An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university has waived all of the usual requirements, such as matriculation, course credits, a dissertation, the passing of comprehensive examinations. It is known by the Latin phrases honoris causa or ad honorem; the degree is a doctorate or, less a master's degree, may be awarded to someone who has no prior connection with the academic institution or no previous postsecondary education. An example of identifying a recipient of this award is as follows: Doctorate in Business Administration; the degree is conferred as a way of honouring a distinguished visitor's contributions to a specific field or to society in general. It is sometimes recommended that such degrees be listed in one's curriculum vitae as an award, not in the education section. With regard to the use of this honorific, the policies of institutions of higher education ask that recipients "refrain from adopting the misleading title" and that a recipient of an honorary doctorate should restrict the use of the title "Dr" before their name to any engagement with the institution of higher education in question and not within the broader community.

Rev. Theodore Hesburgh held the record for most honorary degrees, having been awarded 150 during his lifetime; the practice dates back to the Middle Ages, when for various reasons a university might be persuaded, or otherwise see fit, to grant exemption from some or all of the usual statutory requirements for the awarding of a degree. The earliest honorary degree on record was awarded to Lionel Woodville in the late 1470s by the University of Oxford, he became Bishop of Salisbury. In the latter part of the 16th century, the granting of honorary degrees became quite common on the occasion of royal visits to Oxford or Cambridge. On the visit of James I to Oxford in 1605, for example, forty-three members of his retinue received the degree of Master of Arts, the Register of Convocation explicitly states that these were full degrees, carrying the usual privileges. Honorary degrees are awarded at regular graduation ceremonies, at which the recipients are invited to make a speech of acceptance before the assembled faculty and graduates – an event which forms the highlight of the ceremony.

Universities nominate several persons each year for honorary degrees. Those who are nominated are not told until a formal approval and invitation are made; the term honorary degree is a slight misnomer: honoris causa degrees are not considered of the same standing as substantive degrees earned by the standard academic processes of courses and original research, except where the recipient has demonstrated an appropriate level of academic scholarship that would ordinarily qualify him or her for the award of a substantive degree. Recipients of honorary degrees wear the same academic dress as recipients of substantive degrees, although there are a few exceptions: honorary graduates at the University of Cambridge wear the appropriate full-dress gown but not the hood, those at the University of St Andrews wear a black cassock instead of the usual full-dress gown. An ad eundem or jure officii degree is sometimes considered honorary, although they are only conferred on an individual who has achieved a comparable qualification at another university or by attaining an office requiring the appropriate level of scholarship.

Under certain circumstances, a degree may be conferred on an individual for both the nature of the office they hold and the completion of a dissertation. The "dissertation et jure dignitatis" is considered to be a full academic degree. See below. Although higher doctorates such as DSc, DLitt, etc. are awarded honoris causa, in many countries it is possible formally to earn such a degree. This involves the submission of a portfolio of peer-refereed research undertaken over a number of years, which has made a substantial contribution to the academic field in question; the university will appoint a panel of examiners who will consider the case and prepare a report recommending whether or not the degree be awarded. The applicant must have some strong formal connection with the university in question, for example full-time academic staff, or graduates of several years' standing; some universities, seeking to differentiate between substantive and honorary doctorates, have a degree, used for these purposes, with the other higher doctorates reserved for formally examined academic scholarship.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has the authority to award degrees. These "Lambeth degrees" are sometimes, thought to be honorary. Between the two extremes of honoring celebrities and formally assessing a portfolio of research, some universities use honorary degrees to recognize achievements of intellectual rigor; some institutes of higher education do not confer honorary degrees as a matter of policy — see below. Some learned societies award honorary fellows

Leadership Dynamics known as Leadership Dynamics Institute, was a private, for-profit company, owned by William Penn Patrick. The company focused on personal development and self-improvement. Leadership Dynamics was the first form of what psychologists termed "Large Group Awareness Training". William Penn Patrick wrote a booklet entitled Happiness and Success through Principle, in 1967, founded Leadership Dynamics based on those principles; every employee in the management of Holiday Magic were expected to take part in the Leadership Dynamics coursework, described as having "overtones of strict military training techniques." William Penn Patrick was the financial backer of the company, provided the financial backing for Holiday Magic and Alexander Everett's Mind Dynamics. Patrick stated that students of the Leadership Dynamics Institute would be able to lead "a more creative and constructive life." Patrick utilized the principles of Everett's Mind Dynamics in his company. Ben Gay, a high-level instructor at Leadership Dynamics, was President of Holiday Magic in the United States.

Though he claimed Leadership Dynamics was a separate company, "..in no way related to Holiday Magic, Inc.", author Gene Church pointed out many inconsistencies in this statement. According to a lawsuit brought against Holiday Magic by the Securities and Exchange Commission, in order to advance to the positions of Instructor General, Trainer General, Senior General within the company, employees were mandated to take part in the Leadership Dynamics training. In 1970, William Penn Patrick bought Mind Dynamics, the Leadership Dynamics coursework soon became popular in the United States and Australia. However, Patrick's businesses became involved in pyramid schemes, Leadership Dynamics, Holiday Magic, Mind Dynamics shut down in 1973. Michael Langone wrote in Business and Society Review that Leadership Dynamics was one of the first "transformational trainings"; the extreme form of human potential movement training led to a series of lawsuits for the company. This extreme training involved subjecting course participants to abusive practices such as beating and sleep deprivation, being placed inside of coffins, degrading sexual acts.

Lawsuits against the company by former participants in the coursework alleged that students were sexually abused and tortured, including being placed in coffins or on crosses. The non-fiction book, The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled described some of these practices in great detail, this was made into a film, Circle of Power. Langone noted that many forms of transformational trainings were at the least, indirectly influenced by Leadership Dynamics. While working for Holiday Magic, Lifespring founder John Hanley attended a course at Leadership Dynamics. Chris Mathe, at the time a Ph. D. candidate in clinical psychology, wrote that most of today's current forms of Large-Group Awareness Training were modeled after the Leadership Dynamics Institute. Mathe cited Lifespring, Insight Seminars, PSI Seminars, New Warriors, Impact as groups that were influenced by Leadership Dynamics. Spiritual gifts of inner peace & self-development, current Web site of Alexander Everett

D-Sight is a company that specializes in decision support software and associated services in the domains of project prioritization, supplier selection and collaborative decision-making. It was founded in 2010 as a spin-off from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, their headquarters are located in Belgium. D-Sight has developed different software products that all aim at supporting different complex decision-making processes. All products are distributed under the model of software as a service; the products are used in a wide variety of industries such as energy and natural resources and pharmaceutical, NGO and public, etc. D-Sight Portfolio is a Project Portfolio Management platform focused around the early stage decision-making, it allows users to: Collect and centralize data for project requests and build the business case Prioritize project proposals and evaluate the ranking Allocate resources to those proposals that add the most value to the organization, thereby optimizing the project portfolio D-Sight Sourcing is a strategic sourcing platform to standardize and justify the supplier selection process.

D-Sight Collaborative Decision-Making is a decision-making software that offers a structured approach to data-based group decisions. The methodology used in these platforms is a multi-criteria decision analysis. Rather than looking at one single determinant to make decisions, MCDA methods consider multiple factors, they integrate both quantitative and qualitative information, allow to make informed rather than purely intuitive decisions. D-Sight's software products implement more the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation and geometrical analysis for interactive decision aid, multi-attribute utility theory and analytic hierarchy process