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Highly publicized scandals and increased stakeholder activism for sustainable development have resulted in calls for more responsible global leadership. At the same time, emerging economies characterized by weak institutions, political instability, and a shaky rule of law have gained in importance for global business. Under the lens of responsible global leadership, we highlight the challenges that global leaders face in addressing the needs of diverse, cross-boundary stakeholders, with a particular focus on Western multinational enterprises (MNEs) doing business in emerging markets. We identify three prototypical approaches that MNEs and their leaders take in responding to calls for responsible global leadership, focusing on the tensions and possible trade-offs between globally integrated and locally adapted approaches. We discuss the implications in view of managerial decision making and behavior and offer recommendations for how organizations may promote responsible global leadership.

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion of the role of education in developing a new mindset for sustainability leadership by analyzing a project of a Brazilian business school that implemented a sustainability training module regarding the UN 2030 Agenda. Considering the purpose of signatory school of the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education, this analysis reflects on the student capacities to become sustainable future value generators for business and society in general.

This study is characterized as a quantitative research whose strategy is the investigation between variables to understand the learning evolution of the study participants in each of the topics addressed in the training module. The research has a positivist approach that explores data using statistical methods to detect possible behavior patterns in the analyzed data volume, based on secondary data sourced from the questionnaire that validated student knowledge at the beginning and end of the class.

The data show a considerable impact of education in developing a new mindset for sustainability leadership as there is a big variation students’ average knowledge of the themes that made up the sustainability mindset suggesting that the students’ exposure to the content in the school environment helps increase their knowledge.

This paper fulfills the need to understand the effectiveness of the creation of specific modules of sustainability for students from different areas of activity.

The move of organizations towards corporate global responsibility (CGR) is often a major change process that requires leadership throughout the organization. Despite an array of studies on managerial competencies in this area, previous research on leadership for CGR has not studied the actual leadership practices that are employed in a company's journey to CGR. The paper aims to fill this gap and to show how leadership for CGR is enacted by individuals and organizations that are highly successful CGR leaders.

The paper uses a comparative case‐study approach of five multinational companies that are recognized as industry leaders for CGR. A total of 54 semi‐structured interviews with senior managers were complemented by ten focus groups and an examination of company reports, value charters and mission statements. Interviews as the main source of information were double‐coded in a three‐step process with the goal of knowledge development.

The paper identifies eight interrelated categories of leadership practices for global responsibility: developing CGR vision, strategy, and goals; integrating CGR into business decisions and operations; top management role modeling of CGR; engaging across boundaries; employee development and empowerment; systematic communication about CGR; developing accountability for CGR; and visible integrity in management behavior and decision making.

The findings suggest that focusing on these leadership practices helps organizations build a strong leadership culture that is supportive of CGR.

The examination of actual leadership practices on multiple levels complements the existing knowledge on individual management competencies that are useful for driving CGR in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of responsible leadership.

The author draws on a range of current literature and experiences to share views on the need for responsible leadership.

The need for a new narrative is outlined and the challenges described.

The paper inspires leaders to embrace a new narrative, a narrative that requires a different focus from leadership and a new understanding of what responsible leadership entails.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the highlights of the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit, the Principles for Responsible Management Education Global Forum and the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative General Assembly held in New York and Boston in June 2010. It discusses the potential of the connections and collaborations between these organisations and others to lead to change.

The paper draws out key themes of these concurrent events; connections and collaborations between these initiatives and others; and considers the potential of further collaborations to facilitate change.

There is an acceptance on the part of business of the need to be more socially and environmentally responsible, but a lack of technical know‐how and leadership capacity. Universities generally, and business schools in particular, need to do more to develop graduates for a changing business context with specific reference to the overarching challenge of the twenty‐first century to achieve global environmental sustainability and social justice.

Further collaboration between these organisations is important to drive change through, e.g. sustainability performance management at universities; accreditation processes; and, partnerships between business schools, business and civil society organisations.

The originality and value of this paper is in summarising the highlights of three key interconnected events, the collaborations that led to them, the connections that are strengthening between the organisations and potential of those connections to facilitate change.

It is 50 years since the Gordon/Howell and Pierson reports substantially influenced and shaped management education. “Vision 50+20” offers an alternative future in management education for the next 20 years. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the suggested new purpose of business schools as role models in providing responsible leadership for a sustainable world. The article proposes a model of implementation of the vision in the domain of teaching and learning, with concrete best practice examples collected from around the world. The evolution of teaching and learning in business education is briefly reviewed in light of newly proposed “collaborator” method, hopefully launching a debate and further research in this important domain.

The 50+20 vision of management education for the world resulted from an 18‐month collective creative visioning and back‐casting process, looking into the future and based on explicitly normative assumptions about the need to change business education. The vision was thus primarily developed deductively from a vision of the future, rather than inductively from existing literature and theory. The scholarly assessments of business schools and business school education were used as a starting point for a normative approach, but cannot explain the vision which spans a broad area of topics and fields both within management and beyond. The author complements the vision with examples from around the world to illustrate the emergence of this vision and suggests a model for considering the implementation of vision 50+20.

Business schools need to fundamentally transform their purpose to serve society by providing responsible leadership for a sustainable world, embracing three relevant roles and becoming themselves a role model and a showcase for transformation.

The paper summarizes the result of the global co‐creative visioning process of project 50+20 offering an alternative vision of management education for the world. More importantly, the paper also suggests a model on how to implement the vision in the domain of teaching and learning by providing concrete applications and leading examples from around the world. As such, it provides a visionary guide for any business and management scholar interested in engaging the future of management education.

The paper summarizes the 50+20 vision and introduces a practical perspective for implementing a meaningful new approach to teaching and learning.

Two major trends have shaped the international business field over the past decade: globalization and the quest for responsible leadership. Yet, what are the qualities that predispose business leaders to act responsibly in an increasingly complex, interlinked world, and thus to meet new social, environmental, and political responsibilities? How can organizations develop these qualities in their current and future leaders? In this chapter, we provide tentative answers to both questions by fleshing out some of the qualities global leaders need to succeed in a connected world and by comparing three innovative executive development programs that use international service learning assignments as a way to instill these qualities in their executives. These programs are PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Ulysses Program, Pfizer’s Global Health Fellows Program, and IBM’s Corporate Service Corps.

This paper seeks to discuss the role of business academics and business schools in the development of leaders able to respond to climate change and sustainability challenges.

The paper captures contributions made during a panel discussion at the First Academic Symposium on Leadership for Climate Change and Sustainability held at La Trobe University, Melbourne in February 2011. The Symposium preceded the 10th General Assembly of the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI) held in Melbourne and the authors are from GRLI partner organisations.

There is a pressing need for business schools to focus on the development of personal and leadership skills, to draw staff from outside the traditional business disciplines and to reflect the gender and race diversity of the population in which they are located. The change required in business education to develop leaders who can respond to climate change and sustainability challenges is as significant as the changes needed to the way businesses operate.

The paper identifies changes required in business leadership and outlines key elements of change needed in business education. It assists business school leaders in articulating the business case for business schools to address these issues and navigate potential barriers.

The paper brings together the views of five professors from a different disciplinary background (accounting, critical management, organisational behaviour, organisational design and sociology) with leadership positions in business schools and universities.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a path for entrepreneurial universities to embrace their purpose as custodians of society and to hardwire it institutionally.

The paper is conceptual in its approach, drawing on practical and theoretical insights in the fields of responsible leadership, business sustainability and transformational change. The resulting Circle Model offers a developmental perspective connecting individual and organizational development in service of society.

A key finding lies in expanding the current understanding of an entrepreneurial university beyond its organizational effectiveness to become a true custodian of society in the way it educate, researches and lives this intended purpose. The model offers a next conceptual step for the 50+20 vision (Muff et al., 2013) which had outlined a radical new role for business schools.

More research is required to understand how not only the educational and research strategies but also the organizational structure can be transformed to serve a given purpose.

Concrete insights and examples of the developmental perspective of the model illustrate the opportunities for educating responsible leaders, for consulting business organizations to serve the common good, and for walking the talk by hardwiring a purpose-driven organization.

The originality of the paper lies in the introduction of the idea of a common space of sustainability and responsibility as a foundation to reorient education and research of an entrepreneurial business school and hardwire its organizational structure truly around purpose.

Global systemic risks of climate change, overindebtedness in the aftermath of the 2008/2009 World Financial Crisis and the need for pension reform in the wake of an aging western world population, currently raise attention for intergenerational fairness. Pressing social dilemmas beyond the control of singular nation states call for corporate social activities to back governmental regulation in crisis mitigation. The purpose of this paper is to promote the idea of intergenerational equity in the corporate world.

Theoretical description.

In the given literature on global responsible leadership in the corporate sector and contemporary corporate social responsibility (CSR) models, intergenerational equity appears to have been neglected. While the notion of sustainability has been integrated in CSR models, intergenerational equity has hardly been touched on as for being a more legal case for codifying the triple bottom line.

Advocating for integrating intergenerational equity concerns in CSR models in academia and practice holds untapped advantages of economically influential corporate entities, corporate adaptability and independence from voting cycles.

Integrating a temporal dimension in contemporary CSR helps imbuing a longer-term perspective into the corporate world alongside advancing tax ethics and global governance crises prevention.

Future research avenues comprise of investigating situational factors influencing intergenerational leadership in the international arena in order to advance the idea of corporations tackling the most pressing contemporary challenges of mankind.