Do Managers Dare to Lead Sustainably? Building Blocks for Managing Stakeholders in an Organization to Promote Sustainable Practices
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37886/ip.2024.011Keywords:
sustainability, leadership style, transformational styleAbstract
Research Question (RQ): The performance and development of any organization towards sustainability depends to a large extent on its leaders, their skills, the way they communicate and motivate other stakeholders. This research focuses on leaders, how they act, lead and make decisions when faced with the fact that their vision dictates the promotion of sustainable practices. The research question is therefore: Which are the most frequently highlighted leadership building blocks in the literature that ensure success in influencing stakeholders' sustainability thinking and building an ethical culture in an organization?
Purpose: The main purpose of the research is to review the existing literature on leadership styles to which elements of sustainability can be attributed and to highlight research on the correlation between leadership style and the promotion of sustainable practices in an organization.
Method: The methodological approach was based on the initial findings and started with a systematic review of national and foreign literature and articles published in accessible databases (ProQuest, Science Direct, Cobiss and Emerald) and repositories of Slovenian universities. The keywords used were "sustainability", "corporate leadership" and "social outcomes".
Results: The analyzed articles demonstrate the exposure of the transformational leadership style as sustainable and provide key elements that characterize such leaders. These building blocks have been collected and will be used for further research.
Organization: The study will provide managers with insights into the key building blocks of their leadership to ensure sustainable practices in the organization.
Society: Implementing sustainability factors in organizations or identifying the key attributes of leaders and leadership styles, also has a positive impact on employees and other stakeholders.
Originality: Due to the focus on the implementation of sustainable practices in the organization in correlation with leadership style, the originality of the research will increase the clarity of the theses explored so far and lay the foundations for further research.
Limitations/Future Research: We see the limitations of the research conducted as the relatively small amount of published literature covering the actual implementation of sustainable development towards stakeholders, so we have focused on the findings of the impact of integrated sustainability factors. The suggestion for further research is towards empirical validation of the findings on the key building blocks of leadership style for establishing a robust sustainable business development.
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