Some scholars have argued that prior to the emergence of TA/TF leadership theory as the dominant paradigm, there were increasing misgivings about the scholarly study of leadership. Many questioned its viability as a legitimate area of study, pointing out that scholars have expended a vast amount of money and effort on understanding leadership with little payoff. Hunt (1999) posited that the disillusionment with leadership’s value added potential provided a strong impetus for the paradigm shift ushered in by TA/TF or “new” leadership theories that surfaced in the mid 1980s. Thus, when TA/TF leadership theory arrived on a barren landscape permeated by doom and gloom, it was widely heralded as a new paradigm. Conger and Hunt (1999) attributed the proliferation of empirical and conceptual work on TA/TF leadership to the fact that the theory attracted new scholars who gave research a boost by providing a fulcrum for the field through improved measurement and analytic techniques, greater use of meta-analyses, increased methodological pluralism, and greater attention to context.