Business Leadership

Abstract

The concept of leadership is a relatively new one applied to achieving business results. Prior to 1930, academic interest in this concept was limited, as evidenced by the scarcity of material on the subject. Interest focused on aspects of operational management: executing specific actions through others based on power, subject matter expertise, or rigorous administrative systems. The purpose of this article is to review the evolutionary process of the concept of leadership: executing actions through others based on the characteristics we now consider essential to a leader, defining these characteristics, elaborating on each of them, and arriving at a concrete definition of the modern business leader.