The Nature of Sustainable Leadership: Pitfalls, Insights and New Model

Abstract

This review aims to identify pitfalls and insights into the nature of sustainable leadership frameworks and propose a new framework for organisational longevity and the sustenance of society and the environment. A background literature review was conducted to purposively select seminal and influential frameworks of sustainable leadership. Pitfalls and insights in these frameworks were delineated and developed into broader categories using open coding and constant comparison. The findings reveal that the pitfalls of sustainable leadership at the individual level include a lack of accurate sustainability self-awareness, failure to realise the diversity of strategic thinking competencies and a shaky foundation of sustainability literacy. In contrast, ethical competence and system literacy constitute vital insights. At the organisational level, it is revealed that lack of sustainability human resources, absence of a sustainable organisational culture model and lack of clarity on the value of social capital are pitfalls of sustainable leadership. Organisational-level insights in sustainable leadership hinge on stakeholder centricity, the complexity of driving sustainability innovation and managing the complexity of internal and external interdependencies. A new integrative model of sustainable leadership is proposed with various dimensions for leaders to significantly propagate and model sustainable leadership in the organisation.