31st EGOS Colloquium, July 2 – 4, 2015, Athens, Greece
Sub-theme 57: Responsible Leadership: Addressing Social, Environmental and Business Implications of Leadership
Convenors:
Nicola M. Pless, ESADE Business School, nicola.pless@esade.edu
Günter K. Stahl, WU Vienna and INSEAD, guenter.stahl@wu.ac.at
Christian Voegtlin, University of Zurich, christian.voegtlin@uzh.ch
Discussants:
Thomas Maak, ESADE Business School, thomas.maak@esade.edu
Mary Sully de Luque, Thunderbird School of Global Management, mary.sullydeluque@thunderbird.edu
Recurring corporate scandals and extended social and environmental responsibility expectations directed at multinational business corporations have sparked increasing research on ethical and responsible leadership in recent years. However, the predominant research approaches that address business leaders' ethicality and responsibility still remain mainly focused on internal ethics management (e.g., Brown & Trevino, 2006; Walumbwa et al., 2008). This research misses the broader social and environmental implications of leadership decisions – decisions that can have negative effects on a range of internal and external stakeholders.
Emerging research on responsible leadership addresses the gap at the intersection of organizational leadership and responsible engagement with, and of, stakeholders. Research on responsible leadership investigates the scope of responsibility of business leaders in an increasingly complex and uncertain global business environment, contrasting a shareholder and broader stakeholder orientation. However, despite a growing body of literature ((Doh & Stumpf, 2005; Maak & Pless, 2006; Miska, Stahl, & Mendenhall, 2013; Pless, Maak, & Stahl, 2011; Pless, Maak, & Waldman, 2012; Sackmann, 2006; Stahl & Sully de Luque, 2014; Voegtlin, Patzer, & Scherer, 2012; Waldman & Galvin, 2008), we still have a limited understanding of a leader's scope of responsibility, stakeholders' expectations of a responsible leader, the challenges of behaving ethically and responsibly as a business leader, and the individual, organizational, and institutional antecedents of responsible leader behavior.
This sub-theme seeks to encourage further research and to advance the discussion on responsible leadership. The aim is to move towards a common understanding of what responsible leadership is and what it can achieve. We seek contributions that theoretically and empirically assess responsible leadership and its relation to individual ethical decision-making, stakeholder engagement, and corporate social responsibility. We thereby address aspects connected to responsible leadership at the individual level (e.g., leader decision-making), the group level (e.g., role of shared leadership in corporate responsibility), the relational level (e.g., the leader-stakeholder interaction), the organizational level (e.g., responsible leader behavior and ethical climate), and societal level (the impact of responsible leadership on social and environmental firm performance).
We encourage contributions that address (but are not restricted to) the following topics:
Conceptual and theoretical issues:
- What is responsible leadership? How can we move towards a unified definition of responsible leadership?
- Various attempts have been made to reconcile the shareholder primacy model and the stakeholder perspective. Do these (seemingly) polar opposites adequately represent the range of beliefs or perspectives that business leaders hold with respect to corporate responsibility and ethics?
- What frameworks exist to model the linkages between individual-, situational-, organizational- and country-level influences and responsible leadership?
- What are the boundary conditions and contingency factors for responsible leadership?
Empirical research:
- How can responsible leadership be modelled and measured at multiple levels of analysis?
- What is the role of individual leaders in the formulation of CSR and sustainability strategies, the creation of ethical norms, and their gradual integration within the company?
- What is the relative importance of individual, organizational, and societal influences on responsible leadership, and how do these factors combine and interact to influence leader behavior and ethical choices?
- Little attention has been given to cross-national variations in leaders' responsibility orientations. How does the wider cultural and institutional context within which global corporations and their leaders operate affect the nature and enactment of responsible leadership?
Practical implications:
- Finally, an overarching goal of this sub-theme is to develop recommendations of how organizations can effectively prevent managerial misconduct and promote responsible leadership. What approaches, practices or tools can be utilized to minimize the risk of irresponsible leader behaviour?
General themes that could be covered include:
- Responsible leadership in cross-border, cross-cultural contexts
- Measurement and level-of-analysis issues related to responsible or ethical leadership
- Normative reflections on responsible leadership
- Shared leadership and other new perspectives on responsible leadership
- Training and development of responsible leadership
- Microfoundations of CSR
- Sustainability and leadership
- Ethical leadership theories
Short Biographies
Nicola M. Pless is Associate Professor at ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University, in Barcelona, and the recipient of the Aspen Faculty Pioneer Award 2013. She received her Ph.D. at the University of St. Gallen and is Section Editor of the Journal of Business Ethics. Prior to joining ESADE she was a faculty member of the University of St. Gallen, a Senior Research Fellow at INSEAD, and pursued an executive career serving in senior leadership roles in the financial services industry.
Günter K. Stahl is Professor of International Management at WU Vienna and Adjunct Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD. He received his PhD in business administration at the University of Bayreuth, and was a visiting professor at Duke University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Northeastern University, and Hitotsubashi University.
Christian Voegtlin is Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of Business Administration at the University of Zurich. He received his PhD in business administration at the University of Zurich. He is currently project leader of two research projects on responsible leadership funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Thomas Maak is Professor of Leadership and Responsibility at ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University, in Barcelona. He received his Ph.D. at the University of St. Gallen. He is a Section Editor of the Journal of Business Ethics. Prior to joining ESADE he served on the faculty of the University of St. Gallen and as Senior Research Fellow at INSEAD.
Mary Sully de Luque is Associate Professor of management at Thunderbird School of Global Management. Before joining the Thunderbird faculty, she was a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School. Currently, she is co-director of GLOBE Phase 3, which involves a 24-country study of entrepreneur and non-entrepreneur CEOs and their TMT assessing leadership effectiveness and firm performance.
Sub-Theme link: http://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egos/main.jart?rel=de&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1392376003637&subtheme_id=1368705987343
EGOS 2015 Colloquium link: http://www.egosnet.org/2015_athens/general_theme
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Christian Voegtlin, PhD
Department of Business Administration
University of Zurich
Universitätsstr. 84
CH - 8006 Zürich
Tel.: +41(0)44-634-5304
Fax.: +41(0)44-634-5301
E-Mail: christian.voegtlin@iou.uzh.ch">christian.voegtlin@uzh.ch
Homepage: http://www.business.uzh.ch
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