Antecedents of Responsible Leadership: Proactive and Passive Responsible Leadership Behavior

Abstract

Due to the massive global impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the call for social and environment responsibility has grown stronger, and discussion regarding responsible leadership has been aroused. Agreement on the antecedents of responsible leadership has not yet been reached, however, and most studies are theoretical and focus on the personal characteristics of leaders. In this paper, we explore the antecedents of responsible leadership behavior at the organizational and situational level, through case studies of companies in China. Based on the organizational strategy, organizational ownership, mass media, crisis, local community, and other influencing factors, we determine two types of responsible leadership behaviors: Proactive responsible leadership behavior, which involves leaders showing initiative in dealing with relationships with stakeholders both inside and outside the organization, as well as voluntarily striving to assume relevant responsibilities in order to achieve economic and/or social development goals; and passive responsible leadership behavior, which involves acts of being responsible to some stakeholders under pressure from external circumstances or when unexpected events occur, even though this behavior may go against the actor’s original intention. We further explore the influence mechanism of these factors on responsible leadership and discuss the development trend from passive to proactive responsible leadership behavior.