Responsible Leaders: attributes and roles in a multi-challenged global business environment and implications for Leadership development

Abstract

Business leaders face many enormous challenges in today’s volatile and uncertain environment. Globalisation, new and emerging technologies, complexity and diversity, rapid and often turbulent political, economic, social and environmental changes, unpredictable natural disasters, sophisticated consumer needs, heightened environmental awareness and concerns and a growing need for sustainable livelihood occasioned by diminishing resources. These challenges make running business organisations more difficult than ever. Responsible leadership and responsible leaders for whom the profit motive alone does not reign supreme are needed, heightened by business scandals such as those of Enron and WorldCom. Attributes required of responsible leaders are essentially different from those required of conventional leaders. As demanded by the dynamic business environment, these attributes cannot be fixed. Responsibility, resonating with ethics, has become the defining characteristic of leading a business today as leaders have to consider many, often conflicting, factors in decision-making. Responsible leaders see beyond their organisations, anticipate and embrace socioenvironmental concerns and go beyond short-term profit to longterm sustainability as the ultimate mark of success. For them, sustainability and corporate social and environmental responsibility are not buzzwords or platitudes; they are serious practices that have taken root, having shifted from stakeholderpressure rhetoric to a more value-driven rhetoric. If responsible leaders are to be developed, a clear understanding of key attributes required of them is imperative. Beyond that, it is crucial to lay an ethics foundation among the youth in families and homes, society at large through societal marketing strategies and embed ethics in school and general university curricula as well as business school curricula and corporate training and development programmes.