Advanced Topics in Leadership Research - 5 ECTS

Course Coordinator: Associate Professor Florence Villeséche, Department of Business Humanities and Law

Faculty

Assistant Professor Nicole Ferry
Department of Management, Society and Communication

Prerequisites

The participants are expected to submit a 5-page synopsis of their PhD project (or a synopsis of one of their PhD papers or monograph chapters) one week before the course. If the PhD project is not directly related to leadership, the synopsis should include connections to this topic (throughout or in a dedicated section). The student papers will be discussed in small groups in a feedback session during the course. The students are expected to read each other’s papers before the course starts to ensure rich discussions.

Content and objectives of the PhD course:

This course offers an overview of current debates and themes in the field of leadership studies, including a broad range of perspectives, ranging from transformational, shared, and distributed leadership, leadership and ethics, discursive leadership studies, critical perspectives, and leadership development, among others. In particular, the course aims to focus on existing and potential interfaces, connections, and frictions between leadership studies and other fields within organization studies.

The course will be divided into 2 themes a day, that is, 8 themes in total plus feedback sessions discussing the students’ projects and a final session on the future of leadership studies:

• Theme 1: History and boundaries of leadership studies
• Theme 2: Leadership and the sacred
• Theme 3: Collective, shared, and distributed leadership
• Theme 4: Algorithmic Leadership
• Theme 5: Leadership ethics and responsibility in practice
• Theme 6: Diversity, inclusion, and leadership
• Theme 7: Leadership, identity, and authenticity
• Theme 8: Leadership development

Teaching style

The course is organized as a 5-day on-site learning experience. The pedagogy includes teacher and student presentations, break-out sessions, “PhD troubleshooting” sessions (a half-day session focused on the specific problems or challenges that the participants encounter in their PhD work in relation to the topic of leadership), and intensive reading and discussion of texts. Every day starts and ends with a reflective time, for which we will employ traditional discussion formats as well as journaling and design-based methods.

Moreover, the pedagogical approach reflects that a productive learning experience is co-created. Hence, students will be invited to mobilize their knowledge (their PhD research) in relation to not just the texts but also in relation to their colleagues’ work and the teaching team’s expertise. This interactive learning experience is complemented by concise input and guidance of debates by faculty.

Learning objectives

After the course, the student is expected to be able to

• Engage with the field of leadership studies, acknowledging the variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to study leadership in practice
• Critically discuss current issues in the field of leadership studies, particularly concerning the intersection between leadership and the broader field of management and organization studies.
• Advance their PhD project by actively engaging with peers and experienced researchers from the field of leadership and formulate an impactful research contribution to it.

Preliminary Schedule

Literature

Theme 1: History and boundaries of leadership studies

-        Collinson, D. (2011). Critical leadership studies. The Sage handbook of leadership, 181-194.

-        Plato, Allegory of the cave, excerpt from The Republic.

-        Zaleznik, A. (1977) Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review, May/June: 67-78.

Theme 2: Leadership and the sacred

-        Grint, K. (2010): The Sacred in Leadership: Separation, Sacrifice and Silence, Organization Studies, 31(1): 89-107.

-        Sørensen, B. M., & Villadsen, K. (2018). Penis-whirling and pie-throwing: Norm-defying and norm-setting drama in the creative industries. Human Relations, 71(8), 1049–1071.

-        Spoelstra, S. (2016). Leadership and religion, in The Routledge Companion to Leadership, pp. 341-353. Routledge, 2016

Theme 3: Collective, shared, and distributed leadership

-        Bolden, R. (2011). Distributed leadership in organizations: A review of theory and research. International Journal of Management Reviews 13(3), 251-269.

-        Empson, L., Gagnon, S., & Spoelstra, S. (working paper). Collective leadership as dialogue: Critical conversations for an evolving paradigm.

-        Hawkins, B. (2015). Ship-shape: materializing leadership in the British Royal Navy. Human Relations, 68(6), 951-971.

Theme 4: Algorithmic Leadership

-        Stark, D., & Broeck, P. V. (2024). Principles of Algorithmic Management. Organization Theory, 5(2).

-        Spoelstra, S., & Butler, N. (2026). The ethics of algorithmic leadership and the game of business. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17427150261436598

-        Turing, Alan M. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence, Mind, 59(236), 433-460.

Theme 5: Leadership ethics and responsibility in practice

-        Korsgaard, C. M. (2009). Constitution of agency. In Self-constitution: Agency, identity, and integrity (pp. 1–26). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

-        Pedersen, M. & Olesen, K.G. (working paper). Responsible leadership of moral stress: on leading through practical identities

-        Spoelstra, S. (2022). Leadership and the stings of command. ephemera, 22(1), 155–172. 

Theme 6: Diversity, inclusion, and leadership

-        Villesèche, F. (forthcoming 2026). Leading Inclusion in Contemporary Teams: Integrating Social Psychology and Network Perspectives. In: Bourke, J., & Özbilgin, M. (Eds.), Inclusive Leadership: A handbook. De Gruyter.

-        ​​Ferry, N. (2026). Men’s leadership development: A framework for advancing gender equity in leadership development. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 25(1), 33-55.

-        Villesèche, F., Ottsen, C., & Paunova, M. (2021). Bias and leadership aspirations: Exploring the interaction of gender and parental status in self-evaluations. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, (3), 70-85. 

Theme 7: Leadership, identity, and authenticity

-        Haslam, S. A., Gaffney, A. M., Hogg, M. A., Rast III, D. E., & Steffens, N. K. (2022). Reconciling identity leadership and leader identity: A dual-identity framework. The Leadership Quarterly, 33(4), 101620.

-        Iszatt-White, M., Stead, V., & Elliott, C. (2021). Impossible or just irrelevant? Unravelling the ‘authentic leadership’ paradox through the lens of emotional labour. Leadership, 17(4), 464-482.

-        Villesèche, F., Klitmøller, A., & Michaelsen, C. B. (2024). Leader authenticity and ethics: a Heideggerian perspective. Business ethics quarterly, 34(4), 662-681.

Theme 8: Leadership development

-        Carroll, B., & Nicholson, H. (2014). Resistance and struggle in leadership development. Human relations, 67(11), 1413-1436.

-        Guthey, E., & Ferry, N. (Forthcoming). The leadership development industry and the cultural production of leadership. Academy of Management Learning & Education.

Ferry, N., & Guthey, E. (2021). Start ‘em early: Pastoral power and the confessional culture of student leadership development in US universities. Journal of Business Ethics, 173(4), 723–736. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04565-7

Note: In case we receive more registrations for the course than we have seats, CBS PhD students will have first priority. Remaining seats will be filled on a first come first serve.