From the editor.

The vexing question posed by this month's cover story "Where Are the Leaders?", doesn't mean to convey that there aren't any. They haven't vanished, but author William Rothschild, a former General Electric Co. strategist, emphasizes that it may seem that way as we read about the discredited chieftains of companies like Tyco International, Adelphia Communications and, of course, Enron.

Rothschild offers an interesting thesis about leadership: that different companies at varying stages of evolution need different types of leaders -- not one leader who can shift into differing modes as events dictate. He supports that idea very nicely with good examples drawn from the corporate world. And, in an accompanying interview, top executive recruiter Gordon Grand 3rd of Russell Reynolds Associates talks about what his firm looks for when recruiting leaders for the finance function.

Mention of Enron -- and its lessons seem to be almost unending -- brings up the fundamental issue of corporate ethics. A backlash seems to be developing against the sometimes-loose ethical codes of the late 1990s, as writer Greg Millman found in a series of interviews with top finance executives and business professors and ethicists. A consensus is emerging that something has to be done to re-establish proper behavior, but that new rules from Washington aren't necessarily part of the solution.

As part of our continuing effort to bring in voices from overseas, we offer an interview with Clemens Boersig, the CFO of financial giant Deutsche Bank. As interviewer Ramona Dzinkowski found out, the bank is making a major commitment to the U.S. market -- including listing on the New York Stock Exchange -- but that on issues like corporate governance and ethics, Deutsche Bank, along with other European companies, doesn't feel the same kinds of pressures that its U.S. counterparts are feeling.

Accounting professor Baruch Lev weighs in with the second part of a two-part article on intangibles. In this installment, he makes a case for the importance of what he calls "organizational infrastructure" and presents a way of measuring its value. Determining OI, he says, provides a vital measure of enterprise efficiency-productivity.

Privacy issues continue to flare periodically in many businesses, yet writer Barbara Morris finds privacy experts continuing to sense that corporate leaders aren't paying sufficient attention until they encounter problems. She identifies a series of areas to which companies should be devoting resources, including potential Federal Trade Commission violations and privacy of personal health information.

It's not always easy to recognize when a company is ill until the equivalent of a cold becomes something approaching pneumonia. Consultant and turnaround expert John Collard provides a series of danger signs that executives should look for.

And, in a lengthy interview, the newly appointed Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Robert Herz, sat down with Managing Editor Ellen M. Heffes and talked about his vision of the board and a range of other topics, among them corporate governance, stock option accounting and international accounting convergence. Herz has strong opinions, and expect him to be speaking out in the months to come.