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This chapter explores sustainable development of leadership strategies as a social framework in higher education to help with defining, implementing, and envisioning a sustainable future. Leaders need to develop a sustainable approach for higher education that involves all stakeholders who benefit from having educated citizens to develop common interests that develop and promote sustainable objectives that focus on shared values. An educationally sustainable approach extends beyond a current leader’s time at the institution to continue stable growth and long-term approaches around making decisions, fostering systemic innovation, developing an engaged workforce, and providing quality services and solutions. Leaders need to link sustainable strategies to the school’s mission, values, and finances to help gain consensus and align the decision-making process. In an effort to develop leaders and programs around educational sustainability, governmental organizations have been established to help develop policies and programs to create a sustainable future. Additionally, professional organizations have formed that allow leaders a chance to connect, grow skills, and lead sustainability initiatives. And, higher education institutions have created offices focused around sustainability on campus and educational programs around sustainability leadership to help develop future leaders that are able to take action based on sustainability values and creating an inclusive and reflective process for decision-making. Sustainable leadership has the power to transform society through reorienting the educational system to help people develop knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors for an ever-changing world.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare the conceptual groundwork for the future study of leadership for sustainable development. The paper demonstrates the relevance of Critical Leadership Studies to future research on sustainable development policies and practices. A critical approach is also applied to concepts of sustainable development, with three paradigms of thought described.

The approach taken is an extensive literature review in fields of leadership and sustainable development, with a focus on some of the broad assumptions and assertions in those literatures.

A key finding is that leadership studies drawing from critical social theory can provide important insights into future research and education on leadership for sustainability. This literature shows that some assumptions about leadership may hinder opportunities for social or organisational change by reducing the analysis of factors in change or reducing the agency of those not deemed to be leading. These limitations are summarised as “seven unsustainabilities” of mainstream leadership research.

The paper calls for the emerging field of sustainable leadership to develop an understanding of significant individual action that includes collective, emergent and episodic dimensions. The paper then summarises key aspects of the papers in this special issue on leadership for sustainability.

The implications for practice are that efforts to promote organisational contributions to sustainable development should not uncritically draw upon mainstream approaches to leadership or the training of leaders.

The authors consider this the first paper to provide a synthesis of insights from Critical Leadership Studies for research in sustainability.

Anyone seeking to influence another is a potential leader. Within higher education, determining what an institution should undertake on sustainability can be daunting. Sustainability leaders face labyrinthine, multifaceted sub-cultures, influencers and viewpoints across staff, students, government, business and alumni all with an opinion on whether, how and in what order of priority sustainability should be taken forward. In this paper we take on this challenge by synthesising and critically evaluating core principles and working models for influencing and leading for sustainability in higher education. We identify a series of eight challenges affecting delivery of sustainability and seek to understand how conceptual models and principles in sustainability decision-making and leadership could address these. We draw on the experience of both authors, in tandem with comments from workshop and leadership training programme participants who attended the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) Leadership Lab training in the UK, as well as reflections arising in a detailed case study from the University of Edinburgh. We bring key insights from theory and practice for the benefits of individuals or teams seeking to influence and persuade key decision-makers to embrace the sustainability agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to look behind the veil of the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH), which has been initiated by the fourth King of Bhutan as an alternative to the traditional development concept of gross national product, by analyzing it as an expression of a particular view of leadership originated in the philosophical tradition of Mahayana Buddhism and exploring its relevance for leadership of sustainable development and sustainable (business) organizations.

Review of literature on GNH in a historical and current context, linking it to trends and concepts in sustainability and leadership. Complemented by author’s observations on regular visits to Bhutan since 2003.

The GNH leadership view consists of a set of principles: first, interrelatedness of economy, society and eco-systems; second, the economy, society and eco-systems can flourish if their needs are served; third, governance is the agent for serving these needs by the creation of societal happiness; and fourth, societal happiness should include the enhancement of subjective happiness and well-being of people. By tracing these principles to the philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism, especially the Bodhisattva ideal, and comparing them to the principles driving sustainability, the paper argues that GNH leadership signifies an innovation in leadership for sustainability.

This paper examines how GNH leadership can be applied to organizational and business sustainability, and how it contributes to the emerging theory and practice of sustainability leadership.

The social relevance of the paper lies in the examination of how GNH leadership can be applied to organizational and business sustainability, and how it contributes to the emerging theory and practice of sustainability leadership.

The paper concludes that GNH leadership – as it corresponds to the principles driving sustainability – represents a new model for sustainability leadership.

Organizations are currently striving to become more sustainable, as resources dwindle and social desirability for sustainability increases. This is important in public sector organizations as well as private, and exemplars are needed. Therefore, this chapter provides a description of how a public housing authority in pursuit of a social mission parlayed an energy performance contract into a triple bottom line sustainability journey. The Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's (CMHA) sustainability journey has been shaped most significantly by the commitment of CMHA leadership to collaboration (internal and external) as a core strategy. The chapter provides a rich description of CMHA's emergent partnerships with various organizations in their environment; focusing first on energy and later encompassing social, ecological, and economic sustainability. It describes and analyzes the leadership that emerged which played an essential role in supporting the complexity of increasing collaborative involvement. New theories of leadership, most specifically Complexity Leadership Theory (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2008), emergent leadership (Goldstein et al., 2010), and adaptive leadership (Heifetz, 1994) are used to make sense of the leadership philosophy and actions that worked in the sustainability journey.

Despite the centrality of leadership to the successful transformation of universities toward sustainability, the literature on the role and practices of sustainability leadership in higher education remains poorly developed. To address this gap, this study aims to develop a conceptual model of sustainability leadership in higher education.

The study adopts the scoping review method to review, critique and synthesize relevant literature.

The resulting model of sustainability leadership in higher education proposes that sustainability leadership in higher education has the potential to transform university practices through reorientation and stewardship of the institutional mission and strengthening the commitment of stakeholders. Sustainability leadership has the potential to create a positive effect on a balanced set of performance indicators, as well as contributing to institutional and societal resilience in the longer term.

Sustainability leadership in higher education should be given prominence in its own right due to the unique organizational context of universities. This study synthesized the current discourse on sustainability leadership in higher education and its distinct attributes toward sustainable development.

This review aims to identify the intellectual structure or key theoretical themes that comprise the emerging field of sustainability leadership in higher education.

The Scopus index was used to identify 180 documents published sustainable leadership in higher education published between 1998 and 2021. Author co-citation analysis in VOSviewer software was used to address the research question driving this inquiry.

This review found that the intellectual structure of scholarship on sustainability leadership in higher education is composed of four dominant “schools of thought”. These included sustainability leadership, managing campus greening, managing change and system integration, and education for sustainable development.

The findings suggest a need for more theorizing and empirical studies that explore the nature and effects of sustainability leadership in higher education. Particular attention should be given to how features of universities as organizations shape the requirements for and constraints on leadership. From a practical perspective, the findings highlight key domains of policy and practice that higher education leaders can target in efforts to enhance sustainability in their universities and societies.

The bibliometric review offers empirically-based insights into the evolution and current status of the literature on sustainability leadership in higher education. The findings can be used as a benchmark against which future developments in this knowledge base can be assessed.

This empirical study aims to identify the essential strategic leadership and management factors underlying sustainability in healthcare. It also examines which factors drive sustainability performance outcomes (SPO) in health-care organizations, an analysis lacking to date. It provides a strategic leadership and management perspective toward sustainable healthcare, responding to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The investigation adopted Sustainable Leadership as its research framework. Using a cross-sectional survey, 543 employees working in health-care and pharmaceutical companies in Thailand voluntarily provided responses. Factor analyses and structural equation modeling were employed.

The results revealed an emergent research model and identified 20 unidimensional strategic leadership and management factors toward sustainability in healthcare. The findings indicate significant positive effects on SPO in health-care organizations. Significant factors include human resource management/development, ethics, quality, environment and social responsibility, and stakeholder considerations.

The study was conducted in one country. Future studies should examine these relationships in diverse contexts. In practice, health-care firms should foster significant strategic leadership and management practices to improve performance outcomes for sustainability in healthcare.

This paper is the first empirical, multidisciplinary study with a focus on strategic leadership, health-care management and organizational sustainability. It identifies a proxy for measuring the effects of essential strategic leadership and managerial factors for sustainability in pharmaceutical health-care companies. It advances our currently limited knowledge and provides managerial implications for improving performance outcomes toward sustainable healthcare.

Distributed leadership has been reported in the literature as an effective management approach for educational organizations such as institutions of higher education. This study aims to investigate the role of distributed leadership in the promotion of sustainability in an Israeli college of teacher education.

Based on the Multi-Level Model of Leadership Practice in higher education, taken from Bolden et al. (2008a) and from Woods et al. (2004), the authors investigated how the characteristics of distributed leadership are expressed in three central organization-wide structures in the college (a student group, the green council and a professional development program). They also explored in what ways aspects of distributed leadership promote sustainability-oriented activities on campus. They used a deductive and inductive interpretive approach in this case study.

The authors found three organization-level processes that are based on the principles of distributed leadership and that promote sustainability on campus: distributed leadership enables change in the organization’s internal culture with respect to mainstreaming sustainability; distributed leadership encourages collaboration between the entire campus population and between different departments and distributed leadership on campus enables the development of diverse “bottom-up” and “top-down” structures in the organization.

While the study’s findings indicated several challenges regarding the implementation of distributed leadership in the organization, they ultimately support the idea that distributed leadership may contribute to the long-term, organization-wide implementation of sustainability in higher education institutes. Therefore, the authors recommend that institutions that are willing to promote sustainability adopt distributed leadership as their major management approach.

Today’s small enterprises are forced to rethink their business-as-usual management and shift toward corporate sustainability. The empirical paper responds to a crucial quest for many modern leaders and entrepreneurs, specifically small business owners in emerging economies. This paper aims to answer what they can do to increase long-term financial performance and enhance stakeholder satisfaction, thereby contributing to long-term business sustainability.

Using a convenience sampling, data were collected from a sample of 280 business leaders and entrepreneurs of small enterprises across industries in an emerging economy of Thailand. This study used a sustainable leadership research framework. Factor analysis and multiple regression analysis were used for data analysis.

Seven valid and reliable leadership factors were uncovered as new underlying leadership constructs to examine business sustainability in small entrepreneurial enterprises in Thailand. Results from multiple regressions revealed two significantly positive factors or drivers (i.e. trusting, innovative team orientation and strong, shared vision) for enhanced two sustainability performance outcomes (i.e. financial performance and stakeholder satisfaction). The findings thus contribute to advance our limited knowledge about the contextualised constructs and possible theoretical development of the developing research realm.

Successful small entrepreneurial organisations in Thailand and other emerging economies that wish to improve their business sustainability are suggested to adopt the essential leadership and management practices (i.e. trusting, innovative team and strong, shared vision). Future studies may examine data from a larger sample size and other countries to expand our limited understanding in different contexts.

The resulting practical insights can be used to guide business leaders, entrepreneurs, practitioners and policymakers towards making strategic priorities and investments for improved business competitiveness, resilience and sustainability in small entrepreneurial enterprises. Overall, this study may be a starting point for further investigation on developing entrepreneurial growth and business sustainability in small sustainable enterprises across emerging economies.

The paper responds to calls for more contextualised research studies in the evolving multidisciplinary field of entrepreneurial leadership and business sustainability, particularly in an emerging economy of Thailand. It also unveils the essential strategic leadership factors that positively drive business sustainability in small entrepreneurial firms. And, it empirically examines the effects of diverse strategic leadership factors and multiple sustainability performance outcomes in a single study. It further proposes an emergent leadership-performance model for entrepreneurial business sustainability in the context-specific study. Above all, it advances the currently limited empirical knowledge in the emerging research front towards more sustainable futures.