The Importance of Leadership in the Framework of Organizational Sustainability

Summary

This article shows the social evolution regarding sustainability and the importance of leadership in the business framework, using knowledge management as a communicative propagation tool. We will examine some theoretical approaches in organizational matters and global relations to understand the importance of a sustainable culture. This concept links culture and society, with the objective of showing which approach contributes comprehensively to organizational improvement. Finally, the importance of creative thinking and process to achieve an environmental culture and the proposals in the evolution of an ecological idea toward organizational ethics are emphasized.

Introduction

Most organizations worldwide are indifferent to the changes they cause in the environment. Others are concerned with minimizing the impact they generate on their surroundings. It is worth asking why these gaps in eco-environmental and sustainable awareness exist. In recent years, sustainable policies have been adopted. However, today it is not enough to create environmentally friendly organizations, committed to social responsibility, or to develop eco-friendly products. Organizations need to focus their resources on the continuous improvement of their human talent as agents of change in society and ensure their leaders promote a sustainable organizational culture. Sustainability implies recognizing that the environment, as a complex system, comprises elements that interact inseparably: human beings, nature, and culture, which require integrating ecological awareness, fostering pro-environmental behaviors, and ethics programs for sustainability in any area of knowledge. To this end, the Hommoecosystem model is proposed, which comprises the principles of:

1. sustainability

2. creative-complementarity

3. recursiveness

4. complex systems in the environmental training of leaders within organizations.

For this reason, it is emphasized that training in environmental education is a cornerstone for implementing sustainable programs. At the same time, the lack of education on environmental issues is shown as a global, current, and essential problem. In addition to the above, sustainability leadership in organizations emerges as new actors in social, sustainable, political, and ethical matters. Their development as groups has gained great importance in the organizational sphere, across the various teams that comprise them.

It is worth questioning: how can a sustainable, enduring, and iterative culture be generated within organizations? Does it concern only the people who make decisions in the organization, or is it necessary to implement change management that considers the organization’s sustainability and its environmental impact essential? And on the other hand, how can this sustainability decision as a corporate policy enhance competitive position in national and perhaps global markets? These are important questions that must be answered.

Leadership from the perspective of sustainability

When discussing sustainability, it is necessary to refer to the three dimensions that comprise it: social, economic, and environmental. The 19th-century idea of man separated from nature in a superior position of domination fostered androcentric thinking that established an instrumentalist and exclusive vision of the urban system.

Therefore, to make authentic and effective socio-environmental sustainability a reality, it is necessary to create a new culture in the organization, focused on the sustainable vision of decisions, in which human talent can, despite diversity, keep in mind the need to develop an “ecological awareness” that is oriented toward the organization’s objectives, but always seeking to minimize effects on the environment and the global consequences it may generate.

In other words, implementing change management in the organization, with the objective focused on sustainability, aims to generate financial awareness, so that the KPI proposal creates value, minimizing any effect on the environment and is economically viable for the organization.

Minimizing effects on the environment in pursuit of sustainability is not simple, as an exhaustive analysis of each of the variables involved in the process is necessary.

For this reason, the need arises to present sufficient arguments in favor of postulating intergenerational ethical duties/obligations in a civilizational context to establish the current generation’s responsibility in developing a global ethic that addresses future demands and promotes long-term sustainability policies in organizations and their leaders.

Organizational development through knowledge management

The organizational principles based on sustainable ethics are scarce. “Many organizations seem to attend only to the scoreboard: the profit balance. In doing so, they look away from their relationships with people.” Therefore, managers need to find balance in the foundations of their management: communication, decision-making power, flexibility, social structure, and professional tasks, through departmental interdisciplinarity and teamwork.

By proposing and encouraging organizational direction based on ethics, members of organizations will feel an immediate connection with the institutional mission and vision, in addition to strengthening human relationships within it. Setting aside labor and organizational barriers, for sustainability leaders it will be easier to implement an organizational development plan based on feedback and effective information, where human talent is capable of reacting to external changes in markets and economies in time, thus seeking community benefit and safeguarding the organization’s assets. As long as the organizational development strategy creates value and emotional and tangible benefits for employees—if they do not perceive it, they will not generate significant modifications in response to change. The conceptualization of knowledge management (KM) is an organizational tool that offers the opportunity to create innovation processes and strategies to face change and restructure the business organization.

Figure 1. The 3 principles of sustainability.

These premises incorporate the most important elements of sustainability in organizations

1. Sustainability, included in the company’s policy and mission.

2. Complementarity-creativity, which includes interdisciplinary knowledge, cooperation, and participation of actors in general and of the organization’s human talent and stakeholders.

3. Hommoecosystem, as the complex system integrated by the organization and nature.

4. Recursiveness, implies continuous renewal and restructuring under the action of the environment to survive.

To achieve leadership in sustainability, it is urgent to develop a concept of economy beyond a utilitarian, financial, and commercial approach. Moreover, from this perspective it could be argued that even being strictly rational and knowing that organizations are a group of people seeking a common beneficial objective and their production base originates from natural resources. What utility is society and the environment perceiving with respect to the company’s production?

Under this argument, the business model that governs the purposes of organizations would also be questioned. This is why man needs to observe the economy with a systemic notion, perhaps in pursuit of an “ecological economy,” where this thinking defines principles and valuations to understand in a multidisciplinary way the genesis, development, and magnitude of impacts between economic growth, environmental conservation, and individual well-being. “For ecological economics, what is important is that behind each conflict there is a great plurality of values, which is why it adopts the multi-criteria or multi-value approach that considers, in addition to economic impacts, physical and social impacts.”

Conclusions

A “sustainability leader” is the representative of a collective that seeks to train, teach, and put into practice action programs, environmental practices, or training guides that benefit Sustainable Development. This change agent acts in parallel in environmental, social, and economic improvement within current organizations with a view to long-term growth in sustainable matters. Leaders and companies are responsible for Sustainable Development. Thus, sustainable leadership is responsible for a work group in favor of social and environmental benefit, as they have the knowledge, skills, and competencies that a change agent demands. Since “achieving change in organizations implies significant leaps such as emphasis on training and coaching, a high level of commitment and guidance by highly qualified change agents; it requires management to identify roles and responsibilities.”

Once the variables to be considered in sustainability-oriented training within organizations have been determined, it is necessary to categorize the processes through which these elements will be developed. A coupling scheme must integrate a diagnosis (prior evaluation), management (planning and organization), and implementation (direction, application, and feedback), in order to identify improvement opportunities, necessary communication channels, benefits obtained, and time frames for application. The development of these schemes and processes is positioned as an analysis tool for proper implementation within organizations. It is a proposal that must be adjusted to each type of company using the diagnosis as an evaluation instrument and feasibility study.

This transformation must be initiated by key collaborators, those who are respected and heard, who make important decisions and share the institution’s values. They are the ones who direct, foster, and promote internal communication and knowledge.

The goal is to bring to each change agent an understanding of a sustainable culture in its full extent. To demonstrate that socially responsible and environmentally friendly companies actually generate greater profits, build emotional loyalty with their customers, and satisfy the community’s ecological needs. The result is an increase in market share and a direct and continuous strategic relationship with their segments.

Leaders in Sustainability must focus their efforts on human talent, their motivations and productive innovation, moral principles and effective but equitable decisions, both with stakeholders and with nature. To develop a sustainable culture it is necessary to begin by breaking paradigms and directing objectives toward a common good. To understand that sustainability and environmental education are not a trend, but a constant and continuous policy. For this reason, the importance of developing leaders who are aware of their social impact, who accept and represent the power of their decisions, not only in a space close to their present but distant from it.