ABSTRACT
It was noted in the Introduction that interest and activity in the subject of ‘leadership’ are both running at extraordinarily high levels. In addition, it was also observed that an emergent set of contemporary critical themes could be identified. It was then demonstrated, through a literature review in Chapter 2, that the sheer volume of studies to date had not in themselves helped to clarify the picture. Vast numbers of empirical studies were inconsequential in outcome and often trivial in design. The ‘theories’ of leadership were lacking in breadth and were often addressing different phenomena. Hence the central rationale and the intended contribution of this volume has been to help cut a way through the noise by focusing attention on the identified critical issues and the emergent key trends.
