Responsible Leadership: Pathways to the Future

Nicola M. Pless 0 1 Thomas Maak 0 1 Why Responsible Leadership? 0 1 0 T. Maak (&) Department of People Management & Organization, ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University , Av. Torreblanca, 59, 08172 Sant Cugat del Valle`s, Barcelona, Spain 1 N. M. Pless Department of Social Science, ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University , Av. Torreblanca, 59, 08172 Sant Cugat del Valle`s, Barcelona, Spain This article maps current thinking in the emerging field of responsible leadership. Various environmental and social forces have triggered interest in both research and practices of responsible leadership. This article outlines the main features of the relevant research, specifies a definition of the concept, and compares this emergent understanding of responsible leadership with related leadership theories. Finally, an overview of different articles in this special issue sketches some pathways for ongoing research. - charismatic, authentic, participative, servant, shared, or even spiritual and ethical leadership, and that it is actually this element that is at the heart of what effective leadership is all about. In a nutshell, to not be responsible is not to be effective as a leader (Waldman and Galvin 2008, p. 327). Accordingly, we witness a growing discussion about the appropriateness of current leadership theories to address pertinent leadership challenges. This discussion often cites the role and responsibilities of business leaders in society, frequently in light of social and environmental crises such as the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, the Bhopal disaster for Union Carbide, Shells Brent Spar and Nigerian failures, and Nikes sweatshops, to name but a few. These incidents triggered ongoing debate about corporate-level responsibility; more recent discussions of responsible leadership have been inflamed by business scandals and individual leadership failures at the start of the millenniummost prominently the demise of Enron and Arthur Andersen. Following the fall from grace of the smartest guys in the room (), new laws and regulation arose, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, followed by a critical academic debate about the impact of greed and reckless self-interest in managerial decision-making. The discussion recognized bad management theories [were] destroying good management practice (Ghoshal 2005) and cited the need for managers, not MBAs (Mintzberg 2004), that is, professionals with higher aims and not just hired hands (Khurana 2007). Moreover, a call went out for Responsible Global Leadership from the European Foundation of Management Development, leading to the emergence of PRME, an educational offshoot of the UN Global Compact that seeks to incorporate the Compacts ten principles into the curricula of business schools worldwide. Despite the strong push for reforms, irresponsible leadership was a primary cause of the global economic crisis of 2008; thus, it became clear that solving leadership issues was a long-term endeavor and that responsible (global) leadership needed to be approached on both individual and systemic levels to be effective. As Jeffrey Sachs (2011, p. 3) argues in a recent book, A society of markets, laws, and elections is not enough if the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion toward the rest of society and toward the world. Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery. The quest for responsible leadership is not limited to scandals and subsequent calls for responsible and ethical conduct though (Brown and Trevino 2006). It also stems from the changes in and new demands of business contexts (e.g., Maak and Pless 2006a; Waldman and Galvin 2008). One such demand is stakeholders expectation that businesses and their leaders take active roles in fostering responsible behavior, within and outside the organization, such as by creating responsible organizational cultures, pursuing a triple bottom-line (social, environmental, and economic value) approach, and acting as good citizens (Maak 2007; Pless 2007). As a widening array of stakeholders pay increasing attention to the political role and responsibility of business leaders in the pursuit of a global common good, they ask probing questions about business role in the fight against poverty and the pursuit of human rights, whether in connection to human rights abuses or as potential enablers of human rights, namely, as secondary agents of justice (Young 2006; Maak 2009). What about business leaders role in the establishment of intergenerational justice (Wade-Benzoni et al. 2010), such that they serve as stewards of trust that has been embedded in them (Maak and Pless 2006a)? For all parties involved, these are difficult questions to answer. Yet a common understanding in both academic and practitioner discourses indicates that business leaders must be able to answer them if they are to contribute to a sustainable future. All things considered then, responsible leadership is a multilevel response to deficiencies in existing leadership frameworks and theories; to high-profile scandals on individual, organizational, and systemic levels; and to new and emerging social, ethical, and environmental challenges in an increasingly connected world. The scope and complexity of these challenges calls for responsible leadership and responsible leaders who acknowledge their shared, significant responsibility (May 1996) in tackling problems and challenges. That is, they must walk their talk ultimately to rebuild the public trust vested in them. It should come as no surprise then that business practice has a notable interest in developing responsible leadership in organizations and in encouraging new generations of responsible leaders and academics to understand the origins and outcomes of responsible leadership as a multilevel theory and construct. In what follows, this opening article of the Special Issue seeks to sharpen understanding of responsible leadership by distinguishing this concept from other leadership theories. We specify our understanding of responsible leadership at the individual level, provide an overview of the various articles in this special issue, and offer some tentative pathways for further research. What is Responsible Leadership? A common understanding among researchers in the field indicates that responsible leadership responds to both existing gaps in leadership theory and the practical challenges facing leadership. First, it centers attention firmly on matters of responsibility, including accountability, appropriate moral decision-making, and trust. In other words, responsible leadership seeks to define what responsible means in the context of leadership. Second, being accountable for actions, answerable for decisions, and reliable and trusted are not just semantic variations on the term responsibility but rather constitute inherently relational concepts. By definition then, res (...truncated)