Content area
Abstract
This article examines the existing confusion over the multiple leadership styles related to successful implementation of corporate social responsibility/sustainability in organizations. The researchers find that the problem is the complex nature of sustainability itself. We posit that organizations are complex adaptive systems operating within wider complex adaptive systems, making the problem of interpreting just in what way an organization is to be sustainable, an extraordinary demand on leaders. Hence, leadership for sustainability requires leaders of extraordinary abilities. These are leaders who can read and predict through complexity, think through complex problems, engage groups in dynamic adaptive organizational change and have the emotional intelligence to adaptively engage with their own emotions associated with complex problem solving. Leaders and leadership is a key interpreter of how sustainability of the organization 'links' to the wider systems in which the organization sits, and executing that link well requires unusual leaders and leadership systems. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]