ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING RUBRICS
HW # 1
Dream Job: A Paper on Leadership
Your objective/goal in this assignment is to demonstrate to your instructor that you have read-and have made an attempt to understand, comprehend, and master-the various concepts of leadership and culture as presented in the eReadings, lecture notes, and other information you may have obtained up to this point in the course. To repeat, other sources are permitted as long as they are credible and objective sources. You should use sources from the UMUC virtual library databases. Two excellent sources of articles are ABI/Inform and Business Source Complete.
Assume you have landed your dream job with your dream employer, a global company with several thousand employees. It has offices and facilities all over the world. You have been recognized as an "up and comer" and placed in the company's training program. Part of this program involves sending you to UMUC to take management courses, including this one, with "Professor Jones," an expert in the field.
In the past, the company's recognition of future talent such as you has been based on gut feelings. Top management wants to refine the process, and your supervisor has asked you to write a synopsis on leadership, and to suggest an instrument that can be used to evaluate or predict the leadership capabilities of job applicants. After an informal conversation regarding your assignment with your supervisor, you make notes of the following points:
- What is leadership?
- Is leadership a trait or a process?
- Is leadership assigned or emergent?
- Is leadership the same as management? Is managing leading?
- Are leaders born or made?
- Are there commonalities among leaders?
- Do leaders have certain skills? If so, what?
- Do leaders behave in certain ways? If so, how?
- Can the same leadership techniques apply to a variety of conditions?
- Is it possible to identify certain characteristics of an individual and then match them to a leadership position?
- Are there any instruments (questionnaires or tests) available to determine leader characteristics?
- Are the same leadership techniques applicable to different countries?
In a follow-up conversation, your supervisor points out that it would be impossible to cover each of those points in 4 to 6 pages. What he/she has in mind is for you to consider the various leadership concepts you have studied, pick the one you think is most applicable, and recommend a particular course of actionthat applies best to your company.
Description
Submit a paper of 4 to 5 double-spaced pages discussing the topic of leadership. Follow APA format and guidelines with the following exception: Develop an outline and include it in an appendix at the end of your paper. This outline is to consist of your topic sentence or thesis statement, which should be the first sentence of your paper, and two or three points, which should reflect the second-level headings of your paper.
Learning Outcomes
This paper will help you learn to
- Identify an issue and formulate a research topic that can be adequately covered in the required space;
- Identify, examine, and evaluate various aspects of leadership; and
- Demonstrate competence in using APA format, especially regarding citations and references.
Provide Proper Attribution, and Support Your Conclusions
Give credit where credit is due. It is easy to plagiarize unintentionally. Every time you use the words or ideas of someone else, cite your reference per instructions in your APA Manual.
If you state conclusions or facts such as:
- "All leaders must be resilient,"
- "Discrimination against women is the very worst kind," or
- "Genes are what determine behavior"
Then you have made a claim and you must provide evidence to support it. Furthermore, if the assertion or a piece of supporting evidence is attributable to a particular source, you must also provide complete reference information.