Applicability of Leadership-Related Drivers of Sustainability in Niger Delta Development Commission

Abstract

This study investigated the applicability of leadership-related drivers of sustainability in Niger Delta Development Commission. Based on a pragmatist philosophy, it used a well-structured questionnaire to collect quantitative and qualitative data from respondents chosen by stratified random sampling. The quantitative data were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis using IBM SPSS Statistics 22. The qualitative data were analysed using NVivo, based on existing frameworks synthesised from the literature on leadership-related drivers of sustainability.

The study found that NDDC’s involvement in sustainability initiatives, the extent of its involvement, as measured by its economic, environmental, societal and future generational concerns, is pedestrian and indicates that sustainability is yet to be embedded in the organisation. It also revealed that although majority of NDDC managers make efforts to embed sustainability in the organisation, the applicability in NDDC of all the 14 leadership-related sustainability drivers, which were synthesised from literature review, was mundane.

The findings validate extant literature on the significance of leadership for embedding sustainability in organisations and corroborate previous studies that highlighted the importance deploying leadership-related drivers to embed sustainability in organisations. Consequently, it can be concluded that no matter the efforts managers make to embed sustainability in their organisations, if they do not deploy the sustainability drivers related to the above mentioned leadership processes to a great or very great extent, their efforts will translate to a mediocre level of sustainability embedment.

Keywords: sustainability, sustainability-drivers, leadership, embedding sustainability