Abstract
Though many people including leading leadership researchers believe that leadership matters, the relationship between leadership factor and outcomes is ambiguous. The research stream called “Romance of Leadership” has revealed that people have a tendency to attribute outcomes to leadership and glorify it without taking actual causes into consideration. This paper examines five questions about this phenomenon. What is attributed? What leaders are attributed to? Under what situation do people attribute? What followers attribute? And how do they attribute? Contributions to organization theory, practical implications, and future research avenue are discussed.
