Growing Greener: Cultivating Organisational Sustainability Through Leadership Development

Organisations significantly contribute to climate change, making them essential targets for climate mitigation strategies. There is an opportunity to curb organisations’ environmental impact by increasing the amount of pro-environmental behaviour (PEB)among employees. Many social and psychological factors impact an employee’s likelihood of performing PEBs. Among social–psychological factors influencing employee PEB, leadership is unique as it is a social–psychological factor that can control or influence other factors. Leadership makes performing PEBs at work and home different. Due to its unique position, leadership has garnered attention from practitioners and researchers for how it can affect organisational environmental sustainability. There is limited research focusing on how leadership development can promote employee PEB, thereby increasing organisational environmental sustainability. Researchers conducted a narrative review that provided an overview of how leadership uniquely affects employee PEB, bringing together findings from various fields. Through this review, the authors propose the ICERR model for leadership development, which outlines five key capability areas and three desired outcomes for leadership development related to environmental sustainability. This model consists of 14 proposals that provide a framework for future research and identify critical areas for leadership development programmes looking to impact environmental sustainability.