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The paper's aim is to explore the connection between individual worldviews, called ecological selves, and organizational change, which allows people to create the conditions to confront the global environmental challenges they face as a species.

The essay is a conceptual one, with reference to a small qualitative interview study conducted to explore the idea of ecological selves with organizational leaders.

The findings reveal the existence of several different ecological selves in organizational life; they also suggest fruitful avenues for further research and ongoing practice. The eight ecological selves are the Eco‐Guardian, the Eco‐Warrior, the Eco‐Manager, the Eco‐Strategist, the Eco‐Radical, the Eco‐Holist, the Eco‐Integralist, and the Eco‐Sage. This framework, which is derived from developmental stage theory, is a useful tool for understanding how individual actions are shaped by people's identities and values.

The preliminary research referenced in this study is of limited scope, consisting of a small sample of organizational leaders in a semi‐structured qualitative interview setting. The implications, however, are more interesting for additional research on ecological selves as a tool for individual self‐reflection, organizational culture, and teamwork learning.

This essay argues that creating an ecological selves inventory is useful in understanding how leaders create the conditions for sustainability in their organizations.

Implications for understanding organizational culture are considered: the ecological selves framework is one tool to build self‐awareness among organizational leaders, leading to stronger, more efficacious learning across a spectrum of skills necessary for leadership.

Although the ecological selves framework has been proposed as a theoretical concept in the literature of integral ecology, this paper refers to the first research done with organizational leaders.

Sustainability refers to an organization's activities that demonstrate the inclusion of social and environmental concerns in operations and in interactions with stakeholders (van Marrewijk, 2003). Presenting a framework for developing sustainability leaders, this chapter outlines the principles required for sustainable leadership. Sustainable principles are grounded in changes in thinking, knowing, and doing. These fundamentals can be summed up as developing sustainable thinking, building a sustainable knowledge base, and learning the latest ecologically based frameworks for use in organizations.

The study of power is essential to any study of leadership, as power is fundamental to human organization and is understood to be a driving force of leadership. Power is typically thought of in terms of having dominance over others from a hierarchically higher position. In this chapter, we explore how power is typically defined in the literature and propose that mutualism represents an expanded definition of power and one that more closely aligns with the concept of inclusive leadership. We make a case for viewing power as a capacity that can be developed in others rather than a commodity that can be obtained, horded, or doled out. With this in mind, we explore how these two phenomena intersect from the perspectives of powerdistance, hierarchy, and empowerment. We argue that power expressed as dominance creates distance between leaders and employees, while mutualistic expressions reduce such distance, and that hierarchy and power have been erroneously conflated and when disaggregated can serve a useful purpose in a low-power-distance culture. Finally, through empowerment, we consider approaches to the development of power in others, which is a topic that is rarely considered in the leadership literature. Inclusive leadership offers an important pathway for moving organizations and society toward justice through the creation of cultures characterized by cooperation, unity, and diversity where greater numbers of people step into their capacity for power and begin to address the challenges facing humanity. This is realizable in cultures that promote mutualistic power.

Bryan Adkins is the president of Denison Consulting. His primary expertise is in the area of organizational culture and leadership. He is an experienced consultant and coach working with leaders and teams as they guide their organizations through transitions. Bryan has led a number of large-scale culture change projects and provides consulting services designed to leverage the data collected through the use of the Denison model and associated diagnostics. Bryan holds a master's degree in business from Penn State University and his doctorate in human and organizational studies from The George Washington University.

This Special Issue is intended to heighten awareness of the importance of organizational learning in addressing the demands of organizational sustainability, and in particular triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability. A definition of TBL sustainability is provided, together with an exploration of the practical issues relevant to adopting organizational learning in addressing it. By exploring research and practitioner viewpoints bearing on sustainability‐related applications of organizational learning, this Special Issue aims to help organizations remove barriers to achieving sustainability goals and catalyze the progress for an organization on its sustainability journey.

General sustainability‐related concerns and challenges associated with organizational learning are reviewed, and individual authors voice their understanding of the application of organizational leaning to particular aspects of sustainability based on their research, their case studies, and the extant literature.

Findings include enhanced understanding of the incompatibility of single‐ and double loop learning in TBL sustainability contexts, and the required emphasis on double‐loop learning to progress sustainability aims successfully. The effectiveness of dialogic interaction is described in achieving a transition towards sustainability in people, organizations and society as a whole. How individual worldviews called “our ecological selves” allow creation of the conditions for confronting global environmental challenges is explained. Contributions are made to the understanding of hybrid organizations through the case of a Brazilian networked organization, and a paradox view of management based on the theories of organizational learning and managerial cybernetics is applied to enlighten the understanding of sustainability. The learning and adaptive system of the US commercial aviation industry is explored and the application of such a system in an organization operating according to triple bottom line sustainability principles is described.

The opinions and research presented provide new and unique understanding of how organizational learning may contribute to organizational sustainability. Further value is added via the assessment of means to progress the sustainability ideal, the identification of barriers, and the many practical examples of means to facilitate progress toward that ideal.