John Antonakis is the new editor of Leaderhip Quarterly, and in his first leader, he lays out what he sees as important going forward, and possible perils in the field of leadership research.
Quote from the article:
Because of the incentive structures that institutions and journals set as well as the propagation of particular types of research practices, progress in our science is impeded by five major “diseases.” These diseases may not have unique causes and they are intertwined. I named them as such to group together, in a simple way, the conditions that stifle the production of good science whether in the social sciences or beyond. I have called them diseases and given them pernicious sounding names to draw attention to how serious these impediments are to science. The diseases include: (a) a fixation on statistically significant results (“significosis”), (b) an obsession for novel work (“neophilia”), (c) a fetish for new theory (“theorrhea”), (d) a lack of rigor in developing theory and undertaking empirical work (“arigorium”), and (e) a penchant to accumulate large amounts of disparate factoids, salami sliced output, and trivial works, with little attempt at theoretical integration (“disjunctivitis”).
I can only recommend reading in in full, and taking notes. While written in a leadership journal, I believe its relevance has FAR wider reach.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104898431730070X