Sustainability Discourses in the Leadership and Management Literature: A Critical Review

Abstract

This review advances a critical discussion of prevalent sustainability discourses in the leadership and management literature. Since the 1990s, ecocentric approaches to management have been discussed in opposition to anthropocentric (human centered) management theory. However, limited attention has been given, so far, to clarifying how sustainability discourses have influenced the literature of leadership and management. The influence of rights‐based United Nations Sustainable Development dating back to the Brundtland report in 1987 is widely recognized, as are business and technology‐based discourses in sustainability (ecological modernism). Such discourses are united in a belief in green growth. However, a literature review shows that critical sustainability discourses about limits to growth, planetary boundaries and the need for degrowth, as well as ecocentric discourses, are only marginally present in the literature on leadership and management. In view of the need for leadership to address the “polycrisis” of entangled environmental and social crises, we problematize the lack of critical sustainability discourses in the leadership and management literature.