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Given the social and environmental challenges facing all organizations, there is a need for new leadership models, methods, and tools for implementing organizational change for sustainable development. Toward that end, we review current approaches to leadership for sustainability in terms of their conceptual frameworks and extant research, which all advocate a balanced stakeholder approach to leadership to address the social and environmental issues related to sustainability and sustainable development. Then, drawing from spiritual and being-centered leadership theories, we offer a model of Global Leadership for Sustainability (GLfS) that incorporates and extends the conceptual domain beyond current approaches to leadership for sustainability. In doing so we propose that spirituality, through the qualities of self-transcendence and interconnectedness, is critical for sustainability and is foundational for GLfS. We also emphasize the importance of cultivating a Global Mindset for Sustainability, which incorporates two ethical principles—an ethic of remote moral responsibility and an ethic of care and compassion. As a result, global leaders for sustainability become more committed to moving beyond satisfying stakeholders’ demands for economic returns, toward a more sustainable, triple bottom line, balanced approach. Finally, we discuss implications for theory, research, and practice of GLfS.

Despite 15 years of functioning as an interest group, our domain of inquiry is relatively young and there are limited theoretical boundaries to support, shape, and assist our efforts. This metaphorical “blank canvas” is both empowering, in that so many inquiries are open for exploration, and yet also limiting. In this document we highlight three critical elements to emphasize their importance in MSR research: (a) delineating and operationalizing the key terms of religion, spirituality, and workplace spirituality; (b) acknowledging the work to date in the MSR corpus around definitions of these terms, and (c) being explicit about how ontological and epistemological assumptions inform our methods. The intention is to encourage growth in the quality and rigor of our individual and collective scholarship.

The authors would like to make the following corrections to the published paper [...]

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