Preman Chandranathan

The subject of leadership is considerably rich and diverse, given its development through history, the kinds of analytical, conceptual, theoretical, and methodological perspectives and commitments that contemporary researchers have adopted towards it, and the sheer volume of academic and popular literature accumulated on it to date. This entry attempts to give sense of the topic and in relation to family business research, especially for those unfamiliar with the academic study of the former. An overview of the topic is first presented, by acknowledging some of the different perspectives through which ‘leadership’ may be understood. This informs a subsequent discussion of leadership in family business contexts, which includes brief comments about productive avenues for further research. The entry concludes with some broader observations.