In 1905, the world-famous Carnegie Museum of Natural History placed the bones of a prized Apatosaurus on review. The bones remained on display until 1992, when the fossil was reexamined by a different team of paleontologists. These late-century paleontologists noticed that the dinosaur had been assembled incorrectly and that the wrong head had been placed on the dinosaur almost 90 years earlier.2 Over the course of the twentieth century, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of scholars and academics had viewed the bones and admired the symmetry and perfection of the fossilnever noticing the 90-year-old error the original paleontologists had made. No one ever questioned whether the fossil has been assembled incorrectly or whether this world-famous museum had made an error. On the contrary, because the museum itself stood as an authoritarian benchmark of quality and distinction, it is quite possible that many other museums, paleontologists, and scholars had used this fossil as a standard on which other scholarly ventures were based. It was a profound error, and one that took nearly three generations of scholars to correct.

Given the weighty nature of this mistake, and the overall humor in placing a wrong head on a skeleton, your authors would like to use this example as a starting point from which to explore the possibility that the study of leadership is likewise suffering from an ancient error in construction. We propose that (in some cases) the study of leadership has become a calculus formula that has become memorized, but never derived. By this we mean that for generations younger scholars have been presented with information that is suggested to be true, but may more likely be a strongly supported opinion.

It has been suggested that there are as many methods to define leadership as there are ways to measure it. From a research perspective, this flexibility is often very beneficial, because the purpose of research is to look at things in increasing levels of complexity, with the ultimate goal of discerning intricate parts of the puzzle. But is it possible that, in the literature of leadership theory, the level of complexities has become so intricate that the larger picture is no longer visible? A review of leadership theory suggests the possibility that the answer to this question is "yes."

Furthermore, is it possible that the study of leadership has suffered from theory creep? The original conception of creep is attributed to former U.S. Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, who suggested that creep is the absence of a uniform vision, and who noted that this condition results in constant change.3 The end product of creep results in people solving problems that have no relationship to the original project or process at all. In other words, the wrong fight is fought.

The study of leadership theory may have also suffered from theoretical creep. A review of leadership theories in the twentieth century suggests leadership studies have shifted from the broad and wide-ranging trait and "great man" theories to discriminate research efforts that reflect more of an application of unit models of decision making or satisfaction, rather than theory. Supporting this premise, some authors have suggested the problem with organizational theories is that the wrong unit of analysis is applied to inappropriate situations. Furthermore, many authors suggest previous studies may not be looking at leadership issues, but rather at evaluating supervisory and interpersonal characteristics

• Develop, and describe a simple model of leadership principles and application. Make sure you define and illustrate the parts in the model; further, explain how these parts interact to make a model of leadership principles or application.
• A diagram of the simple model. (The diagram contributes to the answer requirement.)
• Come with a straightforward scenario/narrative of the model in use to demonstrate its utility in the real world!

Your audience should be able to understand the parts in the model and how they interact; further, they should understand how the accompanying diagram accurately (and concretely) illustrates the model.