Reflections, Closing Thoughts, and Future Directions

On the back cover of Bass’s (1985) book entitled, “Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations”, Abraham Zaleznik was quoted as saying, “This book will recast leadership for the next decade or more.” It is clear from the chapters in this book, and work appearing throughout the leadership literature, that we are now into the “more” part of Zaleznik’s quote. Bass’s work, coupled with many other ground breaking contributions in leadership such as Burns’ (1978) research on transformational leadership, and House’s (1977) work on charismatic leadership, have ignited a whole new wave of research on the “higher end” or “new genre” of leadership. These ideas are represented in part by the contributions made in this book.