Dissertation/Thesis Abstract

How Martin Luther King, Jr.'s worldview-leadership transformed an engrained culture
by Hunter, Ron, Jr., Ph.D., Dallas Baptist University, 2016, 432; 10255346
Abstract (Summary)

Leaders help organizations and cultures not desirous of change to undergo cultural shifts. The current study conducts a textual analysis of six speeches delivered from Montgomery to Memphis in order to extrapolate the sources of his worldview and identify the major arguments used in the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. who shaped the Civil Rights Movement, an engrained culture, and morally shaped others to lead cultural change. King used a worldview-leadership style to offer cognitive and emotional suppositions to challenge centuries-old presuppositions within both Caucasian and African American cultures. Significant developmental influences changed King’s outlook, and as a result he communicated to audiences how to change their worldview. As a young boy, King was determined to hate white people but instead he grew into a reformer committed to nonviolent agape love and articulated moral argumentation from a mosaic of influences. As he encountered multiple cultures of stakeholders each possessing their own set of presuppositions, King expressed a pragmatic patchwork of nearly 70 identifiable sources that appear as core values within his speeches. Forensic textual analysis highlights his core values, consciously and subconsciously expressed, and how he passed the influences along to the audiences. His speeches championed lessons learned from parents, grandparents, experiences, professors, theologians, and Western thinkers to suggest more than a legislative shift but one where society as whole began to adopt a better moral direction.

Keywords: Leadership, leader, Martin Luther King Jr., change, Civil Rights Movement, worldview, speech, engrained culture, textual analysis, communication, presuppositions.

Indexing (document details)
Advisor: Nelson, Mary K.
Commitee: Naugle, David K., Williams, Michael E.
School: Dallas Baptist University
Department: Leadership
School Location: United States -- Texas
Subjects: Black history, Communication, Cognitive psychology
Keywords: Change, Civil rights movement, Leadership, Martin luther king jr., Speech, Worldview
Publication Number: 10255346
ISBN: 978-1-369-54373-5