ABSTRACT
Although leadership is probably the most extensively studied topic in the social, behavioral, and management sciences, there is still little consensus regarding the essential features of effective leadership. Part of the problem comes from a lack of attention to conceptual issues of three kinds. First, the term is rarely defined, or defined explicitly. This means that the subsequent research uses a wide variety of ad hoc criteria to define leadership, and the resulting literature is inconclusive. Thus, as of today, there is virtually no consensus regarding the characteristics of effective leadership other than to note that it somehow depends on the “situation.” Second, most discussions never link leadership to a larger conception of human nature. This was not true earlier on; for example, Argyris, McGregor, and Herzberg in the 1960s criticized existing management practices on the basis of their (very similar) ideas about human motivation. They believed that the most powerful human motive is a need to grow, develop, and expand one’s talents, that standard management practices infantilize employees, and that employees react in predictable ways in order to preserve their basic humanity. And third, academic research rarely links leadership to the performance of larger organizational units-thus, for most academic theories of leadership, a person can be a leader even though his or her organization fails.
