Effective Leadership of a Sustainable Organization

Effective Leadership of a Sustainable Organization

For many years, probably since the first business transactions, most people have believed that the purpose of a business was to create profit. Not only make the profit but to maximize it as well. Peter Drucker challenged this mindset by introducing the idea that creating a customer is a purpose of a business because, ultimately, customers are what keep a business in existence (Cohen, 2011). Since profit was the motivating factor for businesses for such a long time there was not such an emphasis on sustainability until the recent past. A business leader may not have had to be concerned with where a product was sourced and how it was obtained, or whether slaves or children were involved in the process, or the conditions under which the employees had to work. Of course, in today’s global economy much of this has changed, although there is still much more to do.

Leadership is defined as “social influence” (Manning & Curtis, 2012, p. 2) in The Art of Leadership and it further states “by ideas and deeds, leaders show the way and influence the behavior of others” (Manning & Curtis, 2012, p. 2). A leaders is shares their vision for the future and then works to make it happen. Servant leadership goes further to look first for the best interests of others. This type of leadership is embodied by the leader that is not interested in his or her personal gain or achievement; instead this type of leader is driven by “a true motivation to serve the interests of others” (p. 148). It is this style of leadership that will be most effective when working towards building a sustainable organization.

Today organizations must take into consideration several dimensions as they strive to become more sustainable. Palthe (2013) categorizes the dimensions as social, economic, and environmental while Balestrero and Udo (2012) add ethical issues as a fourth dimension. It is interesting to note that many times an issue may fall into...