Leadership towards Sustainability: A Review of Sustainable, Sustainability, and Environmental Leadership

Abstract

Leadership and sustainability have been researched and examined concurrently. There is considerable knowledge regarding sustainable, sustainability, and environmental leadership as separate areas of research and as effective leadership styles that facilitate the achievement of sustainability outcomes. While these research streams have developed alongside each other, there is limited knowledge about the similarities and differences between each of these three leadership approaches. To resolve this problem, the purpose of this paper is to review and compare key leadership themes from each sustainable, sustainability, and environmental leadership approach by: (a) identifying key leadership findings, (b) highlighting areas of similarity and difference, and (c) developing an integrated framework of leadership behaviors used to influence and direct organizations towards improved organizational performance with a view to understanding leadership towards sustainability. This comprehensive review is structured around a framework of three theoretical approaches: sustainable, sustainability, and environmental leadership, due to their currency in the literature and relationship to achieving sustainability goals. This review is needed to integrate the fragmented literature, build on and organize current knowledge, and develop a unified framework that combines findings on leadership practices and behaviors in terms of the types of leadership required for achieving sustainability performance. As such, this paper seeks to make a significant contribution to the scholarly literature by unifying existing frameworks and clarifying points of similarity and differentiation under the umbrella of ‘leadership towards sustainability’. Hence, this paper seeks to be among the first to appraise and connect these three leadership approaches, thus filling a gap in the literature.