Leaders matter-a lot. Followers matter as much. Leaders and followers working together can create change. Context matters-a lot. Particularly important to the 21st century context is globalization, the information revolution, diversity, the divide between haves and have-nots, and a range of pressing and in some cases rather new issues such as terrorism and pollution.
Leadership is worth a lifetime of study-and then some.
Of course, the question of whether Leadership Studies is, legitimately, a field of study, or a discipline, or simply a particular area of inquiry remains an open one. Curiously, members of KLSP never did seem to get around to debating in any sustained and meaningful way the state of Leadership Studies. The work immediately at hand appears to have been of more interest than the intellectual and institutional environments within which such work is generally embedded. That said, Leadership Studies, in its various guises and under different names, may fairly be said now to constitute at least a small dot on the academic map. Clearly the study of leadership is a significant part of the business school curriculum.