Leadership

Human Sustainability Leadership
Dr Elli Meleti • 11 Jun 2026 • 47 sec read
Leadership is crucial

Listen

Leadership is crucial in organizations and there is a lot of scholarly research that examines it. However, is leadership the way we want it to be in organizations?

Leadership has changed in such a way that “… for the most part leaders just take care of themselves, regardless of what they should do either to adhere to moral structures or to make their organizations perform better” [1]. Thus, leaders fail their diverse stakeholders in multiple ways. More harmful is the fact that leaders fail their employees (i.e., cut employees’ salaries). How can this be—all this failure—after the thousands of leadership books, talks, blogs, classes, and leadership development programs seeking to make leaders more effective? [2].

The leadership perspectives that are dominant nowadays distinguish leaders from followers and followers from leaders in various ways. Some of these types of leadership are the following: charismatic leadership [3], visionary leadership [4], situational leadership [5], servant leadership [6,7,8,9], transformational leadership [10,11,12,13], and the leader as teacher leadership [14].

References

  1. Pfeffer, J. 2015. Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time. HarperCollins: 162.
  2. Pfeffer, J. 2015. Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time. HarperCollins: 1-4.
  3. Bowie, N. 2000a. “A Kantian Theory of Leadership.” Leadership and Organization Development Journal 21, no. 4: 185–193.
  4. Fleming, R. S. 2026. Successful Transformational Leadership: Preparing Yourself, Your People, and Your Organization. Springer.
  5. Fleming, R. S. 2026. Successful Transformational Leadership: Preparing Yourself, Your People, and Your Organization. Springer.
  6. Greenleaf, R. K. 1979. “Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness.” In Business Horizons. 22: 91–92. Paulist Press.
  7. Bavik, A. 2020. “A Systematic Review of the Servant Leadership Literature in Management and Hospitality.” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality 32, no. 1: 347–382.
  8. Cravens, L. D. 2025. “The State of Servant Leadership Theory: History, Direction, and Benefits.” International Journal of Business & Management Studies 6, no. 8: 21–31.
  9. Lemoine, G. J., N. Eva, J. Smallfield, C. A. Hartnell, and J. D. Meuser. 2025. “Fortifying Servant Leadership’s Foundations: Five Core Questions to Guide Future Research.” Group & Organization Management: 1–43.
  10. Alessa, G. S. 2021. “The Dimensions of Transformational Leadership and Its Organizational Effects in Public Universities, in Saudi Arabia: A Systematic Review.” Frontiers in Psychology 12: 1–16.
  11. Eaton, L., T. Bridgman, and S. Cummings. 2024. “Advancing the Democratization of Work: A New Intellectual History of Transformational Leadership Theory.” Leadership 20, no. 3: 125–143.
  12. Guo, W., J. Cui, L. Arendt, and J. O’Brien. 2025. “Limitations and Potential Dark Sides of Transformational Leadership: The Case of the Founder and Former CEO of Theranos.” Management Teaching Review 10, no. 4: 477–490.
  13. Matsuo, M. 2025. “Transformational Leadership and Team Communities of Practice; Overcoming Knowledge Sharing Barriers.” Journal of Knowledge Management 29, no. 11: 59–82.
  14. Newton, L. 1986. “Moral Leadership in Business: The Role of Structure.” Business & Professional Ethics Journal 5: 74–90.