Sustainable Leadership and Hegelian Self-Awareness

Abstract

The contribution of businesses to sustainability, captured in the concept of the triple bottom line (people, profit, planet), has been given a lot of attention. One line of argument is to make sustainability mandatory via regulation, while another is to create a consciousness for questions of sustainability in the minds of managers, that is, to make managers agents of sustainability. Thus, there is debate about what behaviors, practices, and skills leaders need for positive sustainability. In recent years, scholars have attempted to develop leadership approaches (e.g., sustainable leadership, sustainability leadership) that contribute to the implementation of sustainability and positively influence sustainability practices, filling a perceived gap in the current literature. Here, connections to popular relationship-based approaches such as ethical leadership, transformational leadership, authentic leadership, and responsible leadership are also discussed. In this paper, we debate to what extent a specific leadership type is necessary to successfully lead a company into a sustainable future or whether, regardless of conceptualized behaviors, practices, and skills, it is not the core character and attitude of leaders that is crucial to changing the company culture to achieve the goal of sustainable business. This paper first outlines the existing literature on leadership approaches designed to lead to greater sustainability. It does not claim to be exhaustive but refers to the most prominent research findings. It then critically assesses these and raises questions. In the third section, we propose an alternative view of successful leadership toward positive sustainability.