The rise of sustainable development as a field of applied research has been observed across a wide range of disciplines. Successful change towards sustainability in organizations and societies requires leadership to provide a vision, set direction, and motivate people to move towards new goals. Thus, sustainable leadership is emerging as a new domain of study within the field of management. This review of research employed science mapping tools to examine 952 Scopus-indexed documents explicitly concerned with sustainable leadership. The goals of the review were to document the size, growth trajectory, and geographic distribution of this literature, identify key journals, authors, and documents, analyze the intellectual structure of this knowledge base, and highlight emerging topics. The review documented a modest-sized knowledge base of recent vintage, concentrated in Western developed societies but global in scope. Six Schools of Thought were identified within this knowledge base, one of which—Sustainable Leadership—was singled out for attention. As the first bibliometric review of research on sustainable leadership, this review provides a reference for scholars entering this domain, as well as guidance with respect to high value frameworks, foci for future research, and practical implications.

Many managers and researchers alike are asking: What does an enterprise need to do to generate a proper balance between economic, social, and ecological objectives while gaining superior corporate financial performance, resilience, and sustainability? Several leadership concepts for enhancing organizational sustainability have emerged in recent years, but none provides an integrative approach, with the exception of Sustainable Leadership (SL). However, empirical research examining the effects of various SL practices on financial performance and other business outcomes is lacking. This article addresses this gap by empirically investigating the relationships between 23 SL practices and financial performance. Using a cross-sectional survey, data stem from 439 managers in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand. Of the 23 SL practices in SL, 16 were significantly associated with corporate financial performance. Four SL practices, in particular-amicable labor relations, valuing employees, social responsibility, plus strong and shared vision-were significant drivers, and positive predictors, of enhanced long-term firm performance. Lastly, implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Purpose – Given previous findings that employee satisfaction contributes to firm performance and sustainability, this study examined the relationships between 23 leadership/management practices on employee satisfaction. It identified specific practices with significant effects on employee satisfaction. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Using a theoretical framework and questionnaire derived from Avery and Bergsteiner's Sustainable Leadership Model, data were collected from 1,152 employees in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Bangkok, Thailand. Findings – Overall, adopting sustainable leadership (SL) practices was related significantly to employee satisfaction, consistent with Avery and Bergsteiner's model. Twenty of the 23 SL practices were linked to enhanced employee satisfaction, the exceptions being independence from the financial markets, self-management and environmental responsibility. Specific SL practices predicted enhanced employee satisfaction more than others, the strongest predictor being high staff engagement. Other practices associated with employee satisfaction were: valuing employees, ethical behaviour, considered organizational change, a strong and shared vision, an enabling culture, and quality in products and services. Research limitations/implications – Considerable scope exists for future research into the relationships between individual and bundles of SL practices with employee satisfaction in different national, industry and other contexts. Further limitations are discussed in the paper. Practical implications – Managers of SMEs in Thailand and possibly in other contexts should consider adopting the SL practices shown to significantly enhance employee satisfaction and in doing so help sustain their business success. Originality/value – This study pioneered research into a gap in the literature about the SL and management practices that positively predict enhanced employee satisfaction, an area of importance to both leadership practice and research.

Over the past 30 years, scholars have been calling for modern management theory and research to consider how strategic management tools could be applied to enhance corporate sustainability. While strategic management for sustainability has emerged as a multidisciplinary field, the existing knowledge base has yet to be systematic reviewed. This paper responded to the literature gap by conducting a bibliometric review of strategic management for sustainability. The paper aimed to document the landscape and composition of this literature through the analysis of 988 relevant Scopus-indexed documents. Data analyses found that the strategic management for sustainability knowledge base remained an emergent field with increasing interests from diverse groups of international scholars in various fields, particularly in environmental science, engineering, and strategic business management. Over the past three decades, the literatures have been continuously grown from a few publications in the early 1990s to almost 1000 documents to date. The review found that the most influential journals and authors of this knowledge base were international in scope but predominately from Western developed countries. Five Schools of Thought from author co-citation analysis revealed the intellectual clustering composition of the knowledge base on strategic management for sustainability: corporate sustainability strategy, sustainable waste management, strategic sustainability systems, strategic sustainability management and entrepreneurship, and sustainability assessment strategy. Key topics addressed in this research include the distribution of documents across the most highly cited journals, reflecting the breadth, quality and influential scholars in the strategic management for sustainability knowledge domain, naming of the influential scholars in the field and identification of contemporary foci and research front in the existing literature through the keyword co-occurrence analysis and co-word map. The strategic management for sustainability field has evolved from the key topics related to the green movement at the policy-driven macro level (i.e., ecological or environmental protection/impact, water/waste management and natural resource conservation) to the practicality in organizations with the topics related to social strategic responsibility and business management issues (i.e., corporate strategy, project management, supply chain management, information management, adaptive management, corporate sustainability). In addition to a retrospective, insightful prospective interpretation, practical implication, limitations and future research direction are discussed.

Globally, ethical concerns principally focus on the need for business ethics as well as an emphasis on spiritual leadership to enhance long-term effectiveness and corporate sustainability. This paper responds to a call for further studies of business ethics and spirituality in workplaces and advances the currently limited knowledge in the realm, in particular, from an Eastern Buddhism perspective. Using a case study research approach, this paper investigates how a modern company can ethically and spiritually lead and manage a successful, sustainable business. A Buddhist-based philosophy of “Sufficiency Economy,” as advocated by United Nations Development Programme was used as the research framework to examine the philosophy’s ethical and spiritual application. The findings suggest that, to achieve long-term corporate sustainability, a successful business enterprise should embrace good ethical and spiritual values via ethics/morality, knowledge, moderation, reasonableness, resilience, compassion and care for its stakeholders. Implications, limitations and future research are discussed.