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Responsible leadership is a concept that links leadership, corporate social responsibility, sustainability and ethics to business performance and actions of senior executives and board members. This keynote illuminates how responsible leadership mindsets and their diverse understandings of the purpose of business are related to organizational level stakeholder engagement and corporate social responsibility approaches at the upper echelon. A first link is established between broader social movements (e.g., US Business Roundtable, Conscious Capitalism, Social Entrepreneurship movement) and the social identity of responsible leaders, thereby contributing to the discussion of the changing nature of the purpose of business. The article closes with a Q&A session.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the western developed notion of responsible leadership (RL) from a Singapore context.

Following the qualitative research tradition, face-to-face interviews with 20 influential Singaporean leaders were developed into case studies. Grounded theory methodology was applied to identify similarities and differences within and across cases.

The findings reveal that the interviewed Singaporean leaders projected traits and values consistent with western definitions of responsible and effective leadership. Findings also suggest that contextual factors such as national culture and the ethos of the nation as well as leaders’ relational intelligence influence RL. These factors also help responsible leaders to better manage the tension between responsible and effective leadership.

The small and geographically bound sample size makes it difficult to generalise the findings of this study. As in other ethics studies, interviewees’ desire to present a socially desirable image of themselves could be high in this study. Finally, the methods and analytical techniques applied may be biased and be influenced by the purposive selection of the participants.

Singaporean business leaders may need to consider the importance of retaining and developing the national culture and ethos of the nation, since these are the factors that have been identified in this study as key to influencing RL.

This study identifies the factors that influence RL from a Singapore context. It extends the understanding of the mostly western-based multi-level theory of RL.

The relationship between socially responsible leaders, the key driver of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, and organizational financial performance is a salient issue in the global context for both CSR scholars and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to provide much-needed insights into the interplay of responsible leadership, CSR practices, and organizational outcomes.

It analyses 85 CEOs’ behaviors and their companies’ performance in a two-year database. It thereby enriches understanding of how leaders’ socially responsible decisions impact upon CSR engagement and firm performance.

The results suggest that socially responsible leaders were positively related with organizational performance of return on equity (ROE). The aspects of integrity, morality, and stakeholder relationship aspects of responsible leadership are closely related to CSR. However, CSR practices were negatively related to ROA and ROE. It implies that in China CSR activities could not boost organizational performance in the short term, at least in two years.

Our research has clear limitations. First, most selected firms are renowned large corporations, state-owned, or private enterprises. Foreign-owned enterprises are excluded. Second, the evaluation of CSP is based on the content analysis of firms’ annual CSR reports. Our research has clear limitations. First, most selected firms are renowned large corporations, state-owned, or private enterprises. Foreign-owned enterprises are excluded. Second, the evaluation of CSP is based on the content analysis of firms’ annual CSR reports.

Our research has practical implications for the business world. First, CSR practices in China shall be conducted in a strategic way. Second, responsible leadership is of significance for the Chinese MNCs that are overseas to build trustful stakeholder relations with local stakeholders.

Based on the data analysis, this study provides in-depth discussion of CSR situation in China and its relationship with firm performance, which is one of the first studies to examine responsible leadership in Chinese context and investigate the relationship between responsible leadership and organizational performance.

This study aims to provide a point of reference and another of guidance for future research on the topic of responsible leadership by exploring its challenges, outcomes and practices.

A systematic review of the literature, originally adopted from the medical sciences but also used in management and leadership studies, was conducted to integrate research in an organized, translucent and reproducible manner. The final sample of 46 empirical and conceptual studies were scientifically screened and synthesized.

The synthesis revealed that balancing stakeholder needs, personal characteristics and organizational structures are the main challenges against responsible leadership, whereas financial benefits, employees-related benefits and reputational gains among others are the main outcomes. Practices pinpointed, while scarce, are represented in nurturing a stakeholder culture, and engaging employee-related and human-resource-responsible functions.

This study contributes to the development of responsible leadership.

This paper aims to theoretically answer the question: why might business schools in Egypt fail to develop responsible leaders?

The author starts by discussing modernization theory (Lipset, 1959) – which highlights the idea that the more educated people there are in a given society/nation, the more calls for democracy, social citizenship and social justice will be launched – to address the strong association between the quality of business learning and the development of responsible leadership norms. Moving forward by focusing on the theory of education (Dewey, 1916) and institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), the author finds the main conditions needed to develop responsible leadership norms among business school students.

The author identified the following three necessary conditions: implementing responsible management education, sustaining management learning and ensuring that a purposive hidden curriculum is well-planned in business schools. The author sees these as the main priorities for developing responsible leadership skills among business school students in Egypt and similar post revolution countries.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in responsible leadership, public administration and higher education literature, in which conceptual studies on the role of business schools in post-revolution periods and conflict zones has been limited until now.

Today’s pressing global societal challenges are urgent and require substantial solutions and innovations that tackle the roots of a problem. These challenges call for new forms of leadership, stakeholder engagement and innovation. This paper aims to examine whether, why and how business leaders engage in social innovation. The authors argue that leadership perspective and motivation are important drivers for developing substantial social innovations suited to resolving societal challenges at their roots. More specifically, the authors propose that intra-personal factors (degree of care and compassion), an inter-relational perspective of leadership (shareholder versus stakeholder) and the corresponding leadership motivation (personalized versus socialized) may unveil what quality of social innovation (first-order versus second-order solutions) is pursued by a business leader. Implications for future research and practice are provided.

The authors revisit the concept of social innovation and explore its connection with care and compassion. They suggest a series of propositions pertaining to the relationship between different configurations of leadership and different forms of social innovation.

Responsible business leaders with an integrative leader trait configuration (stakeholder perspective, socialized motivation, high degree of care and compassion) are more likely to foster substantial second-order social innovations for uprooting societal problems than business leader with an instrumental leader trait configuration (shareholder perspective, personalized motivation, low degree of care and compassion). An organization’s stakeholder culture plays a moderating role in the relation between leadership and social innovation.

This paper reveals a path for conceptualizing leadership in social innovation from a stakeholder perspective. Future research should investigate the role of business leaders, their mindsets, styles and relational competencies in co-creation processes of social innovation empirically. If the development of substantial second-order social innovations requires leaders with a stakeholder perspective and socialized approach, then this has implications for leader selection and development.

This paper advocates for new kinds of leaders in facilitating and sustaining social innovations to tackle global societal challenges.

The Covid-19 crisis has coerced organisations and business schools to rethink and reflect their practices about well-being and purpose individually and collectively. While this discourse was existent within academic and professional sphere, it was rather muted or isolated in the quest of pursuing traditional indicators of progress in terms of economic productivity. It is within this context we revisit our past interaction with the leader who has been advocating for responsible leadership which encompasses well-being and purpose amidst Covid-19. Arianna Huffington is the Founder and CEO of Thrive Global, which is a platform to help corporations in promoting individual and collective well-being. Formerly she was also the Co-founder and the President and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post Media Group. In 2014, she received the Tesla Sustainable Leadership Award, after which one of the authors had an opportunity to interview her for the Sustainable Leadership Blog.¹ A staunch advocate of issues like climate change, gender equality, work-life balance and youth empowerment, Arianna exemplifies the commitment to articulate and implement purpose-led corporations, proposing the People–Planet–Profit approach to leadership . By shedding light on Arianna’s perspective this chapter suggests reflective pointers for decision-makers in management education, these are follows: (a) business schools can lead integrating sustainability in their purpose and practice; (b) relevance of the spiritual dimension and its significance in business schools and organisations; and (c) proposing a holistic view in comparison with a traditional view of business education. Finally, we also posit that her practice as role model for responsible leadership during Covid-19 reflects consistent adherence in her past and present discourse about responsible management issues. Thus, her insights can help leaders of public, private and social organisations to grapple with complex organisational issues arising due to of Covid-19.

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.

In the last decades, the notion that leadership comprises responsible leadership has gained support and the academic debate has shed some light on the antecedents, processes, and multi-level outcomes of responsible leadership. Being at the intersection of the leadership and sustainability discourses, responsible leadership has benefitted from the increasing interests that both fields of study have received. Nevertheless, the debate has left several questions around the nature and development of responsible leadership unanswered. Among these questions we reckon an understanding of “responsible” in the definition of “responsible leadership,” the width of leaders’ responsibility and the depth of their impact including the role of personal alongside formal leadership, and the distinction between “responsible” and “non responsible” leaders. The aim of this theoretical paper is to further the academic discussion on leadership in the context of sustainability and its integration in higher education settings. We review the literature and explore the academic debate while step-by-step building a description of responsible leadership that could form the basis for leadership programmes in higher education. Then, borrowing insights from pro-environmental psychology, we share a tripartite description of responsible leadership, which centres around identity, behaviour and responsiveness. As a final step, we share our experience in building an undergraduate programme based on this tripartite description of responsible leadership. Here, we illustrate how the leadership description can be visualised in a figure and used to develop an undergraduate Liberal Arts and Sciences curriculum centred on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This study aims to examine the relationship between employees’ psychological contract breach and two types of voice behavior based on the social exchange theory. Additionally, the study explores the role of globally responsible business leadership in buffering the negative impacts of psychological contract breach on voice.

Survey data was collected from Chinese full-time employees and the final sample size is 337. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

Findings indicate that psychological contract breach (PCB) has a positive and significant impact on employee aggressive voice behavior (AVB), while its relationship with constructive voice behavior (CVB) is not significant. Furthermore, globally responsible business leadership (GRBL) weakens the negative relationship between PCB and CVB, while strengthens the positive relationship between PCB and AVB.

The findings assist organizations in better recognizing the detrimental consequences of psychological contract breach. Second, the findings serve as a reminder to managers of the benefits of displaying globally responsible business leadership. Third, managers should recognize the complexities of globally responsible business leadership.

First, this study sheds new light on the impact of PCB on employees’ desirable and undesirable proactive behaviors by investigating how and when psychological contract breach affects two types of voice behavior. Second, the moderating role of GRBL further enriches our understanding of how to buffer negative effects of PCB and the desirable function of GRBL. Third, this study enriches the social exchange theory by investigating whether the leader−employee relationship will compensate for the failure of organization−employee relationship.