Top Management and Leadership Antecedents of Corporate Sustainability Performance: A Scoping Review

Abstract

The increasingly widespread concern sustainability creates among organisations worldwide makes management exercise of leadership in organisations, to boost corporate sustainability performance a major real-world, contemporary problem. This paper set out to provide a foundation for subsequent empirical studies of sustainability leadership, by summarising existing literature on top management and leadership antecedents of corporate sustainability performance.

Pursuant to the aim and review question, the paper used a combination of keywords, backward and forward search techniques to explore a wide variety of academic databases and libraries as well as professional libraries for pertinent literature.

Based on the literature, the paper established management exercise of leadership in organisations, to boost corporate sustainability performance, as a principal, practical, present-day problem; as well as leadership and top management being vital in sustainability embedment and corporate sustainability performance. It found that managerial discretion, leadership competencies, leadership styles and emotional intelligence are vital for corporate sustainability performance. The paper also showed that leadership competencies, leadership styles and emotional intelligence breed managerial discretion. The review also revealed that researchers’ have concentrated on exploring competencies managers and leaders require for successful sustainability performance in organisations; using mostly quantitative and qualitative methodologies in equal measure to conduct such studies mainly in Europe and the Americas.

The paper suggested the need to explore competencies managers and leaders require for successful sustainability performance in Nigerian organisations. It also suggested the need to explore how emotional intelligence, leadership styles and discretion make for successful sustainability performance in Nigerian organisations.

Arising from the foregoing and the reviewed literature, the paper concluded with a research question and model to propel a proposed empirical study that will seek to explore how top managers’ leadership competencies and styles engender discretion to drive sustainability performance in Nigerian organisations.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; sustainability; leadership; sustainable leadership; CSR leadership; sustainability leadership; drivers of sustainability; embedding sustainability; honeybee leadership; leadership capabilities; leadership competencies; leadership styles; emotional intelligence and co