Wiki- E- Portfolio

Sustainable Leadership

 

Overview of sustainable leadership

Sustainable leadership gets executed by the business leaders through managing the business operations by keeping in mind various sustainable development goals, environment and the society. In the statements of Rehman et al. (2019), a sustainable leadership style is adopted by an individual who provides various benefits to the environment and society along with the maintenance of business financial performance. Sustainable leadership helps in ensuring long term profits for the business organization through inducing innovations in business that possess less harm to the environment, business and society. The Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives taken by business organisations are also a part of sustainable leadership and these help in maintaining balance among the environmental, social and economic conditions of the country and business organisations. Companies like Marks and Spencer which is headquartered in the UK can implement a sustainable leadership approach for minimizing its environmental impact with the help of efficient leadership (Marksandspencer.com, 2021). Sustainable leaders can help the staff members to induce sustainability in their day to day activities.

 

 

 

Sustainability within leadership style

Leaders within the business organisations adopt various leadership styles for providing direction, increasing team’s motivation level and implementing business plans effectively and efficiently. The major five types of leadership styles that are often undertaken by managerial employees in leading business organisations such as “Marks & Spencer” includes “Authoritarian Leadership Style”, “Democratic or Participative Leadership Style”, “Transactional Leadership Style”, “Transformational Leadership” and “Delegative Leadership Style” or “Laissez-Faire Leadership” style. As stated by Zhang and Xie (2017), the “Authoritarian Leadership Style” is adopted by the leaders who possess full control on their team members and clear guidance regarding business projects or implementation plans is provided to the team members by the leader. “Democratic or Participative Leadership Style” involves equal participation of all the team members rather than the leader in the decision making process of the business.

 

Figure 1: Types of Leadership styles

Another leadership style that is adopted by the leaders of business organisations is the “Transactional Leadership Style” that helps the leaders to develop time-bound, measurable and specific goals that can be easily achieved by employees. The managerial employees at Marks and Spencer tend to provide tangible and intangible benefits to the employees in exchange of efficient performance within organisation structure (Marksandspencer.com, 2021). Adapting a similar leadership approach for attaining sustainability can help the leaders to guide the employees for being more responsible towards the environment. “Transformational Leadership” style helps the leaders to inspire the team members through setting an appropriate corporate vision. Innovation and creativity is greatly valued by the business leaders adopting “Delegative Leadership Style” or “Laissez-Faire Leadership” style (Breevaart and Zacher, 2019). Application of “McKinsey 7S Change Management Model” though bringing positive changes within the leadership approach, business organisations can improve their employee management initiatives. Sustainable leadership can be implemented for improving the outcomes gained from appropriate leadership approaches.

 

Factor contributing to the requirement of sustainable leadership

The current deteriorated environmental conditions contributed by human activities have created the requirement of adopting sustainability within conventional leadership style. With the help of appropriate leadership approach goals are set for achieving any objective within the organisational structure. Similarly, adopting a sustainable leadership approach can help to develop sustainability goals and achieve those for reducing environmental impact of business organisations. As suggested by Dalatiet al. (2017), the major issues that have contributed to the requirement of sustainable leadership include environmental issues, financial issues and social issues. Application of “3-Overlapping-Circles Model” of sustainability can help Marks and Spencer to emphasize on the three identified areas of issues.

The environmental issues are contributed by the lack of awareness among the employees regarding environment friendly approach within the organisation. As influenced by the ideas of Alicke and Forsting (2017), bringing change within the organization with  the application of  “McKinsey Change Management Model'', the production process of  M&S can be made sustainable. Sourcing local raw materials can be identified as the first step towards sustainability. Installation of energy efficient equipment within various areas of the organisation is another initiative that can be taken to reduce environmental issues. The major environmental issues that have created the scope for sustainable leadership with the high greenhouse gas emission of the organisation.

The high amount of water required for manufacturing clothing contributes to irresponsible usage of natural resources (Pal and Gander, 2018). In addition to these activities which have been impacting the environment, increasing the amount of wastes disposed into the landfills without any processing is another unsustainable organizational activity. In terms of financial and social issues, COVID-19 pandemic can be blamed. The global economic conditions have contributed to the lack of finances for the business (Donthu and Gustafsson, 2020). This has created the requirement of using organizational resources minimally. The increasing number of social issues has attracted organisational attention and contributes to development of new Corporate Social Responsibility activity under effective sustainable leadership.            

Process of attaining sustainability within leadership

Sustainability can be obtained within the leadership approach of any managerial employee with the help of ensuring the principles of sustainable leadership. Fulfilling these principles can help M&S managers to implement sustainability. The 6C’s can be ensured by the leaders to address the sustainability related challenges within the business environment.

Figure 2: Process of attaining sustainability within leadership

Communication

Leaders with a sustainable approach tend to communicate with the stakeholders of the business to identify their requirements (Osman and Kamis, 2019). This helps them to address sustainability challenges while fulfilling the requirements of stakeholders. 

Collaboration

It is the responsibility of the leader to establish a collaborative work environment for attaining information about the stakeholders related with sustainability challenges. 

Characteristic

The characteristics of a leader determine the extent of sustainability within an organisation. An efficient leader with appropriate characteristics can allow the implication of sustainability within Marks and Spencer.

Creativity

Leaders with situational approach tend to develop creative ways to solve any problem within the organisational structure (Walls, 2019). This creativity induced leadership helps to attain sustainability within a management approach.

Competence

The competence of the leaders within any organisation determines the level of sustainability that can be obtained within the management of the responsibilities.  

Continuity of commitment

Managerial employees who are committed towards reducing environmental impact and inducing sustainability would be capable of attaining sustainability within their leadership approach.

Implication of theoretical concepts for implementing sustainable leadership

Recommendations can be provided to fast fashion retailer brand M&S to level up their sustainability initiatives. The “UN’s Sustainable Development Goals”can help in developing sustainability goals that can allow the leaders of the organisation to train sustainability and implement sustainable leadership (Schalteggeret al. 2018). The first goal that the organisation should establish is reducing its contribution to climate change. The unnatural and synthetic substances that the company releases into the environment are the major contributors of climate change. The toxic materials that are disposed of in the form of fluids disrupts the biodiversity of the water bodies. The wastes disposed of in the landfills contribute to the deprivation of the soil quality. In order to mitigate these issues sustainable leaders can take up the responsibility and motivate the organizational workforce to indulge in recycling and reusing activities. Through these activities, the amount of waste can be controlled. As per Fernandes et al. (2021), the sustainable leaders can convince the management team to develop and implicate strict organisational rules for attaining sustainability. The wastages that companies like Marks and Spencerdisposed  into the environment can be processed for reducing its negative impact on the environment. Strict governmental and organisational policies can help in implementing this recommendation.

Figure 3: UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

Another goal that can be established in accordance with the “UN’s Sustainable Development Goals” is the usage of clean energy. Shifting from conventional energy resources can require an increasing amount of capital resources. However, the high initiation costs can be justified with the positive outcomes that can be obtained from the usage of clean energy resources. Guidance from a sustainable leader can provide staff members’ adequate knowledge required for using clean energy resources. Without proper training or adequate knowledge base, staff members would not be able to work sustainably.  Sustainable leaders tend to motivate the followers to execute their day to day work in such a way that promotes sustainability (James, 2017). This contributes to the change in energy consumption and conventional activities that employees execute while impacting the environment. 

Strategizing the corporate social responsibilities of the organisation can help sustainable leaders to fulfil sustainability goals of the employer organization. Mitigating inequalities based on gender, race, ethnicity through Corporate Social Responsibility activities can be another goal of sustainability for “Marks & Spencer” (Marksandspencer.com, 2021). Donating financially can be an effective initiative that allows implementation of sustainable leadership. Besides eliminating inequality from the society, ensuring the same within organisational structure is one of the major responsibilities of a sustainable managerial employee. It can be concluded that implementation of sustainable leadership within large cooperation like M&S cannot only increase sustainability initiatives but also bring positive changes within conventional operations of the company. Sustainable leaders tend to motivate the employees and make them work with minimum environmental impact.

 

Reference List

Wiki-Week 2: Sustainable Leadership

Alicke, K. and Forsting, M., (2017). McKinsey Supply Chain Segmentation Framework. In Supply Chain Segmentation (pp. 15-25). Springer, Cham.

Breevaart, K. and Zacher, H., (2019). Main and interactive effects of weekly transformational and laissez‐faire leadership on followers’ trust in the leader and leader effectiveness. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 92(2), pp.384-409.

Dalati, S., Raudeliūnienė, J. and Davidavičienė, V., (2017). Sustainable leadership, organizational trust on job satisfaction: empirical evidence from higher education institutions in Syria. Business, Management and Economics Engineering, 15(1), pp.14-27.

Donthu, N. and Gustafsson, A., (2020). Effects of COVID-19 on business and research. Journal of business research, 117, p.284.

Fernandes, J.A.L., Sousa-Filho, J.M.D. and Viana, F.L.E., (2021). Sustainable business models in a challenging context: The Amana Katu case. Revista de AdministraçãoContemporânea, 25.

James, P., (2017). Towards sustainable business?. In Sustainable Solutions (pp. 77-97). Routledge.

Marksandspencer.com (2021) “Marks & Spencer Retail company” Available at: http://www.marksandspencer.com/ [Accessed on 21 June 2021]

Osman, N.W. and Kamis, A., (2019). Innovation leadership for sustainable organizational climate in institution of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Malaysia. Asian Journal of Assessment in Teaching and Learning, 9(1), pp.57-64.

Pal, R. and Gander, J., (2018). Modelling environmental value: An examination of sustainable business models within the fashion industry. Journal of Cleaner Production, 184, pp.251-263.

Rehman, S., Sami, A., Haroon, A. and Irfan, A., (2019). Impact Of Sustainable Leadership Practices On Public Sector Organizations: A Systematic Review of Past Decade. Journal of Public Value and Administration Insights, 2(3), pp.1-5.

Schaltegger, S., Beckmann, M. and Hockerts, K., (2018). Collaborative entrepreneurship for sustainability. Creating solutions in light of the UN sustainable development goals. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, 10(2), pp.131-152.

Walls, E., (2019). The value of situational leadership. Community practitioner: the journal of the Community Practitioners'& Health Visitors' Association, 92(2), pp.31-33.

Zhang, Y. and Xie, Y.H., (2017). Authoritarian leadership and extra-role behaviors: a role-perception perspective. Management and Organization Review, 13(1), pp.147-166.