England

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Accessibility statement
This module offers you the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge leadership ideas in tandem with developing as a practitioner. You'll cover topics such as identity, person-based leadership, collective leadership, ethical leadership and aesthetic views of leadership. You’ll also learn how to be a more discerning and critically engaged consumer of leadership ideas in the workplace and, more generally, in society. The module follows a developmental approach, meaning that you’ll reflect on leadership practice in your working environment and/or the wider world and be well-placed to experiment with new concepts and practices as a result.
You'll learn about many of the major concepts of leadership, one of the oldest organisational concepts, with a history stretching back as far as the Ancient Greeks. Leadership is a practice and area of study that has persisted for so long for good reason: people find it incredibly appealing as an idea. At a very basic level, this is because leadership perhaps inevitably deals with big questions about the overall direction of a group, organisation or society. In addition, people tend, for good or ill, to find the idea of leaders exciting, even bewitching.
You'll cover a broad range of ideas in this module: learn about various key concepts related to what it means to be a leader all the way through to far more recent accounts that hold that leadership resides more in the collective acts of people.
In more detail, you'll cover the following aspects of leadership.
Key module practices
You'll be asked to follow these learning practices as you proceed through the module:
This is an OU level 2 module, and if you have no previous experience of studying business management, it is strongly recommended that you first study An introduction to business management (B100) (or an equivalent).
If you have any doubt about the suitability of the module, please speak to an adviser.
You’ll get help and support from an assigned tutor throughout your module.
They’ll help by:
Online tutorials run throughout the module. While they’re not compulsory, we strongly encourage you to participate. Where possible, we’ll make recordings available.
You’ll be provided with six printed module books and have access to a module website, which includes:
The OU strives to make all aspects of study accessible to everyone, and this Accessibility Statement outlines what studying B208 involves. You should use this information to inform your study preparations and any discussions with us about how we can meet your needs.
To find out more about what kind of support and adjustments might be available, contact us or visit our Disability support website.
Developing leadership starts once a year – in October.
This page describes the module that will start in October 2025, when we expect it to start for the last time.
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