The nature and strength of metal-ligand bonds in organotransition-metal complexes are crucial to the understanding of organometallic reactions and catalysis. Quantum chemical calculations at different levels of theory have been used to investigate heterolytic Fe-N bond energies of para-substituted anilinyldicarbonyl(h 5 -cyclopentadienyl)iron [p-G-C 6 H 4 NH(h 5 -C 5 H 5 )Fe(CO) 2 , abbreviated as p-G-C 6 H 4 NHFp (1), where G = NO 2 , CN, COMe, CO 2 Me, CF 3 , Br, Cl, F, H, Me, MeO, and NMe 2 ] and para-substituted a-acetylanilinyldicarbonyl(h 5 -cyclopentadienyl)iron [p-G-C 6 H 4 N(COMe) (h 5 -C 5 H 5 )Fe(CO) 2 , abbreviated as p-G-C 6 H 4 N(COMe)Fp (2)] complexes. The results show that BP86 and TPSSTPSS can provide the best price/performance ratio and more accurate predictions in the study of ΔH het (Fe-N)'s. The linear correlations [r = 0.98 (g, 1a), 0.93 (g, 2b)] between the substituent effects of heterolytic Fe-N bond energies [ΔΔH het (Fe-N)'s] of series 1 and 2 and the differences of acidic dissociation constants (ΔpK a ) of N-H bonds of p-G-C 6 H 4 NH 2 and p-G-C 6 H 4 NH(COMe) imply that the governing structural factors for these bond scissions are similar. And the linear correlations [r = À0.99 (g, 1c), À0.92 (g, 2d)] between ΔΔH het (Fe-N)'s and the substituent s p À constants show that these correlations are in accordance with Hammett linear free energy relationships. The polar effects of these substituents and the basis set effects influence the accuracy of ΔH het (Fe-N)'s. ΔΔH het (Fe-N)'s(1, 2) follow the captodative principle. ME a-COMe, para-G s include the influences of the whole molecules. The correlation of ME a-COMe, para-G s with s p À is excellent. ME a-COMe, para-G s rather than ΔΔH het (Fe-N)'s in series 2 are more suitable indexes for the overall substituent effects on ΔH het (Fe-N)'s(2). Insight from this work may help the design of more effective catalytic processes.