One approach to a business leadership dissertation is to focus on leadership in specific emerging industries like alternative energy and social networking. Students complete a case study of a leader within an emerging industry. The case study could compare and contrast the case study's featured leader with other notable business leaders and could make observations about how business leadership will shape the future of the industry.
Students can create a business plan for a new company. One component of the business plan is an outline of its leadership structure. Students explain the reasoning behind their outline by comparing and contrasting their company with existing businesses at various levels of success. For each element of the outline explaining leadership structure, students use case studies to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the leadership methods they choose for their new companies.
Students analyze how individual characteristics of business leaders shape their respective companies. To do this, students choose business leaders who share one common characteristic and then compare data about the purpose, profitability and staff of their companies. Some characteristics to investigate include gender, spiritual beliefs and Myers-Briggs personality types.
Another idea for a dissertation is to complete a case study of a company that failed due to poor leadership. The study pinpoints each major area in which leadership failed and provides an analysis of why the failure occurred. Additionally the project provides a detailed explanation of why the company would have been successful without those leadership failures and includes an updated leadership plan for an renovated version of the company.