Some thoughts on “business leadership”

Business leadership is a hot topic; much new writing, consulting, and teaching. This may be driven by exploding student interest in entrepreneurship as they confront their grim job situation. It may also be driven by management theorists’ century of failure to deliver the long-promised “science of managing”. The paper is basically methodological, leveraging from Ronald Coase's 1937 “nature of the firm” paper. It shifts attention from the generalizations that might underpin science to the uniqueness of leadership practice, proposing economic value-creation (the essence of business) as an art form rather than the application of science.