Take it from a leadership scholar: My colleagues and I are a fractious lot. If anything, the differences among us are even greater now than they were in the past. Because the modern academy insists on divisions among many different disciplines and faculties, scholars interested in business leadership tend to maintain a wary distance from those interested in political leadership. So it is no surprise that the field lacks a core curriculum, a widely accepted canon of leadership literature.

A version of this article appeared in the December 2001 issue of Harvard Business Review.