As the signs of the impending ecological crisis become more apparent, the issue of sustainability comes to the forefront in many studies. However, there appears to be a substantial lack of focus on the individual level which can be considered a major shortcoming due to the fact that sustainability can only be obtained through joint efforts of each and every person. A significant part of sustainability work lies on the shoulders of companies and organisations as they are not only legally obliged to reduce the environmental footprint of their activities but also bear a huge responsibility in the face of the whole society. As employees often carry the main burden when it comes to implementing new initiatives, we decided to gain a better understanding of their perspective. In the presented research we explore the sensemaking of employees in relation to sustainability in order to determine their role as followers in company’s or organisation’s sustainability work. Our ambition for the research was to contribute to closing the gap in existing studies by suggesting a theoretical model which would describe various roles which employees enact when faced with sustainability issues. We carried out a qualitative study based on an inductive approach and case study research method. For the purpose of the study we conducted interviews and analysed data looking for recurrent themes, patterns and more importantly variations in the ways employees make sense of sustainability. As a result, we presented four roles which employees enact in the context of sustainability, namely movers and shakers, happy campers, truth-seekers and distant observers, and provided the description of main distinctive characteristics inherent in these roles.

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<p>School leaders face the challenge of creating and maintaining learning during rapid and complex conditions. Some of the challenges associated with leadership based on authenticity in intercultural schools will be discussed. The purpose of this essay is to describe and gain an insight into three school leaders´ views on leadership in multicultural schools. The study is based on scientific articles and the survey consists of interviews with head teachers in different multicultural schools. The hermeneutic research approach has been the basis for this study through qualitative interviews and collected data for analysis. To get a better understanding of the issues this essay culminates in, different leadership styles are shortly presented. The characteristics that underpin this study will hopefully be better understood through definitions of key concepts. In an attempt to further define authentic leadership, the concept of authentic followership will be introduced and discussed. Effective leadership in intercultural schools requires genuine understanding and action. In line with this, various strategies are proposed by which leaders can consciously transform and better understand the problems and find solutions in intercultural school contexts.</p>

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In this thesis, we are studying the issue of transformational leadership in Chinese context, which is subjected to social science category. The reason why we concentrate on this research issue is based on the limited available references of Chinese transformational leadership, on our personal interests of transformational leadership and on the rather interesting and mysterious Chinese context covering the influence of globalization, digitalization and so forth. At the same time, we will focus on two major research questions, what leaders and followers’ expectations are during transformation in Chinese companies and what skills and abilities Chinese transformational leaders need in practice.Since we have ascertained the research issue and questions, the methodology of grounded theory and relevant literatures of organizational change, full range of leadership model, followership, and skill approach laid the solid foundation for our further data collection and data analysis. And the way of interviewing and questionnaire as specific methods of data collection played a crucial role in gathering empirical data, which gives contributions to theory development for our research.Through collecting and analyzing data, we constructed our theory of Chinese transformational leadership. For improving transformation performance in Chinese companies, transformational leaders is required to take both leaders and followers’ expectations into consideration and to lead the transformation with effective leadership skills and abilities. In addition, we found that there is a new implication of transformational followership for readers and a comparatively vague concept of trust in transformation process in Chinese companies for further study.

The purpose of this study was to explore leadership effectiveness from the perspectives of the Full Range Leadership Model and Cognitive Style Theory within the framework of understanding both followers and leaders as individual's attitudes to leadership effectiveness. Leadership effectiveness was measured using newly developed self-report instrument, the Leadership Effectiveness Questionnaire (LEQ) with three scales of effectiveness as suggested by Yukl (2002), which were: 1) aims, 2) followers' attitude towards the leader and, 3) group processes. The Full Range leadership approaches were measured using Bass & Avolio's (1997) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Form 5X-Short, whilst cognitive style was gathered by using Allinson & Hayes's (1996) Cognitive Style Index (CSI). A two stage (questionnaire survey followed by semi structured interviews) mixed method study was undertaken. Questionnaire data was gathered from 331 followers and 172 leaders in Malaysian Government-Linked Companies, and 10 leaders involved in the interviews. Findings from the survey suggest that a transformational approach was correlated significantly and positively with effectiveness. Intuitive Cognitive Style also correlated significantly with leadership effectiveness. Findings from the semistructured interviews identified a few more characteristics of an effective leadership such as balance and appreciative, whilst new dimensions of cognitive style identified such as rational and holistic.

School leaders face the challenge of creating and maintaining learning during rapid and complex conditions. Some of the challenges associated with leadership based on authenticity in intercultural schools will be discussed. The purpose of this essay is to describe and gain an insight into three school leaders´ views on leadership in multicultural schools. The study is based on scientific articles and the survey consists of interviews with head teachers in different multicultural schools. The hermeneutic research approach has been the basis for this study through qualitative interviews and collected data for analysis. To get a better understanding of the issues this essay culminates in, different leadership styles are shortly presented. The characteristics that underpin this study will hopefully be better understood through definitions of key concepts. In an attempt to further define authentic leadership, the concept of authentic followership will be introduced and discussed. Effective leadership in intercultural schools requires genuine understanding and action. In line with this, various strategies are proposed by which leaders can consciously transform and better understand the problems and find solutions in intercultural school contexts.

The outline of this project begins with the exploration of basic idea of leadership and further linking it with Chinese political environment. Subsequently the transformational leadership model is used to analyze Chinese students’ perception of President Xi Jinping, while the traits of followers — in this case Chinese students — are defined using Robert Kelly’s followership model. The central piece of this research was to conduct survey among Chinese students, while the survey questionnaire was analytically designed to reveal the follower’s level of agreement with Xi Jinping’s policies as well as overall popularity. The survey data also helped indicate the types of followers and to examine relevant connections to their viewpoints, which aided in investigating their perception of Chinese president as a leader. This framework would conceivably be an effective attempt to indicate that how followers define themselves and how their standpoint conceives leadership. This study can not only help identify the popularity of Chinese leader among students but also evaluate the effects of policies introduced by Xi Jinping. Finally, the research is included to understand to what extend current policies meet students’ expectations, which can predict the trend and help weigh future reforms, formulation of new policies and development of the governing system.

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The movement of evangelical multiethnic churches, which occurred in the late-1990s and into the early 2000s, sought racial justice by developing racially diverse congregations as their core distinction of Christian discipleship. These evangelical multiethnic churches are situated in a longer historical narrative of black-led, black-centered ecumenical leadership focused on a theological framework of racial reconciliation, cross-racial interpersonal friendships, and diverse cultural expressions. However, research of these churches reveal they actually perpetuate the very inequalities they seek to dismantle. White hegemony remains intact in these multicultural Christian communities through its maintenance of white dominant structures and cultural norms, even with black-led senior leadership. The problem this project seeks to address through the concept of “white followership” is the lack of experience and skills among white evangelicals particularly in multiethnic churches to yield normative power and institutional culture to another cultural expression and organizational power arrangement. Utilizing Dr. Patsy Baker Blackshear’s definition of an exemplary follower, this project will develop the construct of white followership and the particular behaviors and characteristics white congregants in a minority-led multiethnic congregation can adopt. While this project relies on research of evangelical multiethnic churches across the United States, the focal site in which the construct of white followership will initially be applied is The Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is where I, a white female pastor, serve as its Associate Pastor. The methodological approach of this project is interdisciplinary, integrating history, anti-racism research, and white racial identity studies to elucidate the problem of white supremacy in the United States and the American church. The project relies heavily on: 1) sociological studies of religion, race, and power to enumerate the problem of white hegemony in evangelical multiethnic congregations, 2) theological and biblical studies to outline the imperative shift of power needed in white-dominated evangelical multiethnic churches; 3) business and leadership studies to introduce the concept of followership and enrich the construction of white followership; and 4) observing resistance among white congregants as change produces shifts in the status quo, adapting Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) and autoethnographic stories to measure change. White followership, in the scope of this project, focuses primarily on a pedagogical approach, institutional strategy, and overall ecumenical culture primarily expressed at The Sanctuary. It does not address more granular aspects of the communal worship experience, external evangelistic service, and community engagement and action, though those are important considerations as the applied work of white followership expands. Overall, the construct of white followership, while not exhaustive for the remedy of white hegemony in evangelical multiethnic churches, provides an innovative, malleable, and promising solution forward for white congregants to employ toward greater racial justice.