the theory “works as intended” in the boundary
conditions that have been explicated by you or other authors. Your discussions must explicitly
consider how the theory is moderated (bounded) by contingency (contextual) factors that have
not been considered by the authors. When referring to the journal articles, please summarize
each article in about one or two pages explaining the purpose, the theory, the method used,
the results, and the conclusions. The results of the 8 articles must then be integrated into a
cohesive argument.

All sources must be adequately cited and presented in full in the reference list. Do not
“lift” sentences verbatim (i.e., do not copy word-for-word what someone else has written);
please paraphrase what you borrow from others and document all sources (even if
paraphrased) in the reference list. Failure to document a source of information, or plagiarism
of any sort will result in a “zero” grade! Because of space limitations avoid using quotations,
unless imperative.

This assignment is to be prepared individually and should be between 20 and 25

(max.) double spaced pages (excluding the cover page, table of context, and references) of
text proper. Excessively long assignments will be penalized by a reduction of 0.25 points for
each page over the 25 page limit. Excessively short assignments will be penalized in the
grading criteria as it is possible that what has been written does not satisfy the criteria.
However, it is possible that you write a very good project that is less than 20 pages. Please
use Times New Roman 12 point font and include 2.5cm page margins. The assignment is due
by midday (12h00 Swiss Time) Friday 10 February 2006. Please send the assignment by e-
mail to philippe.jacquart@unil.ch Microsoft Word for Windows format. Please provide full
contact particulars (e-mail, telephone, mailing address) with your submission in case we need
to contact you.

Note: as part of your assignment, please send by e-mail to philippe.jacquart@unil.ch,

by midday (12h00 Swiss Time) Wednesday 25 January 2006 the following: (a) the full
reference of the theory that you will be critiquing (b) one proposition (whether explicit or
implicit) of this theory (c) a brief list (1-2 points) of what boundary conditions you will
investigate. Here is an indicative example for you to follow:

(a) Couchpinned, P. (2005). On democratic and autocratic leadership. Journal of

Leadership Research, 34, 55-69.

(b) Democratic leadership will be positively related to subordinate performance.

5
 (c) 1. Culture: In some cultures (e.g., high power distance cultures), leaders cannot
be democratic because they will not be taken seriously (thus democratic leadership might be
negatively related to performance in this context)
2. Organizational context: In crisis or risk situations, when there is no time to
take decisions with subordinates, the leader must be autocratic and take the decision
unilaterally (thus democratic leadership might be negatively related to performance in this
context).

These propositions and short critiques will be presented by me to the entire class
during lesson 13. I will briefly comment on the critiques. The purpose of this deadline is to
encourage you to start thinking soon about your assignment. Also, by exposing you to the
work your colleagues will undertake, this exercise will give you some ideas of what types of
boundary conditions theories have. Note that the theory you choose to send us is the theory
that you must use in your assignment. Thus, please do not leave this to the last minute and
choose your theory carefully. Do not do this exercise in a rush because you might get stuck
with a theory that you do not find interesting or which might be difficult to critique.

Grading
The final grade will be calculated as follows:

1. Presentation of theory based on a significant contributor to the topic – 30% (about 4

pages)
a) Introduction, research question, presentation of theory
b) Explanation of theory and relation to dependent measure/s
c) Boundaries of the theory

2. Review of literature – 30% (about 12 pages)

a) Short summary and analysis of the journal articles supporting your argumentation

3. Integration of literature – 20% (about 4 pages)

a) Integration, synthesis and deductions, presenting coherent closing arguments

4. Flow and presentation – 20%

a) Proper and objective writing using a logical order and reasoning. Gender inclusive
writing.
b) General presentation, sources of information, references

Note: If it appears to me that academy integrity has been compromised, I reserve the right to
examine you orally at the HEC or by telephone at a mutually determined time. Students who I
identify as needing to undergo an oral defense who (a) have not provided contact particulars
with their submission or (b) do not respond within a reasonable time (i.e., within one week
from the date I contact them) to my invitation to undergo a defense or (c) refuse to undergo an
defense, will be given a “zero” grade.

References pertaining to assignment

Antonakis, J., Schriesheim, C. A., Donovan, J. A., Gopalakrishna-Pillai, K., Pellegrini, E. K.,
& Rossomme, J. L. (2004b). Methods for studying leadership. In J. Antonakis, A. T.
Cianciolo, & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.). The nature of leadership, (pp. 48-70). Thousand
Oaks: Sage Publications.

6
Bacharach, S. B. (1989). Organizational theories: Some criteria for evaluation. Academy of
Management Review 14, 496-515.
Dubin, R. (1976). Theory building in applied areas. In M. D. Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of
industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 17-39). Chicago: Rand McNally.

Journals which may be used for the project

(ranked by ISI Journal Citations Report impact factor)

Management journals:
ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVUE
ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY
ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
LEADERSHIP QUARTERLY
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND HUMAN DECISION PROCESSES
JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT
JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

Applied Psychology journals:

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
JOURNAL OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR
LEADERSHIP QUARTERLY
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND HUMAN DECISION PROCESSES
PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Databases that will be useful to use

Two databases that will be most useful to use are PsychINFO and Business Source Premier.
Both databases are accessible from the library homepage at

http://dbserv1-bcu.unil.ch/dbbcu/cds/menu.php.

Students who wish to work from a location other than that of the university may connect
through the university’s secure server at:

https://crypto.unil.ch (log in with your e-mail address and password). Each webpage that you
wish to access has to be entered in the textbox on the top right hand side of the page. Note
that if you visit certain pages often you can create bookmarks (having the library databases
page would be a good idea).

Articles can be accessed through PsychINFO and Business Source Premier. At times,
however, you might only find abstracts to articles. In this case, you will have to access the
article from Perunil: http://perunil.unil.ch/perunil/periodiques/. Many journals can be
accessed on-line. Sometimes you might actually have to take a walk to the library to obtain an
article (Perunil will inform you if the journal is held in electronic or in paper format).

7
 How to track articles on SSCI

One of the easiest ways to find articles that have cited the target article/theory that you have
investigated is to use SSCI. Go to http://wos.consortium.ch and click on “Web of Science.”
Then click on the “Cited reference search” button. As an example, I will track articles that
have cited the following:

Shamir, B. (1995). Social distance and charisma: Theoretical notes and an exploratory study.
Leadership Quarterly, 6, 19-47.

Include the information in the fields as follows:

Note that the journal titles are usually abbreviated so will need to click on the link view the
Thomson ISI list of journal abbreviations). If an author has published more than one article in that
particular journal, you should include the Cited Year in the last field like I have done. Once
you click on “Search” you will Shamir’s article, for example:

8
Click on the “Select” box (which is next to the number 53, the number of times this article has
been cited) and then click on “Finish Search.” You will then get a list of articles that have
cited this work, as follows:

By clicking on the records you can examine the abstract and then get the paper from Perunil if
you think it is useful. Note that for each article that you will use, you will probably have to
read about five or so articles. This will not be an easy job so please start working on your
assignment as soon as possible.