Summary: In November 2009 Human Relations Journal published a special issue on the Context of Leadership (http://hum.sagepub.com/content/vol62/issue11). At the invitation of SAGE, Gail Fairhurst, HUM associate editor, leads an insightful discussion along with the guest editors of this special issue, John Antonakis (University of Lausanne) and Bob Liden (University of Illinois at Chicago). The special issue discusses how despite Lewin's identification of the importance of context in behavioral research over 70 years ago, leadership psychology tended to ignore the context. Only in the past 10 years has context been more routinely included in psychological leadership research.We provide examples of leadership research that has explored the context, introduce the special issue articles, and provide suggestions for future research on the context of leadership.
