Examining relationships between organic leadership and corporate sustainability: A proposed model

Abstract

Much of the leadership literature indicates that organizations adopting the Organic leadership paradigm tend to respond to the environmental change more effectively than those adopting other leadership paradigms, therefore more sustainable. However, few published studies, if any, have specifically investigated the assumed relationship between Organic leadership and sustainability performance. Derived from the literature, a model expressing the relationships between Organic leadership characteristics and sustainability performance outcomes is proposed. The broad proposition is the more organizations adopting the Organic leadership characteristics, the better the sustainability performance outcomes. In this paper, characteristics of Organic leadership such as shared vision and values, self-leading, self-managing, mutual sense-making are independent variables, while sustainability performance outcomes such as financial results, long- term shareholder value, customer satisfaction, brand and reputation are dependent variables. Relevant hypotheses and directions for testing them are also discussed. © 2012 The Clute Institute.